TORRANCE, Calif. -

Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Mazda are among the automakers planning recalls stemming from an airbag issue created by a defective product manufactured by one of the industry’s largest suppliers.

Among the 3.4 million units worldwide expected to be recalled, Toyota, Honda and Mazda offered specific details on Thursday about which models are subject to issues.

Honda said it will voluntarily recall approximately 426,000 model-year 2001-2003 Civic vehicles, approximately 43,000 CR-V vehicles from the 2002-2003 model years and approximately 92,000 model-year 2002 Odyssey vehicles in the United States. The campaign is to replace the passenger front airbag inflator.

“It is possible that the passenger front airbag inflators in affected vehicles may deploy with too much pressure, which may cause the inflator casing to rupture and could result in injury,” OEM officials said.

“Honda is aware of one crash in which a passenger front airbag deployed with too much pressure, causing the casing to rupture,” they continued. “Honda is not aware of any injuries or deaths related to this issue.”

Honda explained that it is announcing this recall to encourage owners of all affected vehicles to take their vehicles to an authorized franchised dealer as soon as they receive notification of this recall from the company. The OEM indicated mailed notification to customers will begin late next month.

In addition to contacting customers by mail, at that time, owners of these vehicles can determine if their vehicles require repair by going to www.recalls.honda.com or by calling (800) 999-1009, and selecting option No. 4.

Meanwhile, Toyota Motor Sales USA announced that it will conduct a safety recall involving approximately 170,000 front passenger airbag inflators installed in several vehicle models.

“The involved vehicles are equipped with front passenger airbag inflators which could have been assembled with improperly manufactured propellant wafers,” Toyota said. “Improperly manufactured propellant wafers could cause the inflator to rupture and the front passenger airbag to deploy abnormally in the event of a crash.”

The vehicles involved include certain Toyota Corolla, Corolla Matrix, Sequoia, and Tundra, and Lexus SC 430 models manufactured from 2001 through 2003. 

More precise vehicle information is being developed, but about 510,000 vehicles may have to be inspected to locate the suspect inflators, according to Toyota.

The automaker said owners of vehicles subject to this safety recall will receive an owner notification letter by first class mail. 

“The recall remedy will involve inspection of the front passenger airbag, and, if it is equipped with an affected inflator, the inflator will be replaced with a newly manufactured one at no charge to the owner,” Toyota said.

Detailed information is available to customers at www.toyota.com/recall, the Toyota Customer Experience at (800) 331-4331 as well as www.lexus.com/recall and Lexus Customer Satisfaction at (800) 255-3987.

Efforts by Auto Remarketing to ascertain which specific Nissan models might be recalled were unsuccessful on Thursday. According to a report by Reuters, Nissan said it was recalling about 480,000 vehicles globally, adding the number of vehicles under recall could increase.

In a message to Auto Remarketing, Mazda spokesperson Jeremy Barnes indicated only a tiny fraction of the 20,000 units the automaker is recalling for this airbag issue is in the U.S. A total of 149 units — Mazda RX-8s and Mazda6s from the 2001 through 2003 model years — are included in the campaign.

Reason for the Large Recall

The Reuters report said the automakers determined the recalls stemmed from problem with airbags supplied by Takata Corp., the world’s second-largest manufacturer of airbags and seatbelts.

Tokyo-based Takata told Reuters it supplies airbags and seatbelts to major automakers including Daimler, Ford as well as the Japanese OEMs.

The report said the faulty airbags were manufactured between 2000 and 2002 in a Takata factory in Mexico.
Reuters noted that the recall is the largest for Takata since 1995 when the company was involved in a recall of more than 8 million vehicles because of defective seatbelts.

“When the last recall took place, we inspected everything such as the site of manufacturing, but we were not able to identify this problem,” Takata spokesperson Hideyuki Matsumoto told Reuters.

A Bloomberg report about the recall included analyst commentary about the overall impact.

“It looks like the cost of the recalls may be pretty big,” Satoru Takada, a Tokyo-based analyst at Toward the Infinite World, told Bloomberg referring to Takata. “It doesn’t seem like something that would be easy to identify and fix. But if the cause is clear, it shouldn’t have a lasting effect.”

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