When you’re at the top of the food chain, everyone wants to eat your lunch. Toyota, arguably the MOST successful car company in the world, is sometimes a victim of its’ own success. When Toyota has a minor hiccup, the press lunges at the opportunity to discredit and devalue the company. Most recently, Automotive News has reported that “The launch of the all new 2007 Tundra full size pickup continues to go anything but smoothly” due to a mysterious camshaft failure found on the 5.7L V8.

Before anyone takes their new 5.7L down to their local Ford, Chevy, or Dodge dealer to trade it in, let’s evaluate the facts:

  1. Automotive news reports 20 instances of this camshaft failure, but this isn’t a complete number. There could be more, and there could be less. Weighed against the current total of 30,000 trucks sold, that amounts to a very small percentage of defects.
  2. To their credit, Toyota has acknowledged there is a problem with SOME of the 5.7L camshafts. If any camshaft has failed, Toyota may replace the entire engine according to correspondence with PickupTruck.com.
  3. If this were happening in a new Dodge, Ford, or Chevy, this wouldn’t be news. The fact is that the only reason camshaft failures are news is because they’re happening on a Toyota.

The bottomline: Until this starts happening with any sort of regular frequency, it’s not a problem. Toyota warranty’s the camshafts on a new Tundra for five years or 60k miles. If there is a defective camshaft in your truck, it’s going to grenade long before the warranty is up. If Toyota installs a new motor (and grants you an extended warranty on the rest of the power train), what’s the harm? Besides, it’s probably not going to happen to anyone that it already hasn’t happened to.

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