TRD engine blow

TOYOTA’S new TRD special vehicles operation has been struck an embarrassing blow just weeks after the launch of its first model, the supercharged TRD Aurion.

Toyota has suspended sales of the high-performance Aurion following the failure of the 3.5-litre supercharged V6 engine in a car being driven by a Melbourne dealer salesman last week.

TRD has since stripped the engine but has yet to determine the cause of the failure.

However, Toyota is confident that the engine failure is an isolated case and will not require rectification work on the 150 cars that have been produced to date.

Toyota has delivered five cars to customers and has another 30 customer orders awaiting delivery.

Owners of the five TRD Aurions have not been formally advised of the problem because Toyota is confident it is an isolated incident.

Dealers have been told not to sell any more TRD Aurions until the investigation is complete and all cars being held in stock are being inspected.

Toyota public relations manager Mike Breen said that, as well as sales, production has been stopped while the TRD engineers go through a process of elimination to get to the bottom of the problem.

“We’ve sold only a handful of cars so what we are doing is, rather than selling cars, we should stop sales while we can manage it,” said Mr Breen.

“We will check each vehicle, which takes about two hours per car, and that should be complete by early next week.” TRD launched the supercharged Aurion only last month after four years of planning and development.

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