The company said, 'the recall would officially be expanded to other geographies, including South Africa'. Toyota Motor's sales in January tumbled 16%, hit by the recall of its most popular models

AS TOYOTA deals with dropping sales and lawsuits across the United States, the company had one more bad news dropping in from South Africa. The latest development shows that the accelerator pedal problems may affect Toyota vehicles sold in South Africa as well as Middle East and Latin America.

 
The company said, "the recall would officially be expanded to other geographies, including South Africa". Toyota Motor's sales in January tumbled 16 per cent, hit by the recall of its most popular models.
 

Toyota has recalled 14 million cars and trucks in America, Europe and China to fix the defective accelerators pedals which give way to unintended acceleration – posing serious accident risk.   
 
The Japanese car maker has indicated that the recall might extend to Middle East, Africa and Latin America—taking back about 180,000 cars imported from the United States and sold in these areas.
 
Affected models include the Camry sedan, the Corolla compact and the Rav4 SUV, which are the company's three best-selling vehicles.
 
In the first public comment from an executive at Toyota's head office, the company's executive in charge of quality said he was expecting a sales hit from the recall.
 
"The sales forecast is something that we're extremely worried about," Executive Vice President Shinichi Sasaki told a news conference. The company will report its third-quarter earnings on Thursday.
 
A separate recall for slipping floormats, also linked to unintended acceleration has also hit 8.1 million Toyota vehicles which are now being recalled, more than its total group sales last year.
 
Although Toyota says the occurrence of problems is rare, public confidence is being shaken by coverage of the saga, including the harrowing details of the crash of a Lexus, blamed on unexpected acceleration, which killed an off-duty California state-trooper and three members of his family last year.
 
Toyota President Akio Toyoda, the grandson of the company's founder, has not formally addressed the public or media on the recall problems. While in Davos, Switzerland last weekend, he appeared on TV channel NHK and apologized to consumers.
 
The company's US head, Jim Lentz also appeared on TV on Monday and expressed his regret in Toyota's largest market.