Toyota’s Takata Fix Is Wearing Out in Japan

Toyota is recalling older Toyota and Lexus cars in Japan a second time because the Takata passenger airbag inflators fitted in an earlier recall are wearing out.

Every car in the new campaign already had its front passenger inflator swapped once, under a run of ten recalls filed between April 2013 and January 2017. Those replacements were Takata inflators that contain a desiccant, a drying agent meant to keep moisture away from the propellant. Toyota now says the moisture protection is not good enough: repeated swings in temperature and humidity can degrade the propellant, and the inflator housing could rupture when the airbag deploys.

The filing is laid out in Toyota’s Japanese recall notice, registered with the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism on November 12 as recall number 5904, with repairs starting November 13. The notice explains that the earlier replacement inflators are approaching the product life predicted by Toyota’s affiliated companies, which is why the cars are being called back again. Dealers will replace either the inflator or the complete passenger airbag assembly on every affected car at no charge.

The Toyota list reads like a tour of the Japanese market in the 2000s. It covers the Corolla family of that era (the sedan, Axio, Fielder wagon, Runx, Allex and Rumion), the first-generation Alphard G, Alphard V and Alphard Hybrid, the Noah and Voxy, the Mark II, Mark II Blit and Verossa, the Blade, Auris, Brevis, Soarer, Avensis, Gaia, Ipsum and the WiLL Cypha and WiLL VS. The single biggest group is the Alphard with the ANH10 chassis code, at 17,941 vehicles. On the Lexus side, the notice names the IS250, IS250C, IS350, IS350C, IS F and SC430.

Response.jp totals the campaign at 95,927 vehicles across 30 models built between August 24, 2000 and December 26, 2012, and reports that Toyota knows of no failures or accidents linked to the problem.

The Lexus models on the list were also sold in the United States, and Toyota filed a separate US recall the same day covering about 314,000 Toyota and Lexus vehicles with Takata front passenger airbags. That US release does not name the models or say whether any of them carry desiccated replacement inflators from earlier recalls, so the Japanese filing cannot be read as a guide to which American cars are included. US owners can check by entering their VIN at Toyota.com/recall or nhtsa.gov/recalls.

The Toyota Report Take

This is the uncomfortable sequel to the Takata saga: a recall of the recall. The desiccated inflators were the industry’s answer to the original problem, and Toyota is now saying in writing that even those have a shelf life, measured in roughly a decade. Japan’s list is mostly cars Americans never saw, but the IS and SC430 are familiar names here, and anyone still driving an older IS that had its passenger airbag replaced years ago should not assume that repair settled the matter. A VIN check costs nothing and takes a minute.