New Delhi, Sep 5: In the second biggest recall in the Indian automobile history, Japanese car major Honda today said it will call back 72,115 units of its mid-sized sedan City here to replace the defective power window switches.
Honda, which is present in India through a joint venture with the Siel Group—Honda Siels Cars India—said the recall will be for the model made in India from 2005 to 2007.
“Honda extends the power window switch replacement to 72,115 units of City in India... HSCI is carrying out the part replacement as part of a global exercise by Honda Motor Company to ensure stringent quality standards for its products,” the company said in a statement.
The replacement will be free of cost and owners will be contacted to carry out the exercise smoothly, it added.
“Although no incident has been reported in India, HSCI is extending the same exercise to the previously sold Honda City manufactured in from 2005 to 2007,” it said.
Honda Motor Co is recalling 9.36 lakh cars, including hatchback Jazz, City and sports utility vehicle CR-V, globally due to defective power window switches.
HSCI, however, said the global recall does not impact the Jazz and CR-V sold in India.
The company said the third generation City, which it sells in India at present, is not affected by the recall.
The latest recall comes at a time when HSCI has been struggling to keep the sales counter ticking in India. In the April-July period this fiscal, the company's total sales have fallen 25.99 per cent at 12,526 units, mainly due to supply issues from Japan on account of the earthquake and tsunami.
The current recall is the second largest such exercises witnessed by the Indian automobile industry so far after the market leader Maruti Suzuki India's (MSI) one lakh recall of its hatchback A-Star.
From December 2009, MSI started calling back one lakh A-Star, the company's flagship export model, to replace a faulty fuel pump gasket to check possible fuel leak. The entire exercise of replacing the part was completed in 2010.
Earlier this year, HSCI had announced a similar recall of 57,853 units of its third generation City to replace a faulty engine part, as part of a global exercise. In January last year also, it had recalled 8,532 units of the City, manufactured in 2007.
In 2007, HSCI had recalled about 4,000 units of CR-V and 2,300 units of the luxury sedan Accord in a move described by the company as product update. This led to a total replacement and change in design of CR-V's fuel tank and upgrade of fuel relay in Accord.
Besides HSCI's recalls, MSI had also faced numerous such issues. Earlier it recalled its hatchback Swift in 2005 to change bolts to reduce the front suspension noise in Swift petrol, and in 2007 electronic control units of Swift diesel. It had also replaced speedometers in M800 and Omni in 2008.
MSI's Japanese parent Suzuki Motor Corp had recalled 10,000 units of the automatic transmission version of its compact car ‘Alto' in Europe, which is sold under the brand A-Star in India.
The recall, however, did not impact the Indian market as MSI does not sell the automatic transmission version here. PTI
