A vice president and managing director at Toyota Motor Corp. both knew about a serious steering defect in the Hilux Surf sport utility vehicle in 1996, eight years before it was recalled due to an accident in Kumamoto Prefecture, police sources said Wednesday.
The two executives, who oversaw quality control at the time, did not recommend a recall, the sources said, without revealing the executives' names.
Kumamoto Prefectural Police have decided not to send their case against them to prosecutors because, the sources said, it believes the quality control chief is mainly responsible for issuing recalls, they said.
Police Tuesday turned over to prosecutors their case against three men -- the 55-year-old current quality control department chief, from Toyota, Aichi Prefecture, and two former heads of the department -- charging they were professionally negligent for not recalling the model for the eight years until the accident injured five people. The two former department chiefs are a 62-year-old who is now an executive at an auto parts manufacturer and a 58-year-old who is in charge of Toyota's recall audit office. Their names also were not released.