#AirBag

The Takata airbag recall was the largest in the automotive industry. So large, in fact, that we don’t actually know how many defective units are still floating around out there.

With the recall encompassing over 100 million airbag inflators sold around the world with the potential to kill occupants with shrapnel, keeping tabs was always going to be difficult. But Blomberg is reporting that it’s effectively impossible to account for all of them, noting that there are parts of the planet where the affected customers weren’t ever notified. We still haven’t even managed to fix all the units we knew were shipped in the United States, with at least 14 million potentially deadly inflators still presumed to be on the road as of July.

Stellantis is recalling 212,373 Ram vehicles over issues relating to the side-mounted airbag inflators. Relevant safety reports were filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration earlier in the month and describe circumstances somewhat similar to the nightmare that preceded the Takata airbag recall. Inflator components exposed to moisture may have a tendency to lose components or outright rupture, potentially spraying the interior with metal fragments.

The Ram inflators are believed to have been exposed to unnecessary levels of moisture during the manufacturing process, resulting in a weakening of the materials under pressure. FCA US (which is the name used on the NHTSA report, rather than the global Stellantis) started an investigation in December of 2020 after it had determined some pickups had been installed with side-curtain airbags with defective inflators. The company traced the issue all the way back to the 2015 model year.

In a fight with NHTSA regulators, Ford came out on the short end again, as more Takata airbags were at issue. This time, it will cost the automaker $610 million, of which they will have to carry the cost in its entirety.

Timothy writes:

Sir, I have a problem with my 1994 Buick Roadmaster. You remember the one that I inherited from my parents but didn’t care for the way it rode? Yeah, that one.

I followed a lot of your advice in making it a much more desirable car for me: big sway bars, rebuilt the front suspension with police grade goodies. Same with brakes. Redid the steering box, too! But now there’s a problem: the darn thing keeps blowing its horn!

Usually I’m in a store when it goes off and the call comes over the loudspeaker that my car is screaming at the top of its lungs. And those triple horns are loud!

Please tell me how to get this fixed!

David writes:

Sajeev,

Almost every rental car I’ve driven, regardless of make or model, in the last 18 to 24 months, particularly in the Bay Area and especially if the car has 20,000 or more miles, has the passenger detection system for turning the airbag on/off broken. Ford, GM, Hyundai, Kia, Nissan, it doesn’t matter. Sedan, SUV, sports car, again it doesn’t matter.

The first time it happened was in a Malibu. I’m driving with an alarm going off and I keep scanning the dashboard for a message or idiot light. Pulled over and checked the doors were all closed and trunk closed. Then I noticed the blinking light for the passenger seat seatbelt not being buckled and that a passenger is detected in the front seat. Nothing was in the seat, not even a piece of paper. After I secured the seatbelt for the invisible passenger the alarm stopped. I had to drive the car that way for the rest of my trip.

This has repeated itself in almost every rental I’ve had since. The most recent frustration was a 2017 Kia Optima I just had, which again required me to drive around with the passenger seatbelt buckled for the invisible passenger.

Does this mean that my personal vehicles will eventually befall the same fate? Is there something that rental car drivers are doing that abuse this system? Does California have a different standard? What gives?

Mike writes:Hi Sajeev,I have a 2008 Ford Fusion V6 AWD with about 101,000 miles. Like many cars, it is one of the vehicles recalled under the massive Takata airbag recall/fiasco. The first recall letter I got from Ford said the car was subject to the recall and that they were still sourcing parts with no timetable for repair. The second letter advised that no one ride in the front passenger seat until repairs were made, but they still didn’t have a timetable for parts and/or repair.After a few months I got sick of waiting for Ford to contact me, so I contacted them – through chat – and asked what Ford was doing to help/compensate owners of recalled cars. Initially they had nothing to offer. After a few tries Ford agreed to give me a free loaner until my car was fixed. After about a month of back and forth with the dealer, they finally arranged a loaner. I dropped my car off and picked up the loaner – super easy.My concern is that now my car is just sitting at the dealership, they have no estimate when the airbag parts will come in. Should I be concerned that my car is just sitting there?

Mike writes:

Ok Sajeev, I got one for you.

I own a 2009 Nissan Xterra 4wd X model. It has nearly 100k miles on the clock. In the past week, whenever I start the vehicle, I hear a chattering noise coming from the passenger side dashboard. The noise persists as long as the passenger air bag light is lit; when that light goes off, the chattering stops. So I took the truck to my local Nissan dealer, whom I trust, and I was told that the problem is the passenger side blender door of the HVAC system – apparently there are gears in this assembly which are not moving freely or properly.

The cost to repair is estimated at about $600 because of the necessity to remove the whole dashboard. The dealer’s service people told me to do nothing until the HVAC system fails to function properly, and it is currently functioning properly except for the above described noise. My question: how is a bad blender door mechanism linked to an airbag light? Can airbags chatter on vehicle startup?

Thank you as always for your excellent advice.

Ford is recalling the Ranger. No, not the one they’re likely to show on stage at Detroit in about a month’s time. Rather, they’re calling back nearly 400,000 of the old Rangers. You know, the ones they stopped producing way back in the, uh, wow, 2012 model year.

In fact, the recalled units stem from much further back than that, with the company saying it will replace the airbags in 391,394 units of the 2004 through 2006 model-year Ford Ranger. Yes, Virginia, this is another problem related to Takata airbags.

Plus, we just wanted an excuse to run a photo of the old Ford Ranger.

Mark writes:Sajeev,I recently acquired a 1990 Porsche 944 cabriolet. It’s in really good shape and has been well taken care of, but I started thinking about the airbags. The 27-year-old airbags.How long are they good for? If they fail will they go off unexpectedly or not at all? Should I replace with new airbags, disconnect or remove completely?

The impending bankruptcy of Japanese airbag maker Takata Corp. has been teased at and speculated upon for months. It was never a question of whether the parts supplier would go belly-up after causing the largest automotive recall in history, but how and when.

After furnishing dozens of automakers with airbag inflators what were, in essence, improvised grenades, the multi-million unit recall has left Takata with little recourse. The company has filed for bankruptcy protection in both Japan and the United States, announcing it will sell off the majority of its remaining assets to Key Safety Systems. One of the missing assets will be the equipment relating to the company’s nefarious ammonium nitrate airbag inflators.

The devices, subject to exploding with far too much force and spraying vehicle interiors with metal shrapnel, are responsible for a minimum of 16 deaths, hundreds of injuries, and the ruination of the company.

Takata, the damned Japanese parts supplier with the exceptionally dangerous airbags, has lost the two top executives at its United States headquarters. According to their LinkedIn profiles, former North American President Kevin Kennedy and former Executive Vice President Robert Fisher are no longer with the company.

Meanwhile, BMW Group is recalling roughly 230,000 vehicles in the U.S. after discovering that some could have been outfitted with defective Takata Corp. airbag inflators during repairs.

Automotive parts supplier Takata Corp, along with three of its former employees, were charged by federal prosecutors with concealing the deadly defect of its airbag inflators.

The devices have been subject to an unprecedentedly massive recall and have have been linked to at least 11 fatalities in the United States. Takata has agreed to plead guilty to the charges against it and will pay $1 billion in restitution.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration expanded its investigation into airbags manufactured by ARC Automotive following the July 8 death of a Hyundai driver in Canada.

According to Reuters, an airbag inflator in the vehicle ruptured, fatally injuring the driver. The death is similar to those caused by faulty Takata airbags, and the investigation could add millions of vehicles to an already massive airbag recall list.

Automakers are busy recalling tens of millions of vehicles to fix potentially deadly Takata airbags, but the fix won’t solve the problem, a former Takata employee says.

The scandal-plagued airbag manufacturer is using the same ammonium nitrate propellant in its replacement inflators, said Mark Ellie, Takata’s former engineering manager, in a report by WGME. Because of this, he claims the danger isn’t gone — it’s just delayed.

The company behind one of the largest safety recalls in automotive history might have a lifeline thrown its way.

Takata, the manufacturer at the heart of the exploding airbag scandal, is being courted by private equity firms, Bloomberg reports, with at least one high-profile company already in close talks.