Honda Motor Co said it would recall another 440,000 cars around the world for faulty airbags as rival Toyota Motor Corp faced further probes over its largest-ever safety crisis.
Honda, Japan's No. 2 automaker, has now recalled close to 950,000 vehicles for airbag problems linked to one fatality and a total of 11 injuries in the United States.
While auto recalls are not uncommon and Honda's is not huge, it comes at a sensitive time for an industry struggling to draw customers back to showrooms after a brutal downturn.
Toyota President Akio Toyoda will come to the United States in early March to meet government officials and to visit the carmaker's local operations, delaying a trip initially scheduled for next week due to the heavy snowfall in Washington, the Nikkei newspaper reported.
A Republican lawmaker, U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, has invited Toyoda to meet with members of Congress the week of February 22. He is also urging the House Oversight Committee chairman to invite Toyoda to a February 24 hearing. A Toyota representative could not immediately be reached for comment.
Toyoda's U.S. visit comes as the world's biggest automaker faces a storm of criticism over safety issues and perceptions that the carmaker has been too slow to respond.
Toyota has up to 70,000 vehicles still stranded on U.S. dealer lots due to defective accelerator pedals that are the subject of a major safety recall, a top U.S. Toyota executive said on Wednesday.
Bob Carter, Toyota's U.S. sales chief, said all Toyota U.S. dealers have parts to repair the accelerator pedals and that the dealers were focused on fixing customers' cars before tackling the vehicles in the inventory.
Toyota U.S. dealers are repairing more than 52,000 gas pedals per day and have completed work on about 225,000 since they started late last week, Carter said.
COROLLA STEERING PROBLEMS
In the latest of a string of product problems for Toyota, U.S. regulators said they were reviewing dozens of complaints about potential steering problems in newer Toyota Corollas.
