Toyota Melting Dashboard Lawsuit

Does your dashboard shine like Mr. Clean's freshly polished cranium? Does it feel like you let a toddler loose with a glue stick? A new lawsuit says Toyota designed, manufactured and subsequently ignored dangerous Velveeta-like dashboards in the 2006-2008 [Lexus ES][4], [Lexus IS][6] and the 2007-2009 [Toyota Camry][7]. The lead plaintiff, Melissa Graham, says the melting conditions create a glossy film on the dashboard that make it difficult to see when it's sunny out. Melissa should just move to northern VT, it feels like my house has been under a never-ending wall of clouds the entire month of November. But I digress...

The lawsuit points to a TSB (that's technical service bulletin for people who never took Manufacturer Acronyms 101) that Toyota issued to dealers in 201. In the TSB, Toyota says their cars "may exhibit sticky interior panels that have a shiny / degraded appearance" and that revised interior panels "have been developed to address this condition." If you read between the lines I'm pretty sure it says 2006-2009 owners are just SOL -- that's an acronym that you don't need to take "Manufacturer Acronyms 101" to understand.

Now a judge needs to decide if Toyota deliberately concealed the defective dashboards and who should pickup the repair bill. The judge should also look into if Velveeta dashboards are a real possibility, because that would be awesome. Hey, if I'm going to have an overly shiny dashboard it might as well be some form of processed cheese product that I can dip a nacho chip into.

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Melting Dashboards Turn into Shiny Goo

One of the automotive world's worst science projects is coming to an end. Toyota dashboards have long been known to melt under the heat of the sun. The melted dashes warp and extrude a strange, goo-like substance that is oddly shiny and sti