Toyota halts Yaris sales in Thailand amidst safety test issues

Toyota Motor Corp has halted sales and deliveries of its Yaris Ativ model in Thailand on Monday, after Dihatsu rigged part of the door in side collision safety tests, said senior officials.

The issue is suspected to have happened due to pressure on Dihatsu to shorten the development time of the Ativ, and the vehicles customers are currently using are safe, said Masahikoo Maeda, Toyota’s CEO for the Asia region.

“If development had been carried out under appropriate conditions, this kind of problem would of course not have happened, I think the fact that it still happened, means there was some kind of pressure at the development site,” said Maeda.

Toyota and Daihatsu were investigating how part of the door in side-collision safety tests carried out for some 88,000 small cars had been changed for the purpose of side-on crash safety testing.

Daihatsu, which became a wholly owned Toyota subsidiary in 2016 when Toyoda was president, Southeast Asia is an important market, with production facilities in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Daihatsu has said that some 76,000 of those vehicles were Yaris Ativs mainly bound for Thailand, Mexico and the Gulf Cooperation Council.