Recalled vehicles ordered off road

By MATHEW DEARNALEY

Certificates were cancelled yesterday on 169 trucks and buses with potentially lethal wheel faults, as a rising tide of vehicle recalls kept swamping the motor industry.

The Land Transport Safety Authority is telling owners of the used-import Mitsubishi Fuso vehicles their certificates of fitness have been revoked, and it is passing registration details to the police to bar them from the road.

This means 270 have been officially grounded under an initial recall of 843 Fusos, as 101 have already failed wheel inspections, although some have been repaired with stronger hubs.

Most failures, from a design fault blamed for a smash which killed a bystander in Japan in 2000, involved trucks. But six buses, including five on school runs, were deemed unsafe.

These and eight trucks have had new hubs fitted by Mitsubishi, which hopes to have parts available for remaining vehicles by the end of this month.

Safety authority spokesman Andy Knackstedt said 169 others had not been surrendered for inspection, more than a week after a deadline.

He also disclosed that Mitsubishi told the authority late last month of three extra Fuso models affected by the fault, meaning 145 more vehicles must be inspected.

Mitsubishi, which is paying for repairs after an outcry against its initial stance that labour expenses were the responsibility of independent importers, has meanwhile started returning 343 recalled four-wheel-drive Galant cars and Legnum station wagons to owners.

This follows a temporary repair to their brakes through disconnecting a computer unit operating a "stability control" feature.

Spokesman Philip Dinness said some permanent repairs had also been completed, but these took 12 hours compared with 20 minutes for the temporary fix, and not all parts had arrived from Japan.

The fix had been cleared by the safety authority, as disconnecting the computer unit "makes the cars perfectly safe to drive".

Although the motor industry has been haunted by a wave of recalls, not all are safety-related. They can mean anything from having to change an oil filter to far more urgent repairs.

Mitsubishi feels aggrieved at being singled out, given that other brands such as Ford last month and Mazda just this week have announced larger local recalls, and defects were disclosed last year in 19.5 million American-made vehicles.

But the brake problem sounded alarm bells when a Mitsubishi agent crashed through an Auckland intersection, prompting the company to ask the safety authority to ground all affected vehicles.