Beleaguered carmaker Toyota said Thursday that it had suspended sales of its new Lexus GX 460 sport utility vehicle, and Moscow dealers are hoping that a recall of the vehicle won't reach Russia.
The announcement came after Consumer Reports, a U.S. non-profit magazine, gave the car a "Don't Buy: Safety Risk" recommendation. The magazine said the SUV lost traction too easily and slid out too far before the electronic stability-control system kicked in to bring the car under control.
Lexus dealers in Moscow have been selling the SUV, which runs fr om 2.98 million rubles ($103,000) to 3.47 million rubles in Russia, since February. A total of 600 cars have been sold in Russia and the Middle East since the beginning of the year.
Toyota has been beset recently by claims that its cars are defective. The company had to recall 4.2 million units in the United States in September 2009 and an additional 2.3 million in January because of problems with the accelerator on several models.
It has also announced a recall on all Prius vehicles produced this year —? 223,000 in the United States and more than 200,000 in other countries — after issues arose with the hybrid car's brake pedal.
The GX 460 is in high demand, and customers who have purchased them haven't reported any problems, said Kirill, a representative at a Lexus dealership who asked that his last name not be used. ?
"Many customers who have bought this car say they are very satisfied," he told The Moscow Times.
He cast doubt on the Consumer Reports test, saying a video clip of the magazine's test drive didn't provide any evidence of a problem.
"They show a car turning at high speed, but it doesn't even spin out of control, to say nothing of flipping over. The car stayed on its path. There was a drift, but nothing special happened to the car," he said.
The tests the GX 460 underwent were extreme, and drivers would not subject the vehicle to such conditions on a daily basis, said Dmitry Leontyev, a reviewer with Russia's 4?…4 Club Magazine.
Toyota said Wednesday that it was halting sales of Lexus GX 460s in North America, wh ere 5,400 have been sold since the beginning of the year. ?
Toyota will try to duplicate the Consumer Reports test to determine whether appropriate steps need to be taken, the company said in a statement on its U.S. unit's web site.
The company also said it would provide loaner vehicles to customers who had purchased GX 460 SUVs and had concerns about driving.
Sales of the GX 460 will be suspended from Apr. 16 to Apr. 28, Paul Nolasco, a Toyota spokesman in Tokyo, told Bloomberg.
Kirill, from the Lexus dealership, said the GX 460 SUVs supplied to the Russian market were unlikely to have the problems mentioned in the Consumer Reports review.
"We don't foresee any problems with quality," he said, adding that the cars Toyota supplied to the Russian market were different from those sold in the United States, since Toyota took into account the characteristics of the national markets, for which it produced vehicles.
A spokeswoman for Toyota's Russian unit declined to comment Thursday.