Local Toyota Dealers Brace for Crush of Repair Jobs

Two area Toyota dealerships expect to start lining up service calls to repair recalled models by the start of next week.

Jim Turner is the President of O'Brien Auto Park in Urbana. He says parts should be delivered in the next couple of days, and technicians are currently being trained on how to repair gas pedals that could stick on rare occasions.

Repairs are expected to take half an hour, but with thousands of customers to serve, Turner says handling all its recalled vehicles could take a few weeks:

"We don't have a lot of details about how many parts we can get all at once," Turner said. "There's a few open-ended questions about exactly how many parts we can get. So this will probably take a month at least to get everybody taken care of."

Meanwhile, the service manager of Toyota of Danville says they're holding off on making appointments, but they're making sure the parts for the eight recalled models are in place first. Kyle Vogel says he expects their technicians will handle about 500 repairs.

Vogel says he also wants to stress that this recall applied only to certain models, and that Japanese-made and some US-manufactured Camry models weren't impacted. But he says any Toyota driver is welcome to bring their car by for peace of mind's sake.

Both Toyota dealers plan on extending their service hours to handle the recall repairs.