By Kim Hyun-cheol
Staff Reporter
It appears to be true that Japanese auto giant Toyota has voluntarily decided to issue a recall on its models with faulty floor mats: Not because the maker was solicited to do so, but because the government had no clue what is really wrong with those vehicles.
``We had no idea during our investigation that there was a problem with the floor mats,'' an unnamed official of the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs was quoted Friday as saying by the Yonhap News Agency.
``We only found out about the defects on the floor shape and the location of the accelerator pedal in the cars in question, before Toyota spoke of the faulty mats,'' he added.
Before the recall announced Tuesday, the ministry and the Korea Automobile Testing & Research Institute (KATRI), reviewed several Toyota models following a huge recall by the maker last year affecting over 8 million vehicles worldwide, on the issue of unintended acceleration.
KATRI, a state-run body under the umbrella of the ministry, probed 17 kinds of floor mats in total but ended up ruling out the defected one.
Toyota replaced that component with a newer mat in February, which led to the suspicion that it had tried to sweep the issue under the carpet in the wake of the recall.
At Tuesday's press conference, Toyota Korea President Hisao Nakabayashi said the replacement followed the same responsive action that took place in the United States.
Nakabayashi said it took some time before identifying the problem in the floor mats, and the maker immediately reported this to the ministry after it recognized the possibility of the fatal interference with the accelerator pedals.
The ministry officer confirmed Toyota was intent on a voluntary recall.
``Those two kinds of floor mats look identical, so we thought there was no problem at first,'' he said. ``Originally we took issue with the defects we found in the floor shape and the location of the accelerator pedal, but Toyota Korea made a recall plan due to the floor mat problem."
But before a final decision was made, Toyota suggested a free repair service instead of a recall because the mats were not provided directly from the maker, according to the ministry. They were manufactured in South Korea between November 2005 and January 2010, and only used in South Korea.
Toyota Korea, the Korean unit of the Japanese giant carmaker, issued a recall Tuesday for a total of 12,984 vehicles with botched floor mats in its three best-selling models ― the Lexus ES 350 sedans and the Camry sedan and hybrid models ― as they could cause an interference problem with the accelerator pedals.
Those mats, when not fully attached to the floor, could slip and cause the accelerator pedals to become stuck ``under rare conditions,'' the maker said. The affected vehicles will be eligible to receive free repairs from the maker's service centers from April 19.
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