Ford halts some China production, Toyota recall widens

Ford Motor Co. has halted production in China of a bus that uses accelerators made by the same company involved in a massive recall by Toyota Motor Corp., reports said Thursday.

"We think it’s pretty isolated but we are aggressively running it to ground," Ford chief executive officer Alan Mulally said on a conference call with analysts.

"While there has been no report of any issue with the Transit, JMC has initiated a review of a pedal assembly part recently sourced from CTS Automotive," Ford’s Chinese partner, Jiangling Motors Co., said in a statement. The light bus, built in Nanchang, is only distributed in China.

"The single Transit model affected by the CTS pedal review, the Transit Classic, represents fewer than 2,000 units."

Mulally said Ford production will continue as usual elsewhere because no other vehicles use that particular pedal.

Toyota recalled another 1.1 million vehicles in the U.S. on Thursday, this time for floor mats that could trap the accelerator pedals, Agence France-Presse reported.

That brings the number of vehicles affected by Toyota recalls this week and last to 5.3 million – more than two-thirds of Toyota’s worldwide sales last year. Toyota said Thursday the recall would spread from North America to China, where just over 75,000 RAV4 sport utility vehicles are being recalled due to accelerator problems, and also to Europe, though Toyota hasn’t yet decided how many vehicles, or which models, would be affected, AFP said.

Models affected are: the 2008-2010 Highlander, the 2009-2010 Corolla, the 2009-2010 Venza, the 2009-2010 Matrix and the 2009-2010 Pontiac Vibe.

The vehicles affected by last week’s sticky accelerator recall are certain models of its RAV4, Matrix, Avalon, Highlander, Camry, Corolla, Tundra, and Sequoia, which account for 57 per cent of its sales.

The production of the gas pedal in question, and its assembly, was recently outsourced to CTS Corp., an Indiana-based parts marker, which produced the pedals in Mississauga, Ont. CTS was originally brought in after the pedal’s original Japanese manufacturer, Denso Corp., was unable to keep up with Toyota’s added production demands. It continues to build the pedals, but CTS was, until this week, making up for the added volumes.

The CTS pedals, however, have since demonstrated a propensity for sticking when exposed to condensation in isolated incidents.

In Canada, there have been five incidents involving the 270,000 vehicles affected by the recall. But in the United States, nearly 19 fatalities have been potentially been tied to unintentional acceleration in Toyota’s vehicles.

As such, the Japanese carmaker is recalling all of the models that may have had a CTS pedal installed, and replacing the CTS pedals with Denso ones. But the shortage in supply continues, so Toyota has been forced to halt sales and production at six of its plants, including Ontario facilities in Woodstock and Cambridge, to ensure it has enough of the pedals to deal with the recalled vehicles.

Meanwhile on Thursday, Ford also reported its an annual profit of $2.7 billion US -its first annual profit since 2005 -and net fourth-quarter earnings of $868 million.