Toyota launched Australia’s first locally produced hybrid, the Camry Hyrbrid on Monday, but the event has been smothered by the latest recall to hit the battered car maker.

Yesterday, Toyota finally announced a global recall of its Prius eco hero to fix a brake problem, with 400,000 cars affected globally, including 2400 in Australia. It comes after a series of overseas recalls for more than 8 million faulty Toyotas, which US lawyers are claiming caused several deaths and will no doubt dent the company’s reputation of quality and reliability.

Toyota Australia had been feeding the automotive press with details of Camry Hybrid with a barrage of press releases for more than a year.

It staged events with associated government ministers to announce the vehicle would come, to announce the first prototype had been produced and to announce the first customer car was rolling off the line at Altona.

The actual launch of the vehicle in Melbourne on Monday didn’t go so well. The word “pear-shaped” comes to mind. What started as a proud presentation of a car the company says will change the Australian automotive landscape descended into an interrogation of Toyota’s quality control processes.

The Australian-made Camry Hybrid and the imported Prius are hybrids, but they are very different models.

Speaking the day before the recall was announced, Toyota Australia said the braking system in the Camry Hybrid was “totally different” to that in the Prius because it is lighter and more advanced although it uses the same basic theory of energy capture.

The problem for Toyota Australia is that the Prius issue relates to the hybrid brakes and its regenerative braking system. Basically, an electric motor helps slow the car capturing energy, which charges the battery before the regular hydraulic brakes also kick in.

It is the relationship between these two braking systems, which are fundamental to hybrid models, causing the issue.

The danger for Toyota is that customers could lose their faith in hybrid technology, the green system Toyota has bet its farm on.

At Monday’s launch, the company stuck to the story that the Prius issue relates to “customer feel”, which is its way of implying there is nothing wrong with the car, just the customer.

Toyota Australia’s sales and marketing chief, David Buttner, explained it this way: “It is just with the inconsistency in feel of the brake, once the ABS (anti-skid brakes) comes on and they hit a pothole or a ripple. There have been no accidents. The brakes work in every instance.”

Toyota Australia has only had two complaints, which they said they had been investigating and there have been no reports of crashes caused by the problem here, despite claims of several in the US.

Buttner was unable to say how much damage the storm of publicity over Toyota’s reliability problems will cause in Australia, but he knows it means some pain for the country’s top selling brand.

“I couldn’t stand before you and pretend for the moment that the global situation, which has achieved very widespread coverage in Australia, will not have some kind of effect on the brand,” he said on Monday.

Toyota Motor Company president Akio Toyoda picked up his pen and wrote an “I’m sorry” piece for the Washington Post, promising to take action on quality.

“The past few weeks, however, have made clear that Toyota has not lived up to the high standards we set for ourselves. More important, we have not lived up to the high standards you have come to expect from us,” he wrote.

“I am deeply disappointed by that and apologise. As the president of Toyota, I take personal responsibility.”

This action alone shows how just how worried Toyota is about its reputation.