LISBON: Toyota Caetano Portugal is to call in over 29,000 vehicles over safety issues stemming from the Takata airbags they have installed, an official company source said.
This represents the first Portuguese fallout from the announcements made by the Japanese manufacturers Toyota and Nissan that they would be recalling over three million cars worldwide due to the aforementioned issue.
Toyota Caetano Portugal told Lusa that the safety review had been ongoing since May when it first started tackling the issue and was now in a position to confirm that the airbag replacement program would extend to 29,304 units according to the same source.
This comes in addition to the 16,000 vehicles that were dealt with in the first phase of the campaign even while Toyota Caetano Portugal stated that no airbag related problem had hitherto been reported to the company.
The Takata airbags have been found susceptible to exploding and projecting metallic shards into the automobile in a default that was only discovered in the wake of six deaths of persons inside Honda vehicles.