Continental airbags problem grows

The recall is tied to Takata’s late-January declaration that another 5.1 million USA vehicles contained defective airbag inflators, according to a Honda spokesman.

Continental Automotive will recall faulty airbag control units that were installed in 5 million vehicles worldwide.

Several automakers are recalling more than 5 million vehicles distributed worldwide over growing concerns in air bag problems.

Last year, Mercedes recalled 126,260 C-Class cars from 2008 and 2009 and 2010 GLK350 vehicles.

Be proactive – Use the “Flag as Inappropriate” link at the upper right corner of each comment to let us know of abusive posts. As such, the recall covers control units built between 2006 and 2011.

Other automakers included in the latest recall expansion are Ford Motor Co., Volkswagen AG, Audi AG, Daimler AG, Mazda Motor Corp., Saab Automobile and BMW AG. As a result, air bags can fail to deploy in a crash or inadvertently fire.

Honda said the driver-side airbag inflators in these vehicles may experience “over-pressurization” due to exposure to high temperatures and high absolute humidity.

Honda said it would notify owners about the problem, but fix parts won’t be available until fall. That leaves tens of millions of cars with potentially problematic inflators on the road that have not been fixed or, in some cases, have not even been recalled. “As a supplier, we have provided all the pertinent information to all potentially impacted vehicle manufacturers”.

Analysts said the two air bag recalls are not comparable, especially because Continental has a smaller market share than Takata, and Continental’s recall affects far fewer vehicles.

Honda will replace air-bag inflators in 13 models to comply with the expanded recall, according to documents filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Thursday. Millions more drivers have been waiting months for the replacement parts to get their airbags fixed.

Reuters reports that Honda recalled another 269,000 similar models in Canada on Monday for the same issue.

The defective airbags are blamed for nine deaths in the U.S.

Honda said in a statement Wednesday night that no inflator ruptures of this type have been reported in any of its vehicles.