Toyota Motor Corp. has proposed spending $1.1 billion (€830 million) to install safety systems and provide cash payments to customers to resolve sweeping US class-action litigation over claims that millions of the Japanese automaker’s vehicles accelerate unintentionally.

About 16 million Toyota, Lexus and Scion vehicles sold in the US from the model years 1998 to 2010 are covered by the action, according to court filings made public on Wednesday. Thirty models are affected, including the top-selling Toyota Camry mid-size sedan and Corolla compact car.

Toyota, the No. 3 automaker in the US market, admitted no fault in proposing the settlement.

“This was a difficult decision, especially since reliable scientific evidence and multiple independent evaluations have confirmed the safety of Toyota’s electronic throttle control systems,” Christopher Reynolds, general counsel for Toyota Motor Sales, US, said in a statement.

“However, we concluded that turning the page on this legacy legal issue through the positive steps we are taking is in the best interests of the company, our employees, our dealers and, most of all, our customers.”

Toyota said it would take a one-time pretax charge of $1.1 billion to cover the costs. Chief Toyota US spokeswoman Julie Hamp said the company would not disclose until February when it issues its next quarterly earnings report whether it would spread the cost over several quarters.

A number of Toyota recalls involving more than 10 million vehicles between 2009 and 2011 hurt the company’s reputation for reliability and safety. However, the effect of the recalls on sales and loyalty is “difficult to isolate,” IHS Automotive analyst Rebecca Lindland said.

“A lot of their growth through the early 2000s were first-time Toyota buyers,” she said. “Those are the people that were most vulnerable to saying, ‘I’ll never own a Toyota again.’ The long-term effects won’t fully be realised until all of the cars that have been impacted by the recall have been retired.”

The biggest safety crisis in Toyota’s history began to get public notice in August 2009 when an off-duty California Highway Patrol officer Mark Saylor and three members of his family were killed in a Lexus ES350 that crashed at a high speed.

A separate lawsuit over the death of the Saylor family was settled out of court. A handful of wrongful death and personal injury cases are still pending but the vast majority of the litigation over this issue will be finished if the proposed settlement is approved.

Within a half year of the Saylor family crash, Toyota president Akio Toyoda and other company executives were questioned in a high-profile US congressional hearing, and Toyota made a public apology.

Toyota maintained all along that its electronic throttle control system was not at fault.

A study by US safety regulator the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Nasa found no link between the reports of unintended acceleration and Toyota’s electronic throttle control system.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.