Toyota’s recall of 8,000 Tacomas to hurt sales further

The Toyota recall followed supplier Dana Holding Corp’s report to US safety regulators that 34,000 drive shaft components it supplied to Toyota,Ford and Nissan could have cracks.

Dana said it was investigating the cause of the problem and remedies would be specific to each vehicle on which the parts are used. It believed less than 2 per cent of the parts shipped to the automakers had cracks.

About 17,000 of the parts were supplied to Ford Escape and Mercury Mariner car-based SUVs and a review found no potential impact on the vehicles,Ford spokesman Said Deep said.

“Our rigorous testing and review concluded there are no safety or performance issues,” Deep said.

The vehicles “will not experience a loss of control or present a safety risk even in the unlikely event the part should fail,” Nissan spokesman Colin Price said in a statement. Toyota said in a document obtained by Reuters that the all-wheel drive version of the 2010 Tacoma trucks may have a component containing cracks in the joint portion of the drive shaft due to an “improper manufacturing process control.”