Toyota says to recall 6.58 million vehicles for steering, seat problems

TOKYO (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp will recall 6.58 million vehicles globally to fix faults in the steering and seats, a company draft statement showed on Wednesday, in one of the largest recalls to date in the global auto industry.

The world's biggest automaker is recalling certain Yaris, Urban Cruiser, RAV4 and Hilux models after identifying faults in the steering column, wiring harnesses and seat railings of 1,058 vehicles. The Yaris is also sold as the Vitz and the Urban Cruiser under the Scion brand as the xA.

The recall tally was preliminary and subject to review until a formal announcement in Japan later on Wednesday, a Toyota representative said.

The recall covers models of the Yaris subcompact and Urban Cruiser SUVs assembled between January 2005 and August 2010 as well as RAV4 SUVs and Hilux compact pickups made between June 2004 and December 2010, Toyota said in the statement.

It said 825,000 of the affected vehicles were in Europe but that it was not aware of any accidents related to these faults.

It was not immediately clear if the faults were due to design or manufacturing issues.

(Reporting by Andreas Cremer in Berlin, Laurence Frost in Paris and Chang-Ran Kim in Tokyo; Editing by Miral Fahmy)