Photo Source: Wikicommons via Creative Commons Library
CarMax, the nation’s largest used car retailer, is in hot water from accusations for selling recalled cars, according to an official statement released by the Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety.
The group, or CARS in short, is an award-winning, non-profit organization advocating for automotive safety. It campaigns for the enactment of new safety laws to protect buyers of both new and used cars.
In CARS’ latest press release, the group warns against buying used cars from CarMax. CARS alleges the company sold and “continues to sell unsafe, defective recalled cars.”
Click here for more news on Takata airbags.
This includes the sale of “vehicles with dangerous Takata air bags that have been linked to 10 deaths and over 100 injuries.” The statement is a follow up to allegations from 2015, where CarMax was first accused of selling Takata-tainted vehicles,
“CarMax sells cars that are ticking timebombs on wheels,” said Rosemary Shahan in the press release, President of Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety (CARS). “Car buyers should avoid shopping at CarMax unless they stop selling recalled cars with lethal safety defects that they fail to get repaired.”
The allegations from CARS stem from the recent recalls plaguing airbag manufacturer, Takata. Takata is currently in trouble for producing airbags with faulty inflators that essentially morph into fragmentation grenades. It presents an issue for any car affected because the faulty inflator could result in deadly injuries, cancelling out any life-saving capabilities that airbags supply.
The Takata airbag recall is being called one of history’s worst recalls in the automotive industry, with nearly 69 million vehicles being recalled as of May this year, according to the NHTSA. It all started when Toyota, Nissan, Mazda and Honda issued their first recall for the faulty airbags in 2013 for 3.6 million vehicles. The recall has since snowballed, forcing Honda to expand its involvement, and later claiming vehicles produced by Ford in 2014 according to Consumer Reports’ timeline. It first hit major news headlines in November of 2014, when the New York Times published its first reports about the defects before Takata itself filed the initial paperwork for the recalls. After this report was published, the NHTSA pressured Takata to issue a recall campaign officially on a national level.
By this time in 2015, Honda and Toyota both expanded their recalls while affecting cars from Fiat-Chrysler, Mitsubishi, Subaru, and General Motors. To date, faulty Takata airbags stretched to include cars by Audi, BMW, General Motors, Jaguar-Land Rover, and Mercedes-Benz. So far, around 8,128,860 airbags have been replaced, according to the NHTSA, as of May.
Many of the recalled vehicles being sold by CarMax are believed to be irreparable because “the manufacturer has not yet developed a fix, or because of parts shortages – leaving car buyers and their passengers at risk,” the CARS statement adds.
Referencing the National Automotive Dealers Association or NADA, the “federal Motor Vehicle Safety Act prohibits the sale and delivery of new vehicles subject to “stop sales” orders issued by vehicle manufacturers or the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), unless and until the defect is corrected. ” That said, it is super illegal to sell recalled cars and dealers are required to issue a stop-sale, including CarMax.
CarMax enforces a strict “125+ point Certified Quality Inspection,” but CARS says CarMax “fails to ensure that safety recall repairs are performed prior to sale.” CarMax also posts a “Commitment to Recall Transparency” on their main press landing page.
CarMax’s main homepage also hosts a special landing page explaining how they handle recalls to protect their customers. The company’s police admits some of its cars “may have open safety recalls on them.” But they clearly explain the reason for this: CarMax is not authorized “to complete safety recall repairs and close out open safety recalls.” In other words, they cannot perform the repair work certifiably on cars needing recalls addressed. Instead, CarMax maintains the repair responsibility is in between the manufacturer’s dealership network and the current owner. Therefore, recall mandates for stop-sales should not affect independent dealers like CarMax.
The investigation is ongoing in correlation to Takata’s continued recall campaign.
FULL DISCLAIMER: This official statement was tipped by fellow colleagues at our supporting partner, AutoNation, the US-based largest car dealership network in the nation. AutoNation promises to fulfil every directive to stop the sale of recalled vehicles and repair them as necessary in order to meet all safety requirements prior to sale.
– By: Chris Chin
Source: Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety
Supporting Sources: NADA, Consumer Reports, CarsFoundation.org, NHTSA
Source: egmCarTech http://bit.ly/2btF4Nl
0 commentaires:
Enregistrer un commentaire