Following the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s broad expansion of Takata airbag recalls on May 19, at least three automakers expanded their recalls this week. BMW and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles announced expansions that affect new models and in some cases supersede older recalls, while Honda’s expansion affects cars already under recall.
Related: Is Your Car Part of the Takata Airbag Recall?
FCA’s expansion involves 4.1 million recalls for driver’s-side airbag inflators. It supersedes a similar recall in December 2014 of 2.9 million cars and adds a few model years to some of the cars involved. In total, a large number of model-year 2004-2011 Chrysler and Dodge pickup trucks, full-size sedans, wagons and SUVs are under recall. So are model-year 2006-2011 Mitsubishi Raiders, a corporate twin to the Dodge Dakota. In addition, FCA expanded its passenger-side Takata airbag recall on model-year 2003 Ram pickup trucks this week; it partially supersedes another passenger-side recall for the Ram and various other cars in December 2014.
Importantly, FCA says anyone who got repairs under the December driver’s-side recall will need to have them done again, but only some owners who got repairs under the passenger-side campaign may need new replacements.
BMW, meanwhile, has issued another recall for driver’s-side Takata airbags on older 3 Series cars (mostly 2002-2005 models, with a few 2006s) that, like FCA, supersedes a 2014 Takata recall. Owners who already received repairs will need to get new replacement airbags again, BMW says. The automaker also added model-year 2002-2003 5 Series and model-year 2003-2004 X5s, both with optional sport steering wheels. If your car has the normal steering wheel, it isn’t under recall.
About 420,000 airbags are in BMW’s expansion; many of the recalled cars are also under recall for Takata passenger-side airbags.
Honda, meanwhile, said in May that it would add some 350,000 airbags to its U.S. recalls; on June 15, it changed the number to 1.39 million cars in a nationwide recall campaign. Affected cars include model-year 2001-2005 Civics and 2003-2007 Accords for front-passenger airbags. Both cars were already under recall for driver’s-side Takata airbags, but Honda’s front-passenger airbag recall has largely been limited to areas of high absolute humidity, like the Gulf Coast. Meanwhile, the automaker said in May that its national campaign to recall driver’s-side Takata airbags had been upgraded from a voluntary “Safety Improvement Campaign” to a formal recall. These announcements followed NHTSA’s recent expansion of Takata recalls to 33.8 million airbag inflators, so they don’t necessarily add to the total. Want to know which cars are involved in the Takata airbag campaign? Read our full list here.
Editor’s note: Honda model years announced on May 28 have been corrected as of June 15 after the automaker reported new figures on the expansion.
