Car Maker Recalls

As previously covered on this blog, within the past few months Toyota has recalled over one million of their vehicles to either fix the drivers side floor mat, fix the accelerator pedal, or fix the brakes.

Now, Honda is recalling more than 400,000 vehicles due to brake problems as well. Apparently, due to the stability control system on some Honda Odysseys and Elements, the brake pressure on the pedal will begin to soften after some considerable use. Eventually, this can become dangerous as the braking power diminishes greatly. They know what the problem is (unlike Toyota); air can somehow get into the braking system because of the stability control system.

Within these past few months, I've begun to think about what a car maker decides on in order to release a recall. It is definitely negative publicity so they must have some very strict rules before their PR people release a new recall to the media.

Recalls aren't a new phenomenon. They have been issued quite frequently over the past 20 years, and probably farther back then that. However, this Toyota recall has been one of the larger ones in recent history.

There are a few others that I remember that were big stories.

Jumping back to the 90's and early 00's, Ford chose a Firestone product for their tires on all of their Ford Explorers. As time went on, reports of roll over accidents due to tread separation off the tires began to surface. Ford eventually recalled all of these vehicles with their tires. The reasons for this to happened included the fact that the incorrect amount of air that should be in the tires was stamped inside the car's door jam. The sidewall of the tires said something completely different. If a person followed the reading that was given in the door jam, their tires would be 10 psi less than recommended. This caused roughly 250 deaths and many injuries (according to Wikipedia).

Another high profile recall that occurred a few years ago was for the Pontiac Grand Prix and the Buick Regal (roughly years 1997-2004?). The cars would catch on fire in consumer's driveways, causing a lot of property damage due to people keeping their cars in the garage.


One other recall that has been sort of swept under the rug and has been a continuous problem is for Chrysler/Dodge. It concerns their Grand Caravan/Caravan/Town & Country minivans. What would happen was during an accident, the airbags wouldn't deploy at the correct time. Not only this, but during assembly, something called the clock spring was inserted incorrectly and was therefore non-operational. This was for the 96 through 00 years I believe. Just recently, they issued a minor recall regarding the same component on a newer version of all of the vans, although the reasoning is only slightly different.