Toyota suspends sales of Lexus GX 460

Re: Evil Toyota

You poor thing. Made a really bad decision eh? Hope your Prius continues to make you miserable for a long time.

 

Re: Evil Toyota

It shouldn't behave like that with all the sophisticated vsc and other systems lexus touts as being safe. Someone might perform such a maneuver if there is an obstruction on a road. I've had a cement block fall off a truck in front of me and a trucks tire exploded and had to manuever around it at highway speeds. My car didn't act like that (I know its a car, but the cement block thing happened in the snow)

Also the target market for the GX doesn't seem to be the rugged, well trained driver. It seems targeted at the soccer mom crowd (from the commercials I've seen).

Also note that CR puts all of the SUVs it test through this same test.

 

Re: Evil Toyota

LOL..Einstein....when you're going to realize, that just because you drive a Toyota...Doesn't mean you should have all the answers for every Toyota problem. Get a grip on yourself...Love your Toyota..And hope nothing happens to you with it...Or you, like everybody else that reported a problem, goes into quarantine.

 

Re: Evil Toyota

My Cherokee got scary pretty easily. The Blazer is better. I will blame Toyota (and Ford and GM and Honda, etc) for marketing SUVs to the soccer mom crowd.

I did note that CR did talk about the fact that the GX's performance was unacceptable compared with newer, modern SUVs. That they have improved is great, but I still think SUVs are not acceptable for most people. Believe me I see a lot of poor SUV drivers living in Colorado. Ooh! I have 4WD. I can drive the speed limit even in 8 inches of snow. At least until I have to stop just like every other vehicle!

 

Re: Evil Toyota

I couldn't agree more. i'd rather drive a subaru in a snow storm because it has a lower center of gravity and symmetrical awd drive. I have driven my prius in many snow storms and I cna't tell you how many flipped over SUVs I have seen compared to cars(I see cars get stuck, but I see more suvs flipped or severly smashed up). My uncle used to have an isuzu trooper back in 95... talk about flip happy!

I wonder if Lexus had stepped up to the plate and offered a hybrid version of the GX would it have made any difference. the extra weight low in the SUV might help prevent that sideways movement/ roll over

 

The magazine article used several trained test drivers who were not allowed to be present or communicate with each other until the tests were over. Then they met and discovered that they all had the same problem: by letting up on the gas in a tightening curve (off-ramp used as an example), the car would behave as shown. Rollover would be a possibility if there were a curb to hit during the sideways slide--looks probable to me. The mag writers blamed the calibration of the electronic stability control kicking in too slowly. They said other Toyotas had their systems work more quickly, and the problem did not arise. They sent results to CR. Toyota people arrived to see what was going on. The mag people would not re-run the test at that time because it was pouring rain, and the original tests were under dry conditions. But they gave Toyota videos of the tests. I imagine Toyota has replicated, since they have halted sales of this model. I predict that a recall to re-flash the software for the stability system will be the result of all this. No more, no less.

 

Suspension of sales of any SUV is a good day to celebrate.

I dream of the day when there are no more SUVs on the roads.

*why I dislike SUVs: They are tall and you cannot see around them (dangerous). The have a higher center of gravity than cars (dangerous). Because they are larger, they must push more air out of the way and they are heavier (larger engine required and thicker steel to support a structure with a higher center of gravity), and this results in greater energy consumption (greater gasoline consumption and more environmental pollutants) than a car. You don't have to agree with me. You can buy an island in the ocean and go form your own country. I have my own island. I call it North America.

 

the gx is an ugly bloated monstrosity. They should just pull the plug on it completely. I mean what is their target market? Botoxed, fake-baked female realtors?

 

Do you work for Toyota? I believe that is the EXACT target market that Mr. Toyoda had intended this vehicle for. If you read the marketing literature, it literally says "Botoxed, fake-baked female realtors." * (although I think they mentioned botoxed, fake-bake male realtors as well)


*intended as joke. not actually a Toyota quote
no offense to realtors, nor allergan, nor fake-bake (although the government is starting to tax tanning beds)

 

This isn't hybrid or Prius news and should be moved to Other Cars.

CR's entries are at:
Consumer Reports Cars Blog: Toyota stops sale of 2010 Lexus GX 460 after Consumer Reports safety alert
Consumer Reports Cars Blog: Don't Buy: Safety Risk--2010 Lexus GX 460

Regardless of whether one thinks their tests/concerns are valid, that's a pretty dumb move in any vehicle to lift off the throttle in such circumstances, you're shifting weight off the rear tires and duh, you're going to lose traction back there.

All cars and "trucks" have their limits and will go out of control at some point. What about cars and SUVs, esp. used ones that have no stability control at all. Should CR label them as "don't buy"?

My 350Z has no stability control because Nissan didn't put make them available on automatics (don't shoot me) when I bought mine. I have spun out in the rain once (while not at a track) on a left turn that I took a bit too fast in the rain. The weight shift didn't help due to the downwards incline and sort of a bump I went over.

 

yeah, too bad it wasn't raining and every other suv tested by CR passed this test including the 4runner that the GX is based on. Go ahead and make excuses if that makes you sleep better at night.

 

You forgot to mention that they are often driven poorly by D-bags.

She's hot BTW.

YOU are the stability control. Maybe you should learn to drive.

....


See how useless the "people are stupid and should learn to drive" arguments are?

 

Being an outsider it sounds to me like your left leaning Government is in bed with the Unions and is out to protect American jobs. Unfortunately not by improving the product of the big 3 so that the rest of the world might be interested in purchasing their gas guzzling products, but by destroying the competition.

Proof of this? These problems are not happening ANYWHERE else in the world. You could argue the rest of the world doesn't have the same standards etc but that's just patronising to the other 5.5 billion people out there.

 

4 Runner not RAV4

 

What's weird is you think that all manufacturers would know that CR will test it and will do these kinds of tests. Wouldn't you do the same testing then?

And liftoff induced oversteer isn't exactly a new phenomenon...

 

In four pages of posts, only one poster hit the key issue: VSC response. The entire crux of CR's concern relates to a slow or delayed response from the stability control system, which allowed the vehicle to come around farther than expected during the test maneuver. Note that this has nothing to do with the type of vehicle under test or physics in general. Two physically identical vehicles could exhibit this difference in response if they were equipped with different VSC systems or VSC programming.

What concerns me is that this is another ECU type of issue. It is another red flag that could indicate that Toyota is having some trouble in that particular area of engineering.

Tom

 

You hit the nail on the head, this is an electronics and programming problem. It is amazing this is happening, the last time CR issued a stop purchase was 10 years ago and involved Mitsubishi.

 

Nice.

 

As discussed earlier, Mitsubishi denied the problem and didn't change the Montero, with NHTSA's concurrence. The Montero had no more complaints of rollover than other SUVs in the real world.

It is a software problem, similar to that in the 2010 Prius braking. If you read CR closely (which the media hasn't), what they said was that the electronic stability control worked. They did say that the ESC took so long to kick in that IF your tire hit a curb or went off the pavement because of the excessive "swing" in the rear end of the vehicle, a rollover was likely to occur. They did not say that it would rollover if you had as much room as they had on the test track.

TMC should be able to fix it with a software update to reduce the length of time before the ESC starts working. Hopefully, Toyota/Lexus has started retesting all of their production models for this kind of issue.

 

Thanks for the video a gray prius. I see that the Manufacturer are still building Big,Tall,Heavy Trucks and the marketing folks are still doing their best to miss inform the sheep that buy them. In the US of A we love to make money off of the demise of others. I could have sworn that I saw data cables hooked up to that hot mom and the actor kids.... They were hooked up to the Matrix!