Lexus recall adds to Toyota misery

Toyota Motor Corp. announced Wednesday that it will recall all four models of its high-end Lexus LS series because of a steering fault.

About 4,500 cars in Japan and 7,000 cars overseas will be called in for emergency repairs in the latest in a series of highly damaging recalls by the giant automaker.

Toyota, which is expected to file the recall with the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism on Friday, said it had received 12 complaints about the steering defect since March. It was not aware of any accidents or injuries stemming from the problem.

The announcement comes after the U.S. Transportation Department announced Tuesday that Toyota had paid a penalty of $16.375 million (about 1.5 billion yen) for not addressing a problem with sticking gas pedals for four months. The company paid the fine, the largest U.S. penalty ever imposed on a carmaker, but did not acknowledge it had been at fault.

According to Toyota and the transport ministry, the latest problem is with the variable gear ratio steering system in all four models of its Lexus LS series, which hit the Japanese market last autumn.

The system is designed to vary the sensitivity of the steering according to the speed of the car. At low speeds, a driver can turn the car sharply with a relatively small turn of the steering wheel. At high speeds, the resulting turn is less sharp.

The system is deactivated when a driver turns the wheel fully in one direction at a low speed. Some drivers have complained that the computer control system does not immediately activate properly when the driver starts turning the wheel in the other direction, which causes the steering wheel and tires to move out of sync.

Toyota said it upgraded the system last fall. The company was aware of the defect at that time but merely mentioned the faulty system in the car's instruction manual because it did not believe the problem posed a safety risk. However, the transport ministry has said that the routine deactivation of the gear ratio during normal driving is a problem.