PR Newswire is reporting the problem concerns the rear drive shaft after reports of one owner experiencing a drive shaft slip yoke failure. The recall is voluntary and no accidents or injuries have been reported.

The problem is caused by a faulty casting from the foundry process, and only affects an estimated 0.05 percent of the models sold. Owners will receive a letter from Toyota advising them of the problem in May.

Owners will be asked to visit their local dealer for an inspection of the rear drive which should only take about ten minutes. If the part needs replacing this will take longer but will be of no cost to the owner. If you are concerned this recall might affect you contact the Toyota Customer Experience Center at 1-800-331-4331, or visit www.toyota.com/recall.

According to USA Today, the recall is one of the biggest, as Toyota are recalling around 2.1 million vehicles in the US, with various Lexus models also affected by the floor mat issue.

In case this is the first time you’ve heard about the problem with these floor mats, Toyota has been having ongoing problems with them due to the fact that they have the potential to jam against the accelerator pedal or interfere with pedal mechanisms. This is obviously a major issue if it occurs to drivers whilst on the road, so you can understand why Toyota has straight away announced this new setback.

Here are the important details that you need to be aware of. New Lexus models affected by the recall include the 2007 Lexus GS 300, GS 350 AWD Lexus, and Lexus models RX 330, RX 350, and RX 400h, the three of which were built between 2006 and 2007.

As for Toyota vehicles, the models included on the list are the 2006 Toyota Highlander and Highlander HV models and the Toyota RAV4 produced between 2006-2010.

What are your thoughts on the models mentioned above, is your motor unfortunately on the list? Over at Detroit News, they are reporting that Toyota has already been fined around $49 million for failing to announce various recalls on time. This latest recall is certainly going to cast Toyota in a bad light – most of you will probably feel this is justified.

We’ll bring you more details on the recall soon.

As reported from BBC News, most of the recalled models affect car owners in Japan, but Toyota are also recalling 421,000 outside of Japan, with 140,000 vehicles specifically linked to the Toyota Avensis model.

If you happen to own a IS or GS Lexus model, you’ll want to know that this car has also been recalled. 255,000 of these affect customers in North America and around 10,000 in Europe.

You’ll be pleased to know that the fuel leakage problem isn’t serious, rather more a precaution measure by Toyota as no injuries or accidents have been reported yet. If you have one of the listed models above, let us know your thoughts on this latest recall – it’s hardly ideal is it?

There is further information the recall over at the Press Association here. We’ve also found this Twitter link to Toyota USA, so you can message them in the hope of a quick response.

Ward’s Auto has been looking into this, which we learned via Engadget and we were shocked when we found out that there were 136 recalls in all, which affected 17.2 million vehicles. If you thought that that figure was high, then you will be shocked to know that 2000 saw more than 24.3 million auto recalls – suddenly things do not seem that bad.

So far Toyota has recalled 6.6 million vehicles, GM 2.8 million, Honda 2.2 million, with Nissan Chrysler and Ford having 1.9 million, 1.1 million and 562,901 vehicle recalls respectively. Looking at those figures we can see that The Blue Oval has improved this year, as 2009 saw the Detroit automaker recall over 4.5 million vehicles.

To get a greater insights into these 2010 auto recalls autorecalls.us has researched the NHTSA database, taking all the handwork out of it for you. We know that all the details will now be out of date, but this is great for those who are studying the past 12 months who for some reason forget that their vehicle was involved in a recall in the first place.

Some of the most recent recalls include Cadillac And Buick Models, Nissan, Mercedes-Benz, and many more.

This is now the second recall involving the Sienna this year alone, the first was in April and was due to rusting spare tire holders. However, looking at the overall picture, 2010 has not been a very good year for Toyota when it comes to their build quality. We had hoped that they had managed to solve these kind of issues – but what would you expect from mass produced products such as cars?

We are informed that those who own one of the Sienna models affected by this recall will receive details early next year once enough replacement parts have come in – not exactly rushing to get the issue rectified. The recall covers 94,000 2011 models that were made before the early part of November 2010.

Some of the questions being asked are why Toyota took this action? What warnings are there? Have there been any reports of accidents and many more? For the complete FAQ list visit Toyota. Even though the Japanese automaker is facing yet another round of recalls the company is still upbeat, Greg Keenan from The Globe and Mail has been reporting on what Yoichi Tomihara, president for Toyota Canada Inc has been saying. How can an automaker have that many recall and still have good sales and even more positive forecasts?

The reason behind this latest problem is due to a sensor on the power steering, with AFP reporting that they could fail if the car drives over humps. If this were to happen, then steering would become much heavier. Thankfully there have not been any reports of accidents.

Toyota said that this is a simple fix, and would just require an update to the software. The last Toyota recall was just last month, which also covered a number of Lexus models; 1.5 million vehicles were affected in that recall.

We still do not understand how Toyota proved one of the most reliable cars in 2010; we have to wonder why more than 10 million recalls has not had an affect on this result?

Are you starting to lose confidence in Toyota?

The recall, which Alan Ng discussed in a recent post is yet another issue with the brakes on a range of Toyota and Lexus vehicles – we have to wonder when the problems will stop for the Japanese car manufacturer?

Toyota has been trying hard to make the recall process of vehicles that much simpler, and this Vehicle Identification Number checker certainly helps. All you need to do is locate your VIN number – more details on where to find that here – and then enter the 17-digit ID number in the search box. (Check your VIN here)

Once you have done this then you just need to hit the submit button and the tool will determine if your vehicle is covered by this latest recall. Are you slowly losing confidence with Toyota?

With over 300 lawsuits ranging from personal injury to economic loss, to date this year, the auto manufacturer has already recalled eight million vehicles across the world for issues such as the entrapment of the accelerator pedal.

Pre-trial rulings have seen some lawsuits merged together attacking the companies marketed values of the quality and safety of its vehicles. Documents provided state that “The defects causing unintended acceleration have caused defective vehicles’ values to plummet.” In answer to this Toyota has said that any advertisement claims are opinion and should be taken as such. In the court papers the automaker claims that they cannot be held liable for misrepresentation and that they would have had no exclusive knowledge of any defects.

For more on Toyota’s latest recall developments check out Autoblog.

Source: Bloomberg

More than 3,000 supposed faults of acceleration issues in Toyota’s have been know leading to this investigation. The Wall Street Journal reports that various data recorders within Toyota’s vehicles, discovered that at the time of these sudden acceleration accidents, the throttle pedals were wide open, without the brakes being applied. This finding suggests that the drivers stamped on the accelerator rather than the brakes, whilst trying to avoid these crashes.

Although Toyota were swift in sanctioning a recall, only one out of the 75 known fatal crashes can be directly pointed to a fault with the vehicle. Even then this single incident involving a California highway patrolman, was found to be down to the floor mat trapping the throttle pedal.

Officials at the U.S.T.D have publicly stated that they are yet to find any electronic faults that could end up causing an accident. It has been confirmed that there have been floor mat and sticky accelerator pedal defects, which Toyota has responded to quickly with a recall. So after more than eight million Toyota vehicles had been recalled, it seems that the Japanese Automaker may have suffered unjustly. Could these latest findings go someway to rebuilding Toyotas reputation ?

Read more: Autoblog

As reported from NPR, the recall has now started as of yesterday, in which 270,000 Lexus and Crown models will be recalled as a result of various engine components which could cause vehicles to stall – namely valve springs.

According to Toyota though, the company made a fix to the spring parts in August 2008, but did not feel that a recall was needed at the time. Company spokesman Hideaki Homma has more details:

”We changed the part in August because then the problem won’t happen at all, even if tiny particles enter during manufacturing. We are talking about microscopic particles here.”

After continued complaints about the problems though, Toyota gave in and issued the recall, bringing us up to speed on the current events. You can’t help but feel that Toyota should of done more two years ago though when the problem first surfaced.

Let us know your thoughts on this.