Parts Paranoia Daily Digest, March 24

Our daily run-down of delays, shut-downs, shortages, and postponements, triggered by the March 11 tsunami in Japan.

  • Toyota informed its U.S. dealers and workers to expect production slowdowns due to parts shortages. “Today, we communicated to team members, associates and dealers here that some production interruptions in North America are likely. It’s too early to predict location or duration,” Toyota said in a statement. Most, but not all of the parts for vehicles built in North America are sourced here. Wall Street Journal
  • Toyota expects to idle its pickup truck assembly plant south of San Antonio. “We are informing our team members that, with the situation over in Japan, it is likely that we will see some nonproduction days coming,” Craig Mullenbach, spokesman for Toyota’s San Antonio plant, said. Mullenbach added that parts needed to build the full-sized Tundra and mid-sized Tacoma pickup truck in San Antonio are running out. Reuters
  • Honda will suspend car production at its Japanese factories until at least April 3. Honda will temporarily transfer some functions such as car development and procurement out of its badly damaged R&D center in Tochigi. Reuters
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Parts Paralysis Daily Digest, March 23

Our daily run-down of delays, shut-downs, shortages, and postponements.

  • Toyota will delay the introduction of the wagon version of the Prius hybrid in Japan. A launch event was planned for late April. This event is cancelled; a new date has not been set. The Nikkei [sub].
  • Toyota will also delay the minivan version of the Prius, Reuters adds.
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  • EBFlex Honda all day long. Why? It's a Honda.
  • Lou_BC My ex had issues with the turbo CRV not warming up in the winter.I'd lean to the normally aspirated RAV 4. In some cases asking people to chose is like asking a Muslim and Christian to pick their favourite religion.
  • 3-On-The-Tree Agree turbo diesels are probably a different setup lower compression heat etc. I never towed with my rig and it was all 40 miles round trip to work with dealer synthetic oil 5,000mi changes. Don’t know the cause but it soured my opinion on turbo’s plus the added potential expense.
  • DesertNative More 'Look at me! Look at me!' from Elon Musk. It's time to recognize that there's nothing to see here, folks and that this is just about pumping up the stock price. When there's a real product on the ground and available, then there will be something to which we can pay attention. Until then, ignore him.
  • Bkojote Here's something you're bound to notice during ownership that won't come up in most reviews or test drives-Honda's Cruise Control system is terrible. Complete trash. While it has the ability to regulate speed if there's a car in front of you, if you're coasting down a long hill with nobody in front of you the car will keep gaining speed forcing you to hit the brakes (and disable cruise). It won't even use the CVT to engine brake, something every other manufacturer does. Toyota's system will downshift and maintain the set speed. The calibration on the ACC system Honda uses is also awful and clearly had minimum engineering effort.Here's another- those grille shutters get stuck the minute temperature drops below freezing meaning your engine goes into reduced power mode until you turn it off. The Rav4 may have them but I have yet to see this problem.