Riyadh: Saudi Arabia's Consumer Protection Association (CPA) on Sunday urged authorities to force Japanese carmaker Toyota's local agent Abdul Latif Jameel Co (ALJ) to recall and check for defaults in cars it sold locally.
An official at ALJ said the company would invite within two weeks owners of Toyota Sequoia and Avalon models both of which are produced in the United States to have their cars checked.
CPA's call, made in a statement sent to the media, is the first by a consumer protection group in the Gulf Arab region where Saudi Arabia is the biggest auto market after Toyota recalled some eight million cars worldwide on safety glitches.
The Gulf Arab region accounted for 6.5 per cent of Toyota's global car sales, Jim Sakaguchi, Toyota's marketing general manager for the Middle East and southwest Asia, told Al Eqtisadiah newspaper in an interview last year.
In its statement, the CPA urged the government to enact a trade ministry decree issued in 2001 that makes it compulsory for a carmaker and its local agent to recall all models that were proven to show defaults.
"The association urges government entities to play their role, monitor and clarify the situation for consumers and also demand that Toyota cars' agent does the necessary and recall cars to make sure they are not affected by this glitch and fix it if necessary," the CPA said.
Toyota said on February 2 the 2005-2010 model year Avalons and 2009-2010 Sequoia cars sold in the Middle East had been shipped from the United States, where those models have been subject to a recall related to faulty accelerator pedals.
Toyota said in a statement distributed in the Middle East that the same problem afflicting cars in North America, Europe and China was unlikely to occur in the Middle East due to the difference in climate.
However, Toyota's distributor in the United Arab Emirates, Al Futtaim Motors, said the two models would be recalled in a service campaign similar to that in the United States.
