US auto sales figures for January, due later on Tuesday, are expected to show a sharp drop for Toyota after it pulled eight of its most popular models from showrooms last week following complaints over sticking accelerator pedals.
In the first public comment from an executive at Toyota’s head office, the company’s executive in charge of quality said he was expecting a sales hit from the recall.“The sales forecast is something that we’re extremely worried about,” Executive Vice President Shinichi Sasaki told a news conference.
On top of a separate recall for slipping floor-mats, also linked to unintended acceleration, some 8.1 million Toyota vehicles are now being recalled, more than its total group sales last year. Toyota President Akio Toyoda, the grandson of the company’s founder, has not formally addressed the public or media on the recall problems. While in Davos, Switzerland last weekend, he appeared briefly on broadcaster NHK and apologized to consumers.
Meanwhile, Europe’s No.2 carmaker PSA Peugeot Citroen said it would discuss with Toyota in coming days how to proceed with its own recall of just under 97,000 Citroen C1s and Peugeot 107s, built on the same assembly lines as Toyota’s Aygo at a joint plant in the Czech Republic.
