Nissan Quietly Recalls a Million Vehicles
If you are a major auto manufacturer, being forced to recall cars is not good for your public image. If that recall is about the safety of your clients, it’s even worse. The media are usually very interested in this sort of thing.
How can you limit the risk of the press picking up your story and turning it into a public relations nightmare? You use the same tactics as you would in front of a pack of hungry wolves: wait until they are harassing another prey, and then act fast!
While GM is currently under the spotlight for the massive problems with their Chevrolet Cobalt/Pontiac G5 where the ignition switch can move itself to the ‘’accessory’’ position, Nissan will quietly recall over a million vehicles because of faulty code in the computer which may prevent the passenger airbag from deploying in an accident.
This recall, starting mid-April, will be simpler than GM’s, though: no new parts, just a simple software update that takes about a minute to do. It will be done at Nissan dealerships, and is of course completely free of charge.
The recall includes: the 2013-2014 Altima sedan, the Sentra, the Leaf and the Pathfinder of the same years, the 2013 Infiniti JX35, the 2014 Q50 and QX60, and Nissan’s commercial van, the 2013 NV 200.
Around 60,000 Canadian vehicles are affected by this problem.
Nissan has reported two cases where the passenger airbags failed to deploy; however the engineers are not certain the computer was to blame.