Sales to Resume for 2024 Toyota Grand Highlander, Lexus TX After Airbags Forced Stop-Sale
It was looking like a great rookie year for the Toyota Grand Highlander and its luxury twin, the Lexus TX, right up until it fell apart. Now, the two brands have a fix in place and are preparing to get things back on track.
The pair of three-row SUVs launched for the 2024 model year and immediately landed among their respective brands’ bestsellers. Then, this past May, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration conducted a random crash test with a Grand Highlander. It failed the test, and Toyota stopped production and froze sales of both the Grand Highlander and closely related TX.
Related: 145,000 Toyota Grand Highlander, Lexus TX SUVs Recalled for Airbag Malfunction
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Shop the 2024 Lexus TX 350 near you
Audits: Not Just for the IRS
NHTSA establishes criteria for occupant safety but does not test every vehicle on the market. Automakers can submit their own test results showing their vehicles are in compliance, and the administration follows up with random audits. During the test of the Grand Highlander, NHTSA found that, with the driver’s window rolled down, the front corner of the curtain airbag failed to stay inside the vehicle, raising concerns about occupant protection.
In June, Toyota recalled every Grand Highlander and TX sold and issued a stop-sale, which prevented dealers from selling any additional vehicles. Kent Rice, group vice president of Toyota Motor North America’s quality division, told Automotive News that “the result was not what we had seen during development. There were some variations that stacked up in the manufacturing process that we hadn’t considered.”
Vehicle development is an enormously complex process, with teams of engineers and designers going back and forth tweaking things large and small right up until — and after — a model enters production. To address the problem, Toyota redesigned the anchoring system for the airbags, which deploy from behind the headliner on both sides of the vehicle.
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Deploying the Fix
Subsequent crash tests have produced satisfactory results, and Toyota will begin notifying owners to schedule repairs on their vehicles in October. Between the Grand Highlander and TX, there are some 158,000 vehicles in circulation that will need to be repaired. The companies expect to resume production by the end of October.
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