Toyota Recalls Grand Highlanders and Lexus SUVs Over Cracked Steering Knuckles

• Toyota has recalled 617 brand-new 2026 Grand Highlander, Grand Highlander Hybrid, Lexus RX, RX Hybrid, TX, and TX Hybrid SUVs: a steering knuckle inside them can crack and cause a loss of steering control.
• The recall, filed with NHTSA as campaign 26V598000 and announced September 28, 2026, affects vehicles built with a specific casting batch of front steering knuckles.
• No injuries have been reported, and Toyota dealers will replace the affected part for free once parts distribution finishes, likely within the coming weeks.

A small recall with a serious failure mode

Six hundred and seventeen vehicles is a small number by recall standards, and that is exactly what makes this one worth reading closely rather than skipping past. Toyota and its luxury division Lexus filed a recall with NHTSA on September 28, 2026, covering 2026 model year Toyota Grand Highlander, Grand Highlander Hybrid, Lexus RX, RX Hybrid, Lexus TX, and TX Hybrid SUVs built with a front steering knuckle that can develop a crack. Toyota’s filing describes the risk in the plainest terms available to a manufacturer: “A cracked steering knuckle could cause a loss of steering control.” A driver who loses steering control at speed has almost no way to correct a swerve into another lane or off the road.

The steering knuckle is the forged or cast metal component that connects a wheel hub, the suspension, and the steering linkage into a single rigid assembly. Every input a driver makes at the wheel travels through this part before it reaches the tire. A crack that starts small under normal driving loads can propagate over months of potholes, hard cornering, and temperature cycling until the part fails outright, at which point the wheel can lose its intended geometry and the driver loses precise directional control. Toyota has not disclosed whether the crack originates from a casting flaw, a metallurgy issue, or a machining defect at the supplier that produced the part, and the recall notice does not specify which supplier built the affected knuckles.

Part of a bigger recall week for four automakers

Toyota’s steering knuckle recall arrived alongside three other new NHTSA filings from Ford, Land Rover, and Volvo, all logged the same week. Ford’s filing, campaign 26V605, covers 2026 Ford Ranger pickups whose backup camera can fail to display an image, a separate defect from the Ranger counterfeit-parts recall reported earlier in September. Land Rover’s new filing, campaign 26V607, covers 2026 Range Rover Sport models where a fault in the powertrain control module can cause a loss of drive power. Volvo’s recall, campaign 26V600, covers 9700-series buses built between 2009 and 2025 with an incorrectly labeled emergency exit, a compliance issue tied to Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 217 rather than a live safety defect for passenger vehicle owners.

None of those three overlaps with Toyota’s steering knuckle problem, and the Range Rover Sport power-loss recall is a different defect from the DC-DC converter issue that pushed Land Rover’s total power-loss recall count past 194,000 vehicles earlier this month. Four separate campaigns from four brands landing in the same week is not unusual: NHTSA typically logs between fifteen and thirty new recall campaigns across the entire industry every week. A steering-control defect on a brand-new three-row family SUV still tends to draw more attention than most, both for the failure mode itself and for the fact that the Grand Highlander and its Lexus TX sibling are among Toyota’s newest and best-selling three-row models.

Why steering failures get treated differently by regulators

Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 208 and related steering-system requirements exist for one reason: a steering failure removes a driver’s single most direct tool for avoiding a crash. NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation prioritizes steering and brake defects for expedited review for the same reason the failure mode offers little or no warning to the driver beforehand. Unlike, say, a slow oil leak or a dashboard warning light that gives an owner days or weeks to react, a cracked steering knuckle can hold under normal loads for a long time and then fail suddenly under a hard turn, a pothole strike, or an emergency maneuver.

That is also why a recall this small moves this fast. Toyota did not wait to accumulate a larger number of affected vehicles or a documented crash before filing; the company’s own quality data on the casting batch was enough to trigger the recall determination. Toyota has a well-documented recall history that goes back to the 2009-2011 unintended acceleration recalls covering more than nine million vehicles worldwide, an episode that reshaped how the company handles supplier quality issues and pushed it toward faster, more conservative recall decisions on emerging defects rather than waiting for field failures to accumulate.

What to do if you own an affected vehicle

Enter your VIN at nhtsa.gov/recalls or call the NHTSA Vehicle Safety Hotline at 1-888-327-4236 to check whether your specific Grand Highlander, Grand Highlander Hybrid, RX, RX Hybrid, TX, or TX Hybrid is part of the 617-vehicle population. Toyota owners can also call Toyota Customer Experience Center directly, and Lexus owners can reach Lexus Financial and Owner Services, to confirm eligibility and get an estimated parts availability date for their region.

The recall was only filed this week, so expect a mailed notification to lag the initial filing by several weeks while Toyota finalizes the replacement part and calibrates the fix at the plant level. There is no interim workaround Toyota has published for drivers of affected vehicles, and the company has not asked owners to stop driving or avoid dealer trips in the meantime, which suggests Toyota’s own risk assessment treats the failure as low-probability rather than imminent. Owners who notice unusual steering feel, a clunk from the front suspension, or a pull to one side should schedule a dealer inspection immediately regardless of recall status; those symptoms warrant a look whether or not a knuckle has actually cracked.

What happens next

Toyota dealers will replace the affected steering knuckle assembly at no cost once the replacement parts are distributed to service departments nationwide, a process that typically takes four to six weeks for a recall of this size. The affected population is a single casting batch rather than an entire model year’s production run, so it is unlikely this recall grows substantially larger, though NHTSA sometimes expands a campaign’s scope if a manufacturer’s later testing turns up additional affected build dates. Owners should watch for a first-class mail notice from Toyota or Lexus in the coming weeks with a specific repair appointment window.

For shoppers currently cross-shopping a new Grand Highlander or Lexus TX, the recall itself is not a reason to avoid the model. A fast, early recall on a small batch of parts is closer to the system working as intended than a sign of a deeper quality problem. It is, still, a reason to ask any dealer directly whether a specific VIN on the lot falls inside the affected build window before signing paperwork: a completed recall repair should be documented in the vehicle’s service history regardless of whether the buyer asks.

Sources:

• Toyota Recalls Certain 2026 Grand Highlander and Lexus TX Vehicles, Toyota USA Newsroom
• Toyota, Lexus Recall 617 Vehicles Due to Steering Knuckles, Kelley Blue Book
• NHTSA Announces Recalls for Toyota, Volvo, Ford and Land Rover Vehicles
• Toyota Recalls Grand Highlander, Lexus TX, and RX, autoevolution