Toyota to recall 136,000 cars over steering fault

The world's largest automaker, which was battered by a global safety crisis earlier this year, said it will recall 65,000 compact iQ and Passo cars in Japan and about 70,800 in Europe, all of them built between 2008 and 2010.

The recall was made after it was found that power steering sensors could malfunction when driving over bumps, making steering more heavy, a spokesman said, adding there had been no reports of accidents related to the issue.

The company said it would replace the necessary software on all cars.

Multiple recalls by Toyota this month have come after a series of mass recalls of around 10 million vehicles worldwide announced in late 2009 and early 2010 undermined the company's once stellar reputation.

The crisis snowballed, prompting US congressional investigations as Toyota was hit with a record $16.4 million fine to settle claims it had hidden accelerator pedal defects blamed for dozens of deaths.

Last month Toyota announced a global safety recall of about 1.5 million vehicles to fix a brake fluid leak that it warned can gradually diminish braking performance.

Toyota in October said it had completed more than five million repairs on US vehicles affected by the series of recalls.

The automaker said about 80 per cent of the 2.3 million US vehicles affected by the accelerator defect had been repaired while 86 per cent of the 148,000 Prius and Lexus vehicles recalled for braking problems had also been fixed.

However, the fall-out from the crisis continues to affect the auto giant.

Lawyers of clients suing the automaker in the US said last month that Toyota secretly bought back some of the faulty vehicles it sold on the market in a bid to hide their defects from the public.

It has also been alleged that Toyota deliberately withheld information about claims its cars were prone to unintended acceleration from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and from its testimony at congressional hearings.

Last week rival Japanese automaker Nissan said it was recalling more than 2.1 million cars globally due to a faulty engine control system, in one of its biggest ever single recalls.