Holden recalls Commodore again

HOLDEN has issued its fourth recall this year for the top-selling Commodore large sedan, this time regarding a defective seat-frame weld.

An incomplete bracket weld, which secures the front seats to their tracks, could fail during a crash, exposing the occupant to a greater risk of injury.

With more than 25,000 vehicles affected (including 3740 in New Zealand), this latest round of recalls takes the total number of Commodores recalled to more than 100,000 this year.

Not all of the vehicles built between February 7, 2013 and May 22, 2014 are affected, and a visual inspection at a Holden dealership will determine whether remedial work is required.

In cases where the welds are found to be defective, Holden will replace the seat-base at no cost to the owner with the remedial work taking between 30 minutes and 1.5 hours.

The fault was flagged during Holden's rigorous internal testing process and no failures have been reported by customers in the field.

Holden is writing to owners, asking them to return their car to a dealer for inspection and rectification where necessary.

Owners of VF Commodore and Caprice models displaying vehicle identification numbers 6G1FL5EP6EL900097 to 6G1NP5E27EL986329 should expect to be contacted.

In May this year Holden recalled almost every VF Commodore for a seatbelt pretensioner fault, then in June more that 27,000 Commodores were called in for an incorrectly greased windscreen wiper component, and again the following month LPG variants of the large sedan were recalled for a potential gas leak.

Holden product communications manager Mark Flintoft said that the large number of recently discovered faults are not a result of slipping quality standards, but partly due to greater involvement of General Motors in development.

With more eyes on the task, faults that may have previously been overlooked are being spotted sooner.

“As far as our quality management and end-of-line vehicle checks go, they've always been thorough, but there is more input from the US as well now, he said.

“We are proactively dealing with this, and a majority of the recalls are as a result of internal investigations.

“The complexity going into manufacturing a car is massive, but we all use the same suppliers throughout the industry as we saw with the Takata airbag.”

Last month, independent safety equipment manufacturer Takata announced a problem with the propellant in its airbag units, sparking a global recall involving millions of vehicles across many brands.