The power of community.

As some of my friends know I am a badge wearing supporter/member of the SA 4×4 Community Forum. This is a very active niche forum of 4×4 enthusiasts, 4,648 of them. (I was once told that as much as 2/3’s are active). That amounts to a fair amount of passionate people. People with a combined voice.

Recently these people got together and raised R10000 for the desert lion project with a quick collection.

In recent times however a portion of the estimated 130 Members that own Toyota Fortuners have been fighting their own little war with regards to suspected handling problems on their vehicles after individuals realised that their complaints where getting met with the cold shoulder/ag shame response.

They rallyed together and hotly debated the subject on the forum generating 10 pages and near 200 posts.

Once the dangers and photos of Fortuners rolled at speeds as low as 60kph became evident the ball rolled quickly. DriveOut/WegRy magazine and the Argus and Mercury newspapers came to aid printing letters and an article containing a response from Toyota SA respectively.

Right now Toyota’s has put measures in place to replace new models and existing vehicles with better tyres which they claim solve the problem, note that they claim that they came to this conclusion by their own accord and claim no formal complaints are lodged. ??

However the Forum does not intend to stop there, they want a total recall as they believe its more than the tyres to blame and they are arranging a mass testdrive in the following week with a DriveOut correspondent where they will test various configs and setups on eachothers Fortuners to arrive at some conclusion.

Don’t underestimate the voice the web can give your little social network group. The power is at your fingertips.