ST. LOUIS — Enterprise Holdings announced that it has now removed 83 percent of the approximately 35,000 recalled Toyota and Pontiac Vibe vehicles from its North American rental fleet on behalf of its Alamo Rent A Car, Enterprise Rent-A-Car and National Car Rental brands.

Meanwhile, the company has also suspended sales of the affected models and will not sell or put any affected Toyota vehicles into service under the Alamo, Enterprise or National car rental brands until the situation is corrected.

Enterprise Fleet Management explained it's still working with Toyota. The company is continuing to contact its leasing customers who have leased a vehicle subject to the recall. It's also attempting to keep them informed of the latest developments.

Furthermore, executives updated the status of their sharing fleet — operated under the WeCar brand. They said no vehicles in this fleet have been affected by the manufacturer's safety recall concerning potentially sticking accelerator pedals.

"We've been able to move so quickly to pull almost 30,000 cars from our fleet because of our coast-to-coast network of neighborhood and airport locations," explained Matt Darrah, executive vice president of North American operations for Enterprise Holdings, which owns and operates the Alamo, Enterprise and National brands.

"I also have to give tremendous credit to our team. Our employees have worked hard to ensure that, in the process of protecting our customers' safety, we've also minimized their inconvenience," Darrah went on to state. "The other factor that's worked in our favor is that the affected vehicles represent such a small percentage of our total fleet.

"That's added to our speed and efficiency in moving vehicles from city to city, or back and forth between airports and nearby neighborhood branches, to minimize delays in getting customers into a replacement vehicle," Darrah noted.

"That same flexibility, combined with new cars coming into our fleet and our plans to keep some existing cars a bit longer than planned, makes us confident that we can continue meeting customer demand," he concluded.