WASHINGTON – Toyota said Friday it will recall 17,000 Lexus luxury hybrids after testing showed that fuel can spill during a rear end crash, The Associated Press reported.

The Japanese automaker said tests conducted for the National Traffic Highway Safety Administration found that fuel leaked during a rear impact crash at 50 miles per hour on a 2010 HS250h sedan. The test, conducted by a NHTSA contractor, showed that fuel spilled as the vehicle spun around after impact.

Toyota’s own testing has not shown any spillage, but a spokesman said the company plans to issue a voluntary recall as it continues to try to replicate the government’s results. It is notifying dealers to stop selling the car.

Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, has attempted to rebound from a series of recalls tied to reports of unintended acceleration and other defects. The Obama administration penalized Toyota with a record $16.4 million fine for acting too slowly on the recalls.

Dealers have repaired millions of vehicles, but the auto giant faces more than 200 lawsuits connected to accidents and the lower resale value of vehicles.

Earlier this week, Toyota Motor Corp. president Akio Toyoda, the grandson of the automaker’s founder, apologized to shareholders for the trouble caused by the recalls. He said the company was doing its best to improve quality control.

Toyota said it has not identified a fix for the reported problems of fuel spillage.

Toyota Motor Corp. has stopped sales of the Lexus LS sedan for about three weeks while it works to get parts to dealers to fix a problem with the vehicle’s steering system, The Associated Press reported.

Toyota on Friday recalled about 3,800 2009 and 2010 LS 460 and LS 600h sedans in the United States to fix a problem in which the steering wheel briefly shifts out of alignment with the wheels when it is turned to the extreme right or left and then quickly re-centered, such as in a tight U-turn. Toyota said it will remedy the problem by replacing the computer processor in the vehicle’s variable gear ratio steering system.

Toyota spokesman Brian Lyons said Lexus dealers will stop selling the LS until they receive the new computer chips for installation. The new parts are likely to begin arriving in mid-to-late June, he said.

Toyota has recalled about 4,500 LS sedans in Japan and 2,750 elsewhere around the world due to the same problem. The LS is Lexus’s highest-end four-door sedan and is priced at $65,380 for the 460 and $108,800 for the 600h hybrid model.

Toyota has sold about 4,000 LS sedans in the U.S. so far this year, accounting for about 6 percent of all Lexus sales. Vehicles covered by the recall were built between Aug. 28 and May 18. LS models produced outside that window do not experience the problem and are available for sale, Lyons said, adding that LS models are currently coming off the production line with the fix already installed.

Lexus builds all of the LS models at its Tahara plant in central Japan.

The automaker has been working to react faster to problems after coming under government scrutiny and being slapped with a record $16.4 million U.S. fine for its slow response to accelerator pedal recalls that affected more than 8 million Toyota vehicles worldwide. The automaker is also facing hundreds of state and federal lawsuits.

Toyota’s safety concerns have triggered the first major review of U.S. auto safety laws in Congress since the large tire recalls by Bridgestone/Firestone Inc. in 2000.

TOKYO – Toyota said Wednesday that it will recall a line of luxury Lexus sedans in the United States and Japan to fix a computerized steering problem, The Associated Press reported.

The recalls will affect 4,500 Lexus “LS” vehicles in Japan and the 3,800 2010 “LS” models that Toyota has sold in the United States. The line is Toyota’s top-priced luxury sedan brand, and includes the “LS 600h” hybrid.

The world’s largest automaker, battered by a series of high-profile safety recalls in recent months, said consumers have complained of steering wheels that came off-center during certain driving maneuvers, out of alignment with the directon of the car’s wheels. Toyota received 12 complaints in Japan, but said it knew of no accidents caused by the problem. The company has sold about 7,000 Lexus “LS” sedans outside of Japan, including the 3,800 in the U.S., 150 in Europe and 800 in China, with others sold in areas such as the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Australia.

After being hit with a record $16.4 million fine in the U.S. and facing strong government criticism both at home and abroad for slow responses to safety problems, Toyota Motor Corp. is working to react more quickly. The company on Tuesday paid the fine in the U.S., where it still faces hundreds of state and federal lawsuits.

The latest issue involves a computerized system that oversees how the steering wheel controls the tires. The steering system comes standard in Japanese models, but is optional in some other regions. It varies the amount that the steering wheel turns the tires on a car, allowing drivers to turn the wheel less at low speeds when attempting to navigate or park in tight spots and providing finer control at high speeds.

The system can take “a few seconds” to return the steering to normal after it has been adjusted, which led to complaints from drivers, said Toyota spokesman Paul Nolasco.

He said Toyota is preparing to conduct a recall in Japan soon, but wasn’t sure of the exact timing. The U.S. recall is expected Friday.

TOKYO – Toyota will offer the same fix for stability control programming it has announced for the Lexus GX 460 in North America to vehicles in other regions, affecting 34,000 vehicles worldwide, the Japanese automaker said Tuesday.

Toyota Motor Corp. will update the stability-control software program to reduce the risk of vehicles sliding in some Land Cruiser Prado vehicles, as well as the Lexus GX 460, sold in other regions, The Associated Press reported.

The move to expand the measures to other regions follows Toyota’s recall in North America and its agreement Monday to a record $16.4 million fine in the U.S., levied for a slow response in earlier recalls.

Toyota has been fighting to regain its once-sterling reputation amid a spate of recalls, which have ballooned to more than 8 million vehicles worldwide, needing fixes for faulty gas pedals, defective floor mats and braking software problems.

Toyota has also been trying to be quicker. The latest global fix comes less than a week after Consumer Reports, an influential U.S. magazine, issued a warning about the Lexus GX 460 sport utility vehicle, saying it may be prone to rollovers.

The automaker said it will carry out similar fixes in Europe and the Middle East to what is involved in the North American recall.

The vehicles requiring the update are 13,000 GX 460 vehicles — 9,400 of them in the U.S., 1,000 in Russia and 1,000 in Oman.

Also affected are some types of left-hand-drive Land Cruiser Prado models. Those models total 21,000 globally, including 4,400 in Oman, 4,000 in Russia and 1,500 in the United Arab Emirates, according to Toyota.

Toyota said the vehicles could slide sideways when turning sharply at high speeds, partly because the fuel tank and the presence of the driver may make the left side of a vehicle heavier.

LOS ANGELES – Toyota Motor Corp. said it’s seeking a fix for the Lexus SUV identified as a “safety risk” by Consumer Reports as a U.S. congressional committee set a new hearing to examine unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles, Bloomberg reported.

Toyota said Friday its engineers reproduced the same “slide” Consumer Reports magazine found in its tests of the 2010 GX 460 SUV. Separately, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman asked Toyota for documents on unintended acceleration for a hearing his panel will hold on potential electronic causes on May 6.

“We’re going to work on a countermeasure” to eliminate the handling issue on the GX, said Bill Kwong, a U.S. spokesman for Toyota’s luxury unit. “It’s too early to say exactly what that will be.”

The combination of Consumer Reports issuing a “don’t buy” assessment on the Lexus GX and renewed congressional scrutiny underscores the challenge Toyota faces regaining its reputation after global recalls of about 8 million autos for unintended acceleration. Compounding those issues, Toyota on Friday recalled 870,000 Sienna minivans in the U.S. and Canada for corrosion in a cable that holds the spare tire.

“Big obstacles remain before Toyota can regain customer trust and its strong quality reputation, especially in the case of non-Toyota owners,” said industry researcher Robert Cole, professor emeritus at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. “The public now associates problems of unintended acceleration with Toyota.”

Toyota Motor Corp. said it would expand safety testing to all of its sport-utility vehicles, after suspending U.S. sales of its Lexus GX 460 amid rollover concerns, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The car maker also decided to suspend sales of the 2010 Lexus GX 460 in other countries where the luxury vehicle is sold and will halt production of the SUV for nine days beginning April 16 to prevent inventory levels from building up.

Toyota drew praise from the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for taking “the proactive step” of offering owners of the luxury SUV a borrowed car until the problem is fixed.

“That is the kind of response we hope every automaker would take,” NHSTA administrator David Strickland said at the Society of Automotive Engineers World Congress meeting in Detroit. Strickland said his staffers have noted that Toyota “has definitely been more responsive” since January, when he took over leadership at the federal safety agency.

Toyota will conduct tests on its Rav4, Highlander, 4 Runner, Sequoia, Land Cruiser and FJ cruiser models, as well as the Lexus LX and the Lexus RX. None of those models has shown rollover risk.

NHTSA Thursday said it will conduct its own tests on the Lexus GX 460. Strickland said Consumer Reports had given the agency a preliminary report before its public announcement Tuesday that the vehicle would get a rare “don’t buy” rating slapped on it.