Owners of Toyota cars which are included in the worldwide accelerator pedal recall are to be contacted by Transport Malta and asked to contact the local importers, Michael Debono Ltd, for repairs.

Michael Debono Ltd (MDL) said when contacted that it had received a list of the affected cars and passed it to Transport Malta which will will now establish who the owners of the cars are.

MDL said it expects to receive the relevant parts in the last week of this month.

"On their receipt MDL will commence rectification work on vehicles involved; all work will be carried out at no cost to car owners."

The company said owners should be aware that an accelerator malfunction is not one that can develop suddenly and that it normally may occur in cold wet climates.

Owners noticing that the accelerator pedal becomes hard to depress, slow to return or is unsmooth during operation should contact MDL on telephone 22694000.

$2bln recall

Meanwhile, Toyota Motor Corp said it expects costs and lost sales from its massive safety recall to total $2 billion by the end of March, keeping it in the red for the year despite its strongest profit in six quarters.

Toyota's recall of more than eight million vehicles due to problems with unintended acceleration has wiped out $30 billion in share value, hurt its reputation and overshadowed what until just two weeks ago had been expected to be an upbeat story of improving earnings.

"Toyota's recall this time is unlike any other in auto industry history," said Lee Sung-Jae, an analyst at Kiwoom Securities in Seoul. "The scale is huge to begin with, and this deals a fatal blow to the very core value Toyota represented -- that is the quality of its cars."

In a further blow, Toyota is looking into dozens of complaints about inadequate braking on its new Prius hybrid on bumpy or frozen roads.

Toyota said it had identified and fixed a software problem related to its anti-lock braking system. A Toyota quality official said depressing the brakes further would activate normal braking on the car, meaning the glitch was not legally considered a safety hazard.

"This issue shows that we may have fallen short of the standards expected of us by our customers," Hiroyuki Yokoyama said, declining to say whether an official recall was planned.