Two of the best new cars of 2024 were available to shoppers for only a brief time. They’re about to come back on sale, though.
The Toyota Highlander has long been one of the most successful SUV designs on the road. It combines bulletproof Toyota reliability and a minivan-like interior with the high seating position and available all-wheel drive (AWD) of an SUV. But its third row is suitable only for children.
For 2024, the company built a stretched version with an adult-sized third row, the Toyota Grand Highlander. It seemed destined to be a great solution for many families, and sold like one.
Lexus, Toyota’s luxury division, launched its own version, the Lexus TX. It offered a more car-like ride than the brand’s other large SUVs, and added Lexus luxury (think an available 21-speaker sound system and a whisper-quiet cabin) to the Grand Highlander formula.
But the two were on sale for just a few months when Toyota found a problem. The company issued a recall order and told dealers to stop selling them.
Stop Sale Order, Recall
Safety testing had revealed that the driver’s side airbag might not unfold properly if the driver’s window was open during a crash. The cars were safe enough to drive as long as owners kept the driver’s side window closed. But dealers pulled them off of sales lots while Toyota engineers worked to find a solution.
The problem did not affect the smaller Highlander.
Toyota Has a Solution; Owners Will Get it First
Now, Toyota says, it has found an answer. Industry publication Automotive News reports, “Toyota has redesigned the lengthy curtain shield airbags on the driver and passenger sides.” Dealer technicians will replace the old airbags with the new design.
Owners should “begin receiving notifications in October to schedule their repair appointments,” AN says.
Kent Rice, group vice president of Toyota Motor North America’s quality division, says the company will repair the cars it has already sold before it fixes the ones on dealer sales lots. That means the stop-sale order may not lift until later in the fall when the company has completed repairs of already-sold cars.
Once that list is complete, it won’t take long to fix the models awaiting sale.
“With production paused, there are about 158,000 of the three-row vehicles that will need to be repaired, including about 4,000 in dealer inventories,” AN reports.
