Toyota became the world’s leading manufacturer at the end of January, surpassing GM and returning to the top for the first time since its spate of auto recalls in 2010. However, in an ironic twist the company announced a recall last week, citing fears over airbags in some models deploying without a reason.

The issue follows on from the huge recall of Toyotas where a number of models were found to accelerate – an issue caused by faulty doormats. This caused dozens of deaths and damaged the company’s reputation immensely, as well as meant it had to pay over $5Bn in damages.

Of course, Toyota is not the only company to have to recall its vehicles – there are in fact numerous recalls every year. Most tend to only affect a tiny number of cars or are quite tiny faults with the vehicles, however. The Toyota recall is something that was vast and also among the ten largest since the 1960s. Let’s take a look at some of the other notable recalls that made the news.

Bridgestone/ Ford Explorer

ford-bridgestone-recall

One of the more recent and most prominent recalls and one we recall shock at was in 2000, when Bridgestone who had equipped a number of vehicles with its Wilderness AT Firestone tyres had to recall millions of them. The reason being, the tyres rolled over and caused and separated the vehicle to crash at high speeds. These tyres were especially popular on the Ford Explorer and it is thought the issue caused over 200 deaths, as well as a dip in Explorer sales.

Ford 1980

The biggest recall of all time and one that impacted on 21m vehicles was a Ford based problem. The recall ranged across Mercury, Lincoln and Ford models built between1970-80 and involved the parking gear failing. Instead of repairing the problem, Ford decided the best course of action was to send warning stickers to owners of the impacted vehicles. It’s thought the problem caused 6,000 accidents, 1710 injuries and around 100 deaths.

Ford 1996

Another Ford related disaster and one that affected 8m vehicles. Ford had to recall a number of its cars due to a short circuit in the ignition that caused fires in their cars. Many of the fires occurred in cars that were unoccupied and hadn’t been used in hours. We understand at Alpha-batteries that this resulted in cars, garages and homes catching fire.

General Motors 1971

GM recalled 6.7m cars in 1971 across a number of its ranges built during1965-1970. A ‘separated motor mount that would allow the engine to life’ was cited as the issue. This was thought would cause a jammed throttle among other problems. GM claimed that no problem existed initially and claimed the recall was to address concern that was created by misinformation.

Ford 1999- 2009 (Again)

Yes, it’s another Ford recall and one that impacted on a number of its vehicles and one that the company stagnated over a decade. The reason being the company found more and more of its cars were impacted by a speed control issue due to short circuiting. Over the ten year period over 15m cars were recalled spanning cars made between 2004 and 1992.

So, as you can see the world of motoring has seen all sorts of serious issues and recalls over the last 50 years, many of which put Toyota’s in the shade for a number of reasons.