The announcements seem to be coming almost every day, if not more frequently: a million-plus Jeeps, a quarter-million Hondas, another million Toyotas. Last year saw a sharp reversal of the long, downward trend in automotive recalls and while it's still too early to say where things will wind up when 2013 winds down, preliminary indications from the first half of the year suggest there'll be another increase, if not an all-time record.
Significantly, automakers recalled roughly the same number of vehicles as they sold in 2012, about 14.5 million, notably with Toyota and Honda, two brands traditionally known for their quality and reliability, at the top of the chart. In fact, those two makers have led the list, in terms of individual vehicles recalled, for the last five years. And they were on track to do the same thing again in 2013 – Honda already targeting about 2 million vehicles for problems ranging from airbags to brakes to switch fires – if it weren't for a series of big safety campaigns announced by Chrysler over the last month.
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