In addition to the standard 2010 Priuses, Toyota is recalling 270 plug-in Priuses, 28,000 Lexus HS250hs, and 11,000 Sai hybrids. Older Priuses are unaffected by the problem, Toyota has said.

Separately, Toyota also recalled 7,300 of its latest-model Camrys in the United States to fix a power steering pressure hose in the engine compartment that may be the incorrect length. This could cause a hole in the brake tube and deplete the braking fluid, interfering with braking, Toyota said in a statement.

Toyota Motor Corp. has already had to recall more than 7 million other cars in the United States, Europe and China over a sticky accelerator and floor mats that can get caught in the gas pedal. Those problems and criticism of Toyota's response to them have sullied the stellar reputation for quality long enjoyed by one of Japan's corporate icons.

Separately, the company has told dealers in the United States it is preparing to repair the brakes on thousands of Prius vehicles there, according to an e-mail sent by a company executive. It was unclear whether Toyota planned a formal U.S. recall.

But Akio Toyoda, appointed to the top job at Toyota Motor Corp. last June, said the company is still deciding what steps to take to fix brake problems in the popular Prius gas-electric hybrid.

Speaking at a hastily announced news conference that lasted an hour, a stern-looking Toyoda promised to beef up quality control.

"We are facing a crisis," he said, publicly confronting the automaker's safety problems for the first time since a global recall affecting 4.5 million vehicles was announced Jan. 21.

He bowed in customary Japanese-style greeting at the start of the televised news conference at Toyota's Nagoya headquarters but did not bow deeply when offering an apology as some executives, including his predecessor Katsuaki Watanabe, have done when under fire.

Toyoda, 53, said the company is setting up a special committee he would head himself.

What lessons should Toyota have learned from the recall fiascoes of American carmakers in decades past? How damaging is this to Toyota's image -- and what will it take to recover?

Check out the observations of five auto experts that were printed in today's New York Times:

Maryann Keller, financial analyst
Jamie Kitman, Automobile Magazine
Michael Smitka, professor of economics
Peter M. De Lorenzo, publisher of AutoExtremist.com
Sean P. McAlinden, Center for Automotive Research

The announcement was made hours after Toyota acknowledged that it had identified a flaw in the car's antilock braking system and corrected it for Priuses built since late January. The car was redesigned for the 2010 model year.

City CarShare, a local nonprofit, removed the brand-new vehicles from its fleet after reports on Wednesday from Japan that their brakes might be faulty. "We will await directions from Toyota on next steps," City CarShare said in a statement.

It may be an abundance of caution or a bad case of nerves, but the suggestion that even the Prius -- one of Toyota's most popular models -- might become a new chapter in the company's safety troubles had some of the most devout Toyota loyalists shaking their heads in confusion and disbelief.

While Toyota has not ordered a recall of the Prius, the questions about its brakes followed hard on the heels of last month's recall of millions of Toyota vehicles for malfunctioning gas pedals.

But on Wednesday, the Prius was drawn into the mounting crisis for Toyota, as Japanese officials ordered the company to investigate problems with the brakes on the 2010 model, according to The New York Times. American safety officials also said they had received dozens of similar complaints.

The problems seemed to weigh on the company's stock as markets opened in Asia Thursday morning, with Toyota down nearly 5 percent in early trading in Tokyo.

The company is also looking into two other hybrids with the same brake system -- the Lexus HS250h and a model sold in Japan, the Sai.

The officials said no decision had been made yet on a Prius recall. If one is instituted, it would affect about 103,000 Priuses in the United States, 176,000 in Japan and 32,000 in Europe.

The company scheduled a news conference Friday night in Japan and said Toyota's president, Akio Toyoda, would attend. The Japanese transport minister, Seiji Maehara, said he had heard from officials in his ministry that Toyota would recall or voluntarily fix the Prius hybrid, Reuters reported.

Toyota dealerships are already repairing accelerator pedals on millions of other recalled vehicles, but the 2010 Prius has so far been exempt from the recall lists.

Safety regulators in Washington said Thursday that they would open an investigation into the car's brakes.

The U.S. announcement was made hours after Toyota acknowledged that it had identified a flaw in the car's anti-lock braking system and corrected it for Priuses built since late January. The car was redesigned for the 2010 model year and this version first went on sale last May in Japan.

Criticism has been growing that Toyoda, grandson of the company's founder, has largely been invisible amid the automaker's worst crisis since it was founded.

Toyota Motor Corp. said Toyoda and Shinichi Sasaki, the executive overseeing quality, will speak to reporters at the automaker's Nagoya office Friday evening. Other details were not immediately available.

The only media comment so far from Toyoda was a brief, impromptu interview last week with Japanese broadcaster NHK on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He said he was sorry for the worries he had caused customers and insisted that Toyota cars were safe.

Toyota said this week it is considering a recall in the U.S. and Japan for its Prius gas-electric hybrid, which has been plagued with braking problems.

Nearly 200 complaints have been reported in the U.S. and Japan over such problems. Toyota said on Thursday it was a flaw in the computerized antilock brake system.

The problems with the Prius, Toyota's flagship model and symbol of its technological prowess and green car ambitions, follow a global recall announced Jan. 21 for 4.5 million vehicles with gas pedals that stick and can cause sudden acceleration.

The blitz of bad publicity has humbled one of the world's largest and most admired corporations and it may take years to get out from under the cloud of distrust.

No doubt they will - just look at Audi, which had similar problems with unintended acceleration with its Audi 5000S in the 1980s, and Ford, which had problems with its Explorer SUV equipped with Firestone tires rolling over in the 1990s. Both companies are now on a roll.

Video: At Toyota in Warwick, the fix is in and it's not that hard


The parts arrived at the Warwick dealership Wednesday morning, and Balise Toyota service director Steve Guyette demonstrates -- in a minute and a half -- the fix his staff needs to perform on recalled Toyota vehicles. Providence Journal video and photo by Andrew Dickerman

Having issued the massive recall the week before - 2.3 million vehicles in North America, some 4.5 million worldwide - the company rolled out its top players and got to work to restore confidence.

Jim Lentz, the head of Toyota's North American sales, started Monday morning by appearing on "The Today Show" where he faced pointed questions from Matt Lauer.
Unfortunately he appeared to be half asleep and if he felt remorse over the deaths, he did not express it.

"This is embarrassing for us to have . . . this kind of recall situation,'' he told reporters later.'' But it doesn't necessarily mean that we have lost our edge on quality. But we do have to be vigilant. We have to redouble our efforts to make sure this doesn't happen again.''

I am old enough to remember the chairman of Johnson & Johnson's response when a lunatic spike Tylenol capsules with cyanide in 1982, resulting in seven deaths.
James Burke immediately took charge, ordered every Tylenol product off the shelves and conducted a massive public relations campaign to get the word out. It cost the company an estimated $100 million.

And when he broke down when talking about the deaths, he showed he cared about people and about Johnson & Johnson and thus restored faith in a company that had not been at fault to start with.

Toyota's cause was also not helped when Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood later told The Associated Press that the company was "a little safety deaf" and that federal safety officials needed to "wake them up" to the seriousness of the pedal problems.

Then later in the week, he confused everyone by first telling Toyota owners not to drive their cars, and then amending his statement to say he meant owners should get them fixed.

"What I meant to say or what I thought I said was, if you own one of these cars or if you're in doubt, take it to the dealer and they're going to fix it," he said.

And while Rhode Island-area dealers were planning on working round the clock to get the accelerator pedals fixed, they still had to contend with the fixes the company is planning for the carpeting and floor mats that have caused similar problems.

For the time being, owners are being told to take the floor mats out, but the company is planning on fixing the carpeting so that floor mats can again be put down safely.

Hopefully, Toyota has seen the worst of this crisis and can turn back to being what it built its reputation on, a first-class organization producing first-class products.

-- Peter C.T. Elsworth

TOKYO -- Toyota acknowledged that is has begun fixing problems with the brakes in its prized Prius, but remains undecided about a recall, adding to the catalog of safety woes - and muddled responses - at the Japanese automaker.

Toyota Motor Corp., already reeling from massive global recalls involving faulty gas pedals in other cars and trucks, said Thursday that Prius models sold since late last month, including those shipped overseas, had the problem with the antilock brake system corrected.

But that still leaves the potential flaw in Priuses sold in Japan and overseas before late January. And while Japan's transport minister urged Toyota to consider a recall of the Prius and said he is ordering an investigation into the brake problem, Toyota executive Hiroyuki Yokoyama said the company hasn't yet decided if a recall is necessary.

Toyota acknowledged the brake problem while reporting a $1.7 billion profit for its October-December quarter.

Providence Journal photo / Andrew Dickerman
A small piece of steel inserted into the pedal assembly corrects the accelerator problem prompting the Toyota recall, Toyota says.

WARWICK, R.I. -- The parts arrived Thursday morning, and Balise Toyota service director Steve Guyette demonstrates -- in a minute and a half -- the fix his staff needs to perform on recalled Toyota vehicles.

Video: Watch Guyette make the switch

What's the connection? It seems Toyota took its eye off the quality ball on which it had built its reputation as it pursued the goal of unseating General Motors as the world's largest auto maker.

Now VW says it plans to take over the number one spot. It is currently No.3 after General Motors and Toyota.

This ambition might seem out of place to the average American. VW is a secondary player in the U.S. market where it sold just 18,000 vehicles in January.

But consider that the VW group includes Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Scania (Swedish commercial vehicle manufacturer), SEAT (Spanish car maker) and Skoda (Czech car maker) and will effectively takeover Porsche next year. The VW Golf is the third best selling car in the world.

VW is Europe's biggest automaker and aims to boost sales by about 60 percent by 2018. To be sure, that is a long way out and anything could happen in the meantime as in Pestilence, War, Famine and Death.

But any one of four horsemen of the Apocalypse would be beyond VW's control. What is in its control, one hopes, is quality control as it pursues the lead in global auto sales.

Peter C.T. Elsworth

He told a couple of telling stories, one about his grandfather's childhood and the subsequent emphasis he placed on family. The other was the advice he gave to Carl Jr. on his graduation from Providence College.

Seems Bob Sr. had a trying childhood. He was an only child who was brought up by relatives as his mother died when he was young. His father remarried but Carl Jr. said Bob Sr. was not close to his father's new family.

He thus developed a passion for close family life. Carl Jr. said this was the main reason he did not take Henry Ford II up when the auto magnate invited him to Detroit to take a senior executive position with the company.

Certainly I remember him telling me that he declined the offer because he wanted to build a family dealership at home in Rhode Island.

The second story reflects the kind of work ethic he demanded of himself and expected of his family. Carl Jr. said he was barely down from the stage where he had received his degree from PC when "Pop" took him aside.

"You may think this is a certificate of achievement," he said Bob Sr. told him in no uncertain terms. "But it's really a certificate of initiation. You are now going to work harder and longer than you have ever worked before."

Thus was Carl Jr. welcomed into the Tasca Automotive Group, starting in the service area where all family members are groomed.

Peter C.T. Elsworth