Four Top Japanese Car Makers Recall 3.4 Million Cars for Airbag Problems

Japanese car manufacturers have steadily built a reputation for reliable and high quality cars and vehicles. But somehow, the issues of safety are slowly marring that once pristine reputation. For some analysts this is due to using common parts as cost-cutting measure, which is often risky and could affect a company’s reputation.

Toyota, Mazda, Honda and Nissan, all Japanese car makers, are facing one huge dilemma: malfunctioning passenger-side airbags made by Takata, a Japanese car gear manufacturer based in Tokyo. The announcement was made on Thursday.

This is no mean feat, trying to recall 3.4 million vehicles manufactured between 2000 November and 2004 March that had been sold worldwide. These cars had been manufactured either in Japan or in their offshore plant sites. This is latest of the issues that have hit Japan’s car manufacturing industry for the past few years.

Malfunctioning air bags

The safety issue concerns the airbag installed on the front passenger side. The four car manufacturing giants said that the airbag could set out with more force than necessary on impact, which in turn could cause fire and scatter debris that would hit the passengers. It has been said that these airbags in question were assembled with propellant wafers that had been manufactured improperly. During impact, this could cause the inflator to burst and cause the abnormal deployment of the airbag. Although there is no record yet of this abnormal deployment happening, they are not leaving anything to chance.

Takata has already announced that they will be sharing in the cost of replacing the faulty part.

Effect on the stock market

The recall announcement barely made a dent in the performance of the car manufacturers’ shares in the stock market. All four manufacturers saw their shares rise. Mazda rose 3.96% while Honda’s shares went up to 3.13%. Nissan’s shares rose to 4.40% to close at 1,043 yen while Toyota’s shares rose to 5.81%. The good performance was not shared by Takata, whose share went down by 9.00%.

Car recall by manufacturer

The highest number of cars to be recalled comes from Toyota. The company announced that 1.73 million Lexus and Toyota cars will be recalled worldwide as well 170,000 Corolla, Sequoia, Lexus SC 430, Tundra and Corolla Matrix in the United States that were manufactured from 2001 to 2003. In Japan, Toyota will recall 320,000 and an additional 490,000 from Europe. Aside from these numbers, Toyota also announced that they might be investigating some 510,000 more cars that might have this type of faulty inflators installed.

Honda will be recalling 1.14 million cars around the world as well as 561, 000 in the U.S., which includes 92,000 Odyssey minivans (2002), 426,000 Civics (2001-2003) and 43,000 Honda CR-Vs (2002-2003). Emails will be sent to affected customers starting in May, according to Honda.

Worldwide, Nissan will recall 480,000 cars as well as 137,000 cars in Japan while 343,000 cars will be recalled in Europe and North America. The cars, manufactured between 2000 and 2004 affect Cube, Teana, Maxima and X-Trail.

The smallest number of cars to be recalled is from Mazda. The recall involves Mazda 6 and RX-8 models. In Japan, the company will recall 4,000 cars and 45,000 vehicles. There are no figures given as of yet but they will also be recalling cars in China, Europe and North America.

Photo Credit: Itsukaichi Street in Tokyo