Toyota Camry, Prius V and RAV4 Lose Consumer Reports Recommendation

Consumer Reports pulled its recommendation for three of Toyota’s cars, including the popular Camry sedan, due to poor crash test results. Although Lexus, Toyota and Acura were ranked as the U.S. auto industry’s most reliable brands in Consumer Reports’ annual new-car reliability survey, the magazine withdrew its recommendation for the Camry, Prius v and RAV4 because they received poor ratings in the latest IIHS crash tests.

“Honestly, we don't take this lightly, but virtually every vehicle now in the family sedan category has been tested and the only one that has gotten a 'poor' is the Camry," said Jake Fisher, director of auto testing at Consumer Reports. “At this point, we don't feel we can continue to recommend people buy a Camry when there's other good choices out there that do better on the test,” he added.

Last year, the IIHS included crashes that involve only a front corner of a vehicle in its tests. Consumer Reports waited to see how the entire industry was affected by the test before adjusting its buyer recommendations. Traditionally, the magazine does not recommend consumers to buy a car that gets poor crash test results.

The Camry was the third best-selling vehicle in the U.S. through September, behind two full-size pickup trucks. Sales were up 1.3 percent from the same period last year to 318,990 cars.

Toyota says it has made changes to the Camry to improve its performance in the crash tests and IIHS is planning to retest the car in December.

By Dan Mihalascu

Story References: Consumer Reports via Reuters

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Toyota Prius V Owners Sue for Poorly Performing Precollision System

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, or IIHS, recently introduced a new test program that “rates the performance of front crash prevention systems to help consumers decide which features to consider and encourage automakers to speed adoption of the technology.”

They then proceeded in trying out several dozens of cars, and found Subaru and Volvo modes’ systems to be the best of the lot, achieving the best mitigation results. However, one car fared particularly badly, to the point where its crash mitigation system only shaved a “negligible” amount of speed off, before hitting the placed obstacle.

The car was the Toyota Prius V that comes with the brand’s Pre-Collision System (PCS), part of a $5,000 options pack, of which it accounts for about one fifth of what is asked. Now, owners have caught wind of this, and have proceeded to take legal action against Toyota Motor Sales, demanding justice and answers, according to Courthousenews.

"Of those 47 models, only the Toyota Prius V and one Infinity model failed to qualify as a crash prevention system," the complaint states. "Despite the PCS [precollision system] being marketed and sold by TMS [Toyota Motor Sales] as an accident mitigation system that provides automatic braking in unavoidable frontal collisions, it provides no real safety benefit to consumers who paid for the option through either a sale or a lease."

According to Tae Hee Lee, one of the lead plaintiffs in the suit against Toyota Motor Sales, officials representing the automaker responded by stating that the the company never said that its models include collision-avoidance systems.

"This false statement makes clear that Toyota knew that the class vehicles equipped with PCS did not provide any effective automatic braking in unavoidable frontal collisions," the complaint reads.

The plaintiffs want $5 million for “breach of warranty, fraud, breach of contract, bad faith and other claims.”

We will bring you more on this, as it comes up.

By Andrei Nedelea

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Ford Says C-MAX Hybrids Outsells Toyota Prius Plug-in and V in its First Full Month of Availability

Ford has taken yet another swipe at Toyota in the battle of the hybrids. The Blue Oval announced that in November, their first full month of availability, combined sales of its C-MAX Hybrid and C-MAX Energi Plug-in Hybrid in the U.S. reached 4,846 units beating the 4,456 deliveries of the Prius Plug-in and Prius V hybrids delivered by Toyota.
“The C-MAX hybrids are off to a great start and our dealers and customers, especially in California, cannot get enough of them early in the launch”, said Ford general marketing manager Dave Mondragon.

Toyota Considers Changing Prius Design to Make it More Appealing

No matter how much you may save on fuel and tax incentives the state or the government might provide, for a certain number of buyers, design plays a major role when deciding on a new car. Hybrids and EVs, while futuristic, are far from being called beautiful – the $100K+ Fisker Karma excluded.
Apparently, Toyota feels the same way about its line of Prius hybrids. Therefore, despite being on track to set record sales, the Japanese carmaker is mulling whether to continue with the aerodynamic, wedge-shaped styling, which truth be told, has been around for a while, for the next generation models or try something completely new.