A car expert went viral on TikTok after warning users against buying a Grand Highlander from Toyota. That’s because he said the auto manufacturer recently made an “unheard of” announcement that made him skeptical of the car’s safety.
User @tomislavmikula started his video with a warning to viewers: “if you are considering buying a Toyota Grand Highlander, you might want to think twice.”
He added: “Toyota just did something that I have never seen them do before.” As of Saturday, @tomislavmikula’s clip had amassed more than 561,600 views.
What’s wrong with the Highlander?
Toyota’s Grand Highlander SUV was put on a stop-sale in June, meaning it was temporarily unable to be sold because there was an issue with the car. The 2024 Highlander was facing issues with its airbags, according to a press release from Toyota.
Toyota said that roughly 145,000 cars were impacted by the recall. But @tomislavmikula said that the car’s troubles run deeper.
“That seems bad enough, but the news that they got this morning might be even worse,” he said.
According to @tomislavmikula, Toyota recently alerted dealerships to remove the Highlander from its website. He’s said he’s confirmed the news with “multiple Toyota reps.” Officials with Toyota seemingly confirmed this to some media outlets. According to one source, the Grand Highlander and Toyota’s Lexus TX “continue to be paused until October 21 at the latest.” The Daily Dot has reached out to Toyota for comment by email.
@tomislavmikula said that it’s “unheard of” for a manufacturer to tell a dealership to remove all the potential inventory off the lot. For most stop-sales, he said, you can still take deposits to hold the car for when the issues are eventually solved.
He said that wasn’t the case for Toyota, however.
“They need to scrub it completely,” @tomislavmikula said. “They cannot do anything at all with the Grand Highlander.”
He said he hoped the issues with the car would be resolved sooner, but that this move gave him pause.
“If you’re looking at a Grand Highlander, you should think twice,” he said.
Should Toyota customers be worried?
In an Aug. 1 video, @tomislavmikula issued an update regarding Toyota’s problems. In short, he said that those wanting to buy a Toyota Highlander should be able to do so—but it will require some patience.
He cited Toyota’s target date of Oct. 21. After that, @tomislavmikula added, Toyota is going to start rolling out the cars, with the goal of having the airbag issues completely resolved by the end of November.
“So if you’re looking to buy a Grand Highlander, we should expect December if not 2025 to really have your car done,” @tomislavmikula said. “This might not be the news you want to hear, but this is what Toyota is saying.”
Because of the potential issues with the car, however, some viewers vowed to never purchase a Highlander. Others who already own that car admitted to having traded it in.
“I just traded in my 2021 highlander bc I had sooo many recalls that they can not fix at this time,” one woman admitted.
“Looks like I’m buying a Honda pilot instead of a Highlander next week,” another added.
Of course, some prospective buyers weren’t turned off by the news. They said that they wanted to negotiate a lower cost for the car given its issues.
@tomislavmikula 7/19/24 Toyota Big Update On The Grand Highlander #carbuyingtips #toyota #newcar #delivrd ♬ original sound – Delivrd
“How should this impact our negotiations on a GH?” one person asked.
“So is it possible to get a better deal on the 2024 ones,” another implored. “We reserved a 2024 but at that point we could just buy a 2025 model.”
The Daily Dot has reached out to @tomislavmikula via TikTok comment.
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