Ed Grisamore

I don’t recall ever being part of a recall.

I am part of one now, though.

I am one of the 2.3 million Toyota owners in the U.S. — and 4.2 million worldwide – who will have to haul my 2008 Avalon back to the dealership for a recall.

They claim the gas pedals can get stuck. This is not good.

First, let me say we are a Toyota family. I believe in them. We own three of them. I have been driving them for 10 years.  I will continue to drive them until I get old enough to join the AARP and drive a Buick. (Just kidding.)

Why? Dependability. When you go to crank them, they start. I’ve never had a Toyota leave me on the side of the road.

Longevity, too. They are built to last. It has been my experience that if you take care of them, they will take care of you. I put 220,000 miles on a Sienna before I started driving the Avalon. A friend of mine now owns that Sienna, and it’s still going strong. My oldest son has more than 200,000 miles on his 1996 4-Runner, and my wife has more than 140,000 on her 1999 Camry.

I once had a reader take me to task for driving a Toyota. She said it was un-American to drive a foreign car. A few days after she wrote me, there was an article in The Wall Street Journal that compared a Sienna to a Ford Thunderbird. The Sienna (which was built in Georgetown, Ky.) had about 90 percent American-made parts. The Ford, on the other hand, had somewhere around 60 percent of its components made in the U.S.

I’ve been looking for that lady ever since.

I did have to take the Avalon in this past fall to have the floor mats bolted down. It seems the mats on the driver’s side were prone to sliding up under the gas pedal. That happened to me a few times, but it was more annoying than anything else. And it wasn’t part of a full-scale recall like this.

Now there is a chance the gas pedal itself may get stuck. This will make me worry every time I get into the car until I can get it fixed.