The Real Challenges Facing Toyota (NYSE:TM)

Toyota (NYSE:TM) announced yet another recall on Thursday, adding 2.7 million more vehicles in the U.S. to its ongoing attempts to address sticking gas pedals. It comes on the heels of another recall announced a few weeks back that affected 1.7 million vehicles around the world, including 265,000 Lexus sedans that came almost entirely from the U.S market. There were a few different issues involved in that one, but none is trivial: Each of the defects could cause gasoline leaks.

These were the company's first recalls since October, but that's not saying much. According to Reuters, Toyota has now recalled almost16 million vehicles since the company's quality woes began to surface in the fall of 2009, at a hefty cost in both cash and credibility.

But lingering recall woes aren't the only thing causing buyers to hesitate. Toyota is stumbling on a couple of different fronts just as its key global competitors are picking up steam. Can it recover?

The real trouble with Toyota

At least one analyst thinks the gas-leak recall will end up costing the company around $240 million all by itself, but the real costs will be hard to determine. Toyota (barely) led the world's automakers in sales again last year, but its U.S. sales were down 0.3% in a year where nearly all rivals saw big gains. Edmunds.com, which tracks a number of car-shopper metrics, estimates that 17.9% of buyers considered a Toyota in December, down 2.3 percentage points from December 2009, just before the recall scandal broke into mass public awareness.




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