Car recalls surge to an all-time high

Some 38,000 Minis may have faulty gearboxes

By Dan Roan BBC News Online

There has been a staggering tenfold increase in the number of cars being recalled by manufacturers.

This week's car survey by the Consumers' Association yielded information on nearly 34,000 vehicles, and contained both good and bad news for the consumer.

On a positive note, research by the organisation's Which? magazine found that car reliability generally was improving, if only marginally.

But the number of cars recalled went up dramatically from 150,000 to more than 1.5 million with problems ranging from faulty seat belts to difficulties with brake pedals.

"Recalls are the hidden secret of the car industry," says Andy Pringle, deputy editor of What Car? Magazine.

"The rise in recalls may be because there's been a tightening of the procedures by manufacturers - safety standards are now set higher."

Legal worries

This extra vigilance can be largely explained by last year's dispute between Japanese tyre-maker Bridgestone and the Ford motor company to which it supplied its Firestone tyres.

Both companies are facing lawsuits from US consumers over a spate of accidents allegedly linked to faulty products.

"The episode has shown manufacturers that they have to be especially concerned with safety, and has emphasised to them that what they're making is potentially very dangerous," says Mr Pringle.

"The fact that one and a half million vehicles were recalled last year is amazing really given the vast amounts of money these companies are making, and supposedly spending on development and testing."

Called to account

As if to emphasise the point, there have recently been a series of high profile recalls announced;

This week German manufacturer BMW said it was recalling 56,000 X5 sport-utility vehicles after it discovered a problem with the brake pedal.

At the same time, it announced it had to recover 38,700 Minis worldwide to fix a gearbox defect.

And then there's the Jeep; this week 43,000 of their off-road vehicles were recalled in the UK because of a possible brake problem, part of a giant 177,000 European-wide recall.

Manufacturers DaimlerChrysler have asked owners of 29,000 Jeep Cherokees and 14,000 Grand Cherokees to have their brakes checked.

Elk test

Arguably the most infamous of recalls was back in 1997 when Mercedes had to recall thousands of its A-class in Scandinavia when the model failed the infamous "elk test".

This stability test, which involved driving the car fast around sharp turns as if avoiding an animal on the road, caused the car-maker a large amount of embarrassment, and money, and made consumers more aware of safety concerns.

But perhaps the most worrying aspect of these failures is that defects are sometimes noticed years after production begins; in these cases manufacturers find it impossible to trace all of the vehicles, and some slip through the recall net.

Tight deadlines

So should car-makers spend longer on development before putting new models on the production line?

"In many cases what's happening is that cars are being made with faults in them which are only being corrected by the manufacturer at their leisure," says industry expert Professor Karel Williams of Manchester University.

"What we need is an official agency responsible for all this. We must put the burden of proof on the manufacturers, and have a system of official fines for such failures."