Chicago Sues Car Manufacture for Faulty Design
The city of Chicago is suing Toyota, accusing the company that makes one of the most popular vehicles in America of "willfully" ignoring a design that allows users to install third-party modifications such as more powerful aftermarket engines.
These modifications make the vehicles more powerful. For example, a 2.5L Tacoma can be upgraded by a user to have a 4.0L engine.
According to the suit, these allow anyone to circumvent long-standing federal and state fuel efficiency regulations. These replacement engines are available for anybody to order over the Internet.
Such an engine replacement can substantially increase the horsepower available. This can lead to loss of control by driver/operators.
While Toyota does manufacture these engines, they are for other vehicles. Third-party vendors are creating the swap in capabilities.
However, the suit accuses Toyota of making a "willful decision to not take meaningful action to address this problem". They claim that other manufactures have designs that make third-party engine swaps more difficult or expensive.
The city claims that they have confiscated many of these Toyota vehicles with overpowered engines in the last few years.
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