Notoriously reliable Toyota, has issued 11 recall notices as of mid-April 2026. This makes the Japanese company the second most recalled manufacturer of 2026 as things stand, though it is tied for that second place spot with a couple of other companies. There are no prizes for guessing which OEM currently occupies the number 1 spot.
The recall notices Toyota has issued include everything from faulty fuel pumps to a pedestrian warning sound being a little too quiet. Across the 11 recall notices, over a million vehicles have been recalled by Toyota so far in 2026, though this does include recalls issued by the company’s luxury brand, Lexus.
According to data from the NHTSA, Toyota is currently sharing the number 2 spot with Chrysler, which is what we’re assuming the government body has Stellantis listed as, and General Motors, who recently had to tell C8 Corvette owners to leave it in the garage.
The three manufacturers sitting on 11 recalls each account for 30% of recall notices issued in 2026. Factor in Ford, which (if you haven’t guessed) is currently top of the pile with 29 recall notices issued, and those four manufacturers are the source of 56% of recall notices issued this year.
A bad year for Toyota, a better year for Ford
So why am I picking on Toyota? Well a notable decline is always going to draw more attention than a company just being a bit bad. While Toyota is currently duking it out for second place in the 2026 recall leagues, it wasn’t even in the top 10 this time last year.
In fact, the NHTSA only had five recall notices listed from Toyota in that period. Which isn’t even enough to get the Japanese brand a spot on the organization’s pie chart.
Just as a good kid going bad is newsworthy, so too is a bad kid doing slightly better. Toyota’s recalls in the first four months on 2026 have more than doubled compared to this time last year. The company also only issued 15 recalls in the entirety of 2025, a figure it could easily fly past in the first half of 2026 if the next two months are as bad as the first four.
Despite topping the list with 29 recalls, almost as many as the three manufacturers occupying the number two spot combined, Ford is actually doing far better than it was this time last year.
During the same period in 2025, Ford issued 40 recall notices. So yes, 29 recalls is pretty bad. So bad in fact we’ve stopped reporting the ones that don’t cause significant danger, even though Ford sells a lot of vehicles and that recall news affects a lot of people. But it is an improvement of over 25% year on year.
Plus, to its credit, Ford did build one of the only vehicles that has not been recalled at all in the last five years, albeit in limited numbers. The few other vehicles to make the “not recalled” list were from model years 2025 or 2026, which usually means they haven’t been recalled because a fault hasn’t been spotted yet.
Still, Toyotas are generally seen as the most reliable vehicles for a reason. Despite the odd blip, like this string of recalls or that time the other year when Toyota’s factories forgot the inside of an engine isn’t supposed to include metal shavings right from the factory, Toyota has basically been the golden child of vehicle manufacturing in the last decade. Hopefully Ford continues to improve, and Toyota snaps out of it.
