Dubai: UAE customers of Honda, Japan's second-largest automaker, will not be affected by the latest recall that involves almost 95,000 vehicles globally over faulty airbags, a company official in Dubai said.
The vehicles affected, of 2001-02 model year Accord, Civic, Odyssey and CR-V, have airbags that deploy too much pressure when inflated, which could cause injury, reports said.
"The recall relates to a dual-igniter type inflator which is not found in models in the UAE.
"Cars sold in the UAE use a single-igniter type inflator," Mark Kass, managing director of Trading Enterprises, the UAE distributor of Honda products, said in a statement.
Arijit Basu, assistant general manager, sales and marketing Honda Middle East told Gulf News that the problem occurred due to production under low stamping pressure in the airbag units.
"We have adopted production equipment which automatically sorts out and discards units produced under inadequate pressure," he said, adding that while no faulty units have been found in the UAE, any incidents will be resolved with new airbag component fitting.
Honda chief financial officer Yoichi Hojo told Reuters that the recall of 437,763 vehicles, the earlier estimate of affected vehicles, would likely cost it an estimated 2 billion yen (Dh80.7 million) to 3 billion yen.
The moves and costs come on top of a recall first announced in November 2008 for 4,200 Accord and Civic sedans due to faulty airbag inflators, and expanded last June to cover an additional 510,000 vehicles globally.
Last month, Honda announced a global recall of about 646,000 cars for a fault with a window switch.
Honda's latest recall comes after Toyota Motor Corporation saw its largest-ever recall that included more than 400,000 of its latest version hybrid models.
— With inputs from Reuters
