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First Toyota unintended acceleration case headed for trial

Toyota is going to be back in the spotlight, as the first of its unintended acceleration lawsuits is headed for trial. This case covers a Los Angeles sushi shop owner, Noriko Uno. According to the what the family told The Detroit News, Uno only put about 10,000 miles on her 2006 Toyota Camry in four years. Uno was apparently afraid of high speeds, avoiding the freeway and taking a route home along LA's surface streets to avoid them.
On August 28, 2009, Uno's Camry suddenly accelerated to 100 miles per hour, eventually striking a telephone poll and a tree and killing her. The family contends that Uno attempted to step on the brakes and pull the emergency brake, neither of which brought her speed under control, while Toyota maintains that improperly installed floormats and driver error have been behind the majority of the 80 cases expected to be heard in court.
In Uno's case, The Detroit News is expecting the trial to focus on the lack of an override if the gas and brake pedals were pressed at the same time. Brake overrides were installed on Toyota's European fleet. The Uno family attorney will need to prove to the jury that it wasn't driver error that killed Noriko Uno.

Next-gen Toyota Tacoma to debut at Detroit Auto Show

Toyota's confirmation comes on the heels of General Motors' successful launch of its own midsize pickups. The next generation of the Toyota Tacoma pickup truck will be revealed in January at the Detroit Auto Show, a top executive confirmed Thursday. Bob Carter, senior vice president of automotive operations for Toyota, offered no other details, but the new version of the pickup is expected to have significant upgrades compared with the aging model on sale now. Our spy shooters caught a prototype testing this summer, and rumors of the new generation have been swirling for months. We've also previously reported that Toyota is planning to ramp up production next April at a factory in Mexico that builds the Tacoma. Toyota's confirmation comes on the heels of General Motors' successful launch of its own midsize pickups, the Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon, which have garnered awards, positive reviews and solid sales since they arrived in showrooms this fall. It's unclear how large the new Tacoma will be, especially considering that the Canyon and Colorado flirt with fullsize territory. The Tacoma was last updated in 2012, and the segment has changed dramatically since then with the addition of the GM trucks. Another Tacoma competitor, Honda's aging Ridgeline, is also expected to re-launch in 2015, which would leave the Nissan Frontier as the oldest truck in the field. Tacoma sales have slipped 4.1 percent to 140,757 units this year, though they posted a 3.3-percent gain in November. Meanwhile, Carter also said Lexus will reveal two performance vehicles, though he didn't elaborate. "I'll leave it at that, but I promise you'll enjoy it," he said coyly. Lexus just showed the LF-C2 convertible concept at the Los Angeles Auto Show.

HQ move based on study, not pitch from Gov. Perry, Toyota says

Toyota's surprising announcement on Monday that it will move its North American headquarters from Torrance, CA location to the Dallas suburb of Plano, TX is allegedly not due to any political wrangling from the state's Republican governor, Rick Perry.
Perry (above) has been up front in his aggressive pursuit of businesses and jobs for Texas, traveling to California, Missouri, Illinois and New York to tempt corporations to his state. And it's not just about the promise of much lower taxes, a Perry spokesman reminds Automotive News that the state boasts, "a workforce that is skilled and ready to do any job."
For his part, Jim Lentz, Toyota's North American CEO said Plano was chosen through an internal process, with the location helped by its proximity to the company's massive pickup factory in San Antonio rather than any campaigning from the governor.