NHTSA orders Ford to make a biggest car recall

Ford has to recall three million cars from the American transport, the watchdog NHTSA decides due to faulty airbags from the Japanese manufacturer Takata. The watchdog rejected a request on Tuesday to avoid that recall.

Ford now has 30 days to work out a plan to inform the affected owners and solve the problem. An amount was not mentioned, but a recall of such magnitude, Ford will cost many millions of dollars. The company hasn’t responded to the decision yet.

According to NHTSA, these are airbags in the Ranger, Fusion and Edge Models, which were built between 2006 and 2012. It also includes certain types of the Lincoln and Mercury brands. The Japanese car manufacturer Mazda must also recall 5,800 cars.

The biggest recall ever

Both companies had appealed against the recall, because they considered that the defect in the airbags did not constitute a direct danger to the drivers and passengers of the cars.

In November, the largest American car manufacturer General Motors had to repair 5.9 million cars after NHTSA refused an appeal. That cost GM $ 1.2 billion.

Takata airbags have been causing problems in the car industry for years and have led to the biggest recall of cars ever. Some airbags opened too quickly and pieces of metal were thrown through the cars. These incidents would have caused 29 deaths and many injuries. Takata confessed to manufacturing errors and was fined a billion dollars. The debacle led to the bankruptcy of the subcontractor in 2018.