Recall Alert: more Hondas affected by defective airbags

To date, 14 vehicle manufacturers have recalled more than 25 million vehicles globally as a result of the Takata airbag inflator recall.

Well, it’s now Continental’s turn to recall vehicles with potentially faulty airbags – five million to be exact.

Fewer than two million affected vehicles are in the USA, according to a spokeswoman for Continental in Auburn Hills, Mich. Continental Automotive is a division of Germany’s Continental AG.

We’ll keep you posted.

Defective Takata inflators have been linked to nine US deaths since 2004, all but one of them in older Honda vehicles.

With this new market action, a total of approximately 970,000 Honda and Acura vehicles in Canada, have been or are now subject to replacement of a Takata driver and/or passenger front airbag inflator. About 24 million US vehicles are being recalled for that problem, which is the largest automotive recall in USA history.

Honda says replacement parts won’t be available until late summer. Instead, this is an extension of the Continental recall affecting 112,001 Chrysler, Dodge, and Volkswagen vehicles we wrote about earlier today. Continental has been aware of a defect as early as January 2008, it said in the filings. Frontal, side, and curtain airbags may be affected, as well as the seat belt pre-tensioners. With today’s tally, Honda’s recall has expanded to as many as 8.51 million Acura and Honda vehicles in the United States – accounting for about a third of the company’s overall recall tally.

Continental is more than just a tire company.

Honda spokesman Chris Martin confirmed the dealer memo as well as the stop-sale order, which he said is Honda’s protocol with any recall that involves cars likely to be among dealer’s new or certified pre-owned inventory. “Because any kind of rudimentary analysis of recalls over the last 20, 30, 40 years shows that they tend to be fairly low priority”. Richard Blumenthal and Edward Markey urged NHTSA to recall all cars with Takata inflators.

The senators asked Obama to use “every tool at his disposal” to accelerate the fix of all vehicles with “potentially lethal” Takata airbags. Mark Rosekind, the head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, last month warned that there could be still further expansions of the Takata recall, which at that point had affected more than 19 million vehicles.