I have purchased an Innova 8 months ago. Before that I owned a Qualis since 2000. I have been driving cars for the last 25 years and I have never had a serious accident driving, especially frontal collision.
In Innova I have had three bad experiences in trying to break Innova at speeds above 100 kmph on good highways in dry weather. At speeds around 100-120 kmph Innova takes more than 500 ft to stop even with hard and full brakes screetiching. Once even on a local trip, it did not break as well and I collided with a gate.
Atleast two of my other friends who own Innova have had frontal collisions due to breaking insufficiency at high speed. Since then I have spoken to many Innova Taxi Drivers over the last few months and all of them have confirmed that they find this problem and it could be dangerous.
I complained to Customer Service Department of Toyota Kirloskar on their website and asked them to tell me the official breaking distance of Innova. They kept avoiding me, unlike of Toyota, and took 20 days to answer my question. They were very secretive about disclosing this and were not willing to commit to it formally. They told me yesterday that in test conditions it Innova breaking distance could be 45 mts(150 feet) at a speed of 80 kmph. They also told me in real conditions it could be much worse and advised me not to rely on this data.
Toyota has a high credibility. They should immediately research and analyze the number of Innova frontal collisions statistically over a period of one year and compare it to other cars. When I got my Innova reparied at my dealer, he said there were many ( he said 70 cars) Innovas pending such reparis in his service station. Alternatively Toyota can find out statistically how many Front Bumpers are being sold by them for repair indents in a year and compare that relative to the number of Innovas sold.
This problem requires serious investigation. Innova’s breaking power at high speeds is very deficient and unreliable in emergencies. I have driven many cars in the similar segment and have never experienced such problems. Today I am very apprehensive driving Innova on highways at high speeds.
Will Toyota have the credibility and assurance to clarify this to everyone who owns Innnova officially somewhere so that we know as Innova owners, where do we stand and what we should do to prevent such dangerous problems driving Innovas.