I think if you’re in the market for a toyota. You should wait. Here’s my thinking

1)Residual values on these cars are going to take a hit. No doubt about it.

2)New car sales are going to take a hit, because of the perception issue.

3)Toyota is going to lose marketshare for this PR mess.

4)Toyota will then do what it takes to keep it’s marketshare and keep shareholders happy.

5)I bet Toyota will sell several models at losses just to keep the market share. And they probably can take the short term financial hit from doing so.

It use to be if you wanted a good deal for a Toyota, you had to chase for that “loss leader” on Thursday/Saturday. I have a feeling pretty soon, just about every car on the lot will be a loss leader 🙂

What Toyota is doing, is using this PR mess into air out all the dirty laundry it has all at once.
It started with the stuck accelerator, then the prius braking problems. They also recalled trucks for rust/corrosion issues, and now trucks with broken driveshafts…And this list will grow…I wouldn’t be surprised to see recalls for oil sludge in some of their engines, and other recalls for transmissions. They aren’t doings this because they truely care about customers. They’re doing this because they are already taking a massive PR hit, and they might as well address everything that they have been ignoring up to this point….

And guess what? Other manufacturers are doing the same thing to air out their dirty laundries too. Honda just announced an expanded recall on airbags.
It’s recall agamendon.

Personally, I’m laughing at all the headaches people are going to deal with in the future for direct-injected engines that these manufacturers are touting these day..