I kinda agree it might just be the floor mats in some cases....when I first got my jeep grand cherokee....the alinement and height of the brake and accelerator was difffent than my old car and I found myself at stoplights revving the engine even though I was pushing on the brake.
It didn't take long for me to realize that on this model I had to move my right foot further onto the brake as to not simultaneously touch the accelerator while applying the break...go figure///

keep your crappy plastic azz toyotas

I'm a Lincoln man

In most cases after the toyotas crash the police are finding the floor mats in the car owners trunk.... right where toyota says they should be.... weird.


The new MKS is an amazing car! The 2010's have the new EcoBoost engine.... probably the most advanced car engine on the road today

All manufacturers have had some reports of unintended acceleration.
There are more sophisticated electronics in cars today than there were in some fighter jets of twenty years ago.

I prefer good old fashioned mechanical things controlling the important stuff in my car.

Fords are made in Mexico!

That's a play on words and disingenuous... While some are ASSEMBLED (not made) in mexico so are some toyotas. Don't believe me? Go to at Culiacan, mexico and see what they're building there Most home appliances are also made there and the Chrysler V-8 engine is also made in Mexico. Engines in the Chevrolet Equinox sport utility vehicle are from China. Quite frankly as long as the quality is still there I don't care where it's made. Both Ford and toyota give the same warranty with the exception that Ford also gives free Roadside assistance (which toyota doesn't).

NOW THATS THE TRUTH

DAM THATS WHAT THE UNION WAS SAYING BEFORE YOU GOT YOUR LOW PAYING JOB !

i like driving over them yota's !

...

So what??

None of the money ( aka profits ) that Toyota makes actually stays here in America.

So what if the employ a bunch of people.

Your ******** line about keeping an American brand car for " two years " is a load of crap. It may have been true a couple of decades ago, but it's no longer applicable.

Oh yeah...blaming people for putting in the " wrong " floor mats or not " installing " them properly is ******** too.

How about Toyota designs a car that something as simple as a floor mat COULDN'T cause a problem.

Funny how you blame the people that bought the cars that keep you employed, but utterly neglect the fact that the design and engineering ( if a thing like a floor mat could cause such a HUGE problem ) was faulty in the first place.

Pretty pathetic, dude.

Not lame at all

http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_170186.asp

http://www.fox40.com/news/headlines/ktxl-news-jamessikesinvestigated0311,0,4677651.story


Fact...Incidents related are due to improper floor mats

Fact....James Sikes is a loser

You used to work on cars? You have credentials to back up your source of opinion on Toyota's sheet metal?

Thats odd? Consumer reports is still ranking Toyota third? Same as last year? http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/toyota-finishes-third-in-consumer-reports-brand-ranking/

Recent article from Popular Mechanics:

Anatomy of Toyota's Problem Pedal:
Mechanic's Diary
What's the real problem behind Toyota's unintended acceleration? Is it simply a sticky
pedal, or is the trouble more fundamental? PM senior automotive editor Mike Allen
delves into modern car tech, explaining why widespread theories about electrical throttle
problems and electromagnetic interference are misguided.
By Mike AllenPublished on: March 3, 2010
Toyota has recalled millions of cars and trucks—4.2 million to replace floor mats that
might impede throttle-pedal travel, and 2.4 million to install a shim behind the electronic
pedal assembly. All of the affected pedal assemblies were made by Canadian supplier
CTS. Toyota's boffins have documented a problem that can make a few of these pedals
slow to return, and maybe even stick down. Problem solved.
But the media, Congress—and personal-injury lawyers—smell the blood in the water.
Not to diminish the injuries and a few deaths attributable to these very real mechanical
problems, but they're statistically only a very small blip, which may explain why Toyota
took so long to identify the issue, especially when it has symptoms similar to the
similarly documented floor mat recall. Plus, sudden unintended acceleration (SUA) is
notoriously difficult to diagnose because, more often then not, the problem can't be
repeated in front of a mechanic. Let's not forget the Audi SUA episode back in the '80s;
the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration eventually concluded that there was
no mechanical problem. The culprit, as hard as this is to admit, was most likely driver
error. To put the issue into context, in the last decade, there were about 24,000 customer
complaints about SUA involving almost every major automaker. The NHTSA
investigated fewer than 50.
The issue now is whether there's a more insidious problem unrelated to the two recalls
already extant. Specifically, whether there's some design flaw in the entire concept of
electronic throttle control. Some are questioning whether electromagnetic interference
from devices like cellphones could be contributing to the acceleration problems.
It used to be that there was a steel cable that ran from the pedal itself through the firewall
and attached to the throttle blades that admitted air to the intake manifold. A sticking
throttle could be the result of friction anywhere—in the pedal pivot, between the cable
itself and its nylon-lined sheath, or in the carburetor or fuel-injection throttle blades.
(Does anybody remember carburetors?). Modern cars, which make up the majority on the
market today, use a throttle pedal assembly that is connected to the engine only
electronically. Signals are carried over wires to the engine management computer, which
in turn sends electrical impulses to the stepper motor that actually controls the throttle
blades.
Sounds like there are plenty of places for gremlins to seize control of the works, right?
And that's where pundits who don't really understand the architecture of throttle-by-wire
systems go wrong. It's all in the engineering.
Let's start at bottom of it all—your foot, which moves the pedal fore and aft in relation to
the firewall. Inside the pedal assembly is a spring to make it return as you lift off, a
device to add a little friction that dampens the movement (Your foot would tire in short
order if there wasn't some damping), and a transducer of some sort that turns the
movement of the pedal into an electrical signal. That transducer is a simple device,
invented in 1879 by Edwin Hall (not 1979; 1879). It consists of only a single slab of
semiconductor with a few wires attached to its edge, one on each end and one in the
middle. With a voltage applied to the end wires, it acts as a voltage divider. Placing a
magnet near the sensor changes the magnetic lines of flux, which literally push the
electrons away from the electrodes and changes the voltage at the center wire. The
magnet, in the Toyota case, is on the pedal arm. As the pedal moves, it alters the voltage
at the semiconductor and that's how the engine computer knows the position of the pedal.
The benefit of Hall-effect sensors is that there's no mechanical connection to corrode, no
internal resistance, and other electronics, such as amplifiers, aren't needed. You could
make one on your kitchen table with a refrigerator magnet and some doorbell wire.
There are two discrete Hall-effect sensors in the Toyota/CTS pedal, which is common
industry practice. Just to make sure the sensors aren't confused, they run on totally
separate circuits back to the ECM, three wires each. They don't even share an electrical
ground. Like many onboard automobile sensors, they are also completely isolated from
the vehicle ground. To reduce the potential for interference or mistakes, they operate at
different voltages. The first sensor, known as ACCEL POS #1, has a nominal voltage
range from 0.5 volts to 1.1 volts at idle and 2.5 volts to 4.5 volts at wide-open-throttle
(WOT). The second sensor, ACCEL POS #2, delivers from 1.2 volts to 2.0 volts at idle
and 3.4 volts to 5.0 volts at WOT. Why such a wide range of permissible voltages? The
engine computer (ECM) recalibrates the sensor regularly, every time you start the car and
the ECM goes through its power-on self-test.
Both accelerator-pedal-position Hall-effect sensors have to agree fairly closely, or the
ECM will go into its limp-home mode, which turns on the Check Engine light and sets a
trouble code.
There's more. If Toyota's engine-management scheme is anything like that of most other
car companies, firmware inside the ECM also monitors the airflow into the engine, the
throttle blade position and engine rpm, and calculates backwards to what the throttle
pedal position should be. Any discrepancy, and a trouble code is set, the Check Engine
light on the dash goes on, and you're dialing the service manager to make an
appointment.
Bottom line: The system is not only redundant, it's double-redundant. The signal lines
from the pedal to the ECM are isolated. The voltages used in the system are DC
voltages—any RF voltages introduced into the system, by, say, that microwave oven you
have in the passenger seat, would be AC voltages, which the ECM's conditioned inputs
would simply ignore. Neither your cellphone nor Johnny's PlayStation have the power to
induce much confusion into the system.
These throttle-by-wire systems are very difficult to confuse—they're designed to be
robust, and any conceivable failure is engineered to command not an open throttle but an
error message.
So what to make of the unintended acceleration cases popping up by the dozens? Not the
ones explainable by problem sticky pedals, but the ones documented by people who
claim their vehicle ran away on its own, with no input, and resisted all attempts to stop it?
Some can probably be explained as an attempt to get rid of a car consumers no longer
desire. Some are probably the result of Audi 5000 Syndrome, where drivers simply lost
track of their feet and depressed the gas instead of the brake. It's happened to me: Luckily
I recognized the phenomenon and corrected before it went bang. Others may not have the
presence of mind.
But the possibility that a vehicle could go from idling at a traffic light to terrific,
uncalled-for and uncontrollable acceleration because the guy next to you at a traffic light
answered his cellphone? Or some ghost in the machine or a hacker caused a software
glitch that made your car run away and the brakes suddenly simultaneously fail? Not in
the least bit likely. Toyota deserves a better deal than the media and Congress are
giving it.

And finally Edmunds.com:




Toyota Recalls Put into Context by Edmunds.com

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — February 10, 2010 – Edmunds.com, the premier online
resource for automotive information, has obtained and reviewed the National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) complaint database. A key
finding: despite being the subject of intense scrutiny of the company,
Toyota ranks 17th among automakers in the overall number of complaints per
vehicle sold.

According to the database, which consists of complaints filed by
individuals and is not checked for accuracy by NHTSA, Toyota was the
subject of 9.1 percent of the complaints from 2001 through 2010 (until
February 3). During this period, the company sold 13.5 percent of all new
cars in the United States.

Land Rover ranks first among automakers, with 0.6 percent of the complaints
compared to only 0.1 percent market share from 2001 through 2010 (until
February 3).

The following chart sets forth the results for all automakers:




AUTOMAKER RANK (IN PERCENT OF PERCENT OF
ORDER OF COMPLAINTS IN SALES IN US
MOST NHTSA DATABASE MARKET
COMPLAINTS
PER MARKET
SHARE)

LAND ROVER 1 0.6% 0.1%

AMERICAN SUZUKI MOTOR CORP. 2 0.9% 0.4%

ISUZU MANUFACTURING SERVICES OF 3 0.3% 0.2%
AMERICA

VOLKSWAGEN OF AMERICA, INC 4 4.1% 2.4%

JAGUAR CARS LTD 5 0.4% 0.2%

VOLVO CARS OF N.A. LLC. 6 1.1% 0.7%

CHRYSLER LLC 7 16.3% 13.0%

MAZDA NORTH AMERICAN OPERATIONS 8 1.7% 1.5%

MITSUBISHI MOTORS NORTH AMERICA, 9 1.3% 1.2%
INC.

FORD MOTOR COMPANY 10 18.3% 17.6%

GENERAL MOTORS CORP. 11 25.3% 24.5%

NISSAN NORTH AMERICA, INC. 12 5.8% 5.9%

HYUNDAI MOTOR COMPANY 13 4.2% 4.4%

BMW OF NORTH AMERICA, LLC 14 1.7% 1.9%

SUBARU OF AMERICA, INC. 15 1.1% 1.3%

AMERICAN HONDA MOTOR CO. 16 6.8% 9.4%

TOYOTA MOTOR CORPORATION 17 9.1% 13.5%

MERCEDES-BENZ USA, LLC. 18 1.0% 1.5%

PORSCHE CARS NORTH AMERICA, INC. 19 0.1% 0.2%

SMART USA DISTRIBUTOR LLC 20 0.0% 0.0%

you can argue all you want to,but the damage is already done.

i buy sell trade vehicles,and my majority vehicles are all Domestic.
usually dodge,fords,and chevys.
of the foreign vehicles,not one is toyota,nor has there been for years.

i would not waste my time buying a toyota.
the way they get you,they sell you the vehicle cheaply,then gouge you on parts and repairs,otherwise known as the back end.

i also find your 2 year comment to be very amusing.
perhaps you might have noticed we are still in a recession.
people are indeed keeping their vehicles longer,and actually repairing them instead of replacing them.

in closing,the toyota brand is scarred,perhaps permanently.
the financial wave is still rolling out on this fiasco.

i understand your loyalty to your employer,and i applaud your commitment,but,keep your eyes open.


Buy American Vehicles,we need the money back in this country.

2 years?

I drive a '99 Lincoln Town Car with 141,000 miles on it.

it's in as good of shape as when I bought it and I expect to get another 100,000 miles out of it


so, this whole thread is really just a commercial for Toyota?

You must be talking about the newer ones. I drive a barebones no-frils 98 Toyota Corolla and have yet to have any significant problem with it. It gets great gas mileage and the repairs I get done by my own mechanic. I have kept up with the regular maintenance and can say this is the best car I have ever owned.

I drive a 98 camry too. BEST car ever!!!

Since no one else is really on topic either (something about fraudulent claims of out-of-control cars, or something)...

...I'd like to draw a correlation here between (a) people making false claims of out of control cars and (b) UFO sightings and the like.

Once an idea reaches a certain level of visibility, you are going to have people coming out of the woodwork and telling lies (or mis-understanding their own experiences) to fit the highly visible idea.

Get a pushbike.....or a donkey!

Now, that's a good attitude!!