Counterfeit materials used by a “third tier” Chinese parts supplier have given Aston Martin cause to recall more than 17,500 of its cars. The only model to escape the callback is the Vanquish, while all other left-hand drive models built since November 2007 and right-hand drive models built since May 2012 are affected.
The part concerned is a pedal arm for the accelerator which does not meet specification and could break causing a stuck throttle, for example. Despite internal investigations discovering the only recorded example of the pedal arm breaking occurred while a US dealer was performing a retrofit for an existing recall campaign Aston Martin has taken decisive action to remedy the potential problem.
A letter to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (320kb PDF) details the problem and states:
Aston Martin’s engineering specification requires pedals arms to be made of PA6 material supplied by DuPont. Initial tests on the failed pedal arm have shown that the Tier Three Supplier (defined below) used counterfeit material, which was received in bags labelled as DuPont PA6 material.
Tests reveal that the failed pedal arm was made from material consistent with PA6.6 material, rather than DuPoint PA6 material as specified in our drawing specification…
All counterfeit material and all pedal arms made of this suspect material have been quarantined.
Representatives from Aston Martin and DuPont will travel to Shenzen Kexiang Mould Tool in China to supervise the production of the new pedal arms using materials supplied directly by DuPont.
Aston Martin says it will contact all owners about the recall and it plans to shift production of the pedal arms from China to the UK “as soon as possible in 2014”.
Swift, decisive and assertive. That, Volkswagen, is how you carry out a recall.
[Source: Reuters & NPR]
