Toyota and the Volcano

I suppose after all the problems that car manufacturer Toyota has been suffering these past few months, it’s only fair to allow it to blow its own trumpet on the few occasions when it still can.

While Europe’s most advanced aircraft were rendered powerless by the ash cloud from Iceland’s Eyjafallajökull volcano, Toyota’s legendary Hilux pick-up truck was used by a team of scientists to transport monitoring equipment to the summit just before the volcano erupted.

The vehicles used for the expedition were prepared by specialist firm Arctic Trucks to the same extreme environment specification as the Hilux used by Top Gear presenters Jeremy Clarkson and James May to team to drive across the Arctic to the Magnetic North Pole a while back. With giant low-pressure 38-inch tyres, the go-anywhere Hilux had the measure of every challenge in its path as it made its way through ice and snow towards the volcano’s fiery heart.

What happened to the equipment after the volcano blew its ash cloud 30,000 feet into the air isn’t recorded….

The company needs to grasp at any straws that it can at the moment, with even more problems arising on top of the worldwide recalls that it has had to make over the past couple of months over various faults on its vehicles. Only a few days ago Toyota Motor Europe announced that it is making a voluntary recall of around 7,500 Land Cruiser 150s (Prado) and Lexus GX 460s in Europe in order to carry out a reprogramming of the Vehicle Stability Control (VSC) software to improve its responsiveness in certain circumstances.

While the recalled vehicles are safe to drive under normal conditions, on certain vehicles equipped with the optional Kinetic Dynamic Suspension System, when the driver makes a sharp turn of the steering wheel at high speed, or when they negotiate a right-hand curve at excessive speed, there is a possibility for the car to slide out, even though Toyota says that it is a controllable situation. The problem is apparently due to an insufficient activation of the VSC system when the vehicle is driven under certain extreme conditions. The issue was investigated following a report in a US-based consumer magazine.

The affected vehicles in Europe are only left-hand drive versions – no right-hand drive models are affected and so no recalls are being made in the UK.