How’s your recall? 47M vehicles need overdue repair work
The folks at Carfax recently pointed out that 47 million vehicles on United States roadways have at least one outstanding safety recall.
Carfax says that is a net increase of 1 million recalls in the past 12 months and that every state has at least 100,000 registered vehicles with an open recall.
If you’re like me, reading that news item created just the reaction Carfax wants—it drove me to visit the mycarfax.com website to check on our family’s two vehicles by entering either the VIN or license plate number.
Mrs. G’s recently traded 2004 Solara came back with zero outstanding recalls. The only one we remember receiving was a notice that Toyota would repair a cracked dashboard, should we have one.
My 1978 GMC Caballero has been off the “dealer and approved repair facility network’’ for so many years that no records of the vehicle even showed up.
Of course, many of the open recalls are for cars that have been traded and resold, often multiple times.
A major industry—and conscience-tugging—issue is whether dealers should be obligated to clear any outstanding recalls before a used car is resold.
It would seem to be a moral obligation for a dealer to fix any vehicles in its family—that is, for a Toyota or Lexus dealer to fix their own and each other’s vehicles. Same for Nissan and Infiniti as well as Honda and Acura. Take it further and apply it to the Ford-Lincoln and GM and FCA families.
That’s why there’s a special place in my heart for Mike Jackson, CEO of AutoNation Inc., the country’s largest dealer group.
Last fall, Jackson said the company won’t sell any vehicle, new or used, that needed repairs under a recall.
In the short term there’s no doubt his company would be losing sales to competitors who continued to turn cars over quickly, without making the repairs.
In a world where stockholders only care about the bottom line, Jackson’s action struck a chord in my heart. He did the right thing for the right reasons. Fortunately, he’s in a position where he can’t be thrown out on the street for such actions.
What’s happened? It turns out that AutoNation has been stocking up on vehicles to make up for the 16 percent it can’t sell until repairs are completed.
Long-term inventory is a corporate no-no in the automotive business as it ties up capital. Finding a different make of car on a dealer’s lot is how we managed to get a good deal on a lightly used Subaru at a Jaguar Land Rover dealership.
“Many people still are unnecessarily risking their lives by not staying informed or taking action when their vehicle is under a recall,’’ says Carfax spokesman Larry Gamache. “It’s one of the many reasons family-oriented vehicles, including one in four minivans, are the most highly impacted.’’
Last year, the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued a record number of 51 million vehicle recalls.
You can bet that’s one number the industry doesn’t want to top in 2016.
A seemingly more common variant on the recall list is the stop sale edict that comes down to dealers from manufacturers.
Some in recent memory were for Corvette, diesel VWs-Audis-Porsches, and now the new Honda Civic with a 2.0-liter engine, some of which may have piston-ring problems.
This is the ugly side of manufacturing.
Because technology is advancing so quickly, the automotive industry is changing to shorter production cycles for models. Instead of a four- or five-year (or more) generation, some models are being retooled in two- or three-year cycles and new cars pushed to market before everything is fully tested.
The result? Recalls, customer dissatisfaction, and reliability problems.
For the short term, buyers should protect themselves and make sure recall work is done on their vehicles.
Even better, if you’re negotiating to buy a car, you can incorporate a recall check into your discussion.
We’re in a time when salesmen are glad to turn their monitor around to show you a whole bunch of figures.
Checking to see if there’s a recall on the vehicle shouldn’t be too hard. Another way is to visit nhtsa.gov, find a pull-down menu under vehicle safety, and click on recalls and defects. That also gives you an option to check a vehicle by its VIN (vehicle identification number). That’s the number on your registration and usually on the left side of the dashboard at the base of the windshield.
Getting the work done might not be so easy if you’re involved with an off brand, but a job well done if the car is within a brand’s family.
It makes so much sense that you could help start a national movement.
Etc.
Our plan was to include an anecdote from our annoying-driver files here; however, what we saw on a recent rainy Florida morning trumped most of those tales.
For starters, it wasn’t just raining. This was a downpour of the build-an-ark variety, and the concrete-paved roads were greasy.
We were in heavy traffic on a big city roadway (four lanes in each direction). A vehicle in the second lane (from the left) was about to miss the entrance to a health center, and the driver cut abruptly across to the right. Because traffic in the far right lane was stopped (lined-up) to enter the driveway, our unthinking driver wound up blocking the third lane, too. Horns blared, cars swerved and slid (did we mention the road was greasy?). Amazingly, as far as we could tell, there were no accidents. This maneuver ranks high on both my all-time “It’s all about me’’ and “I have no consideration for other drivers’’ lists.
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