WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Ford Motor Co. said on Thursday it would recall 3 million vehicles for broken airbags at a cost of $ 610 million.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Tuesday ordered Ford to withdraw the driver’s airbag inflators, rejecting the carmaker’s 2017 petition to avoid it.
The defect, which in rare cases leads to the rupture of airbag inflators and the sending of potentially lethal metal fragments, led to the largest recall of cars in US history of over 67 million inflators. Worldwide, about 100 million inflators have been installed by 19 major car manufacturers.
The withdrawal includes 2.7 million American vehicles. Ford will include cost in fourth quarter results.
The vehicles were previously recalled for passenger side inflatables. “We believe that our extensive data has shown that the withdrawal of safety was not justified for the driver’s airbag. However, we respect the NHTSA’s decision and will issue a withdrawal, “Ford said.
NHTSA also asked Mazda Motor Corp. to recall 5,800 airbag inflators in 2007-2009 B-Series vehicles.
Takata blazers have resulted in at least 400 injuries and 27 deaths worldwide – including 18 deaths in the US, with two in the 2006 Ford Ranger trucks mentioned earlier.
The Ford vehicles mentioned include various Ranger, Fusion, Edge, Lincoln Zephyr / MKZ, Mercury Milan and Lincoln MKX vehicles from 2006-2012.
In November, the NHTSA rejected a petition filed by General Motors Co. to avoid withdrawing 5.9 million American vehicles with Takata airbags. GM said the reverse call covered 7 million vehicles worldwide and will cost $ 1.2 billion.
Ford separately disclosed on Thursday that it expects to see a $ 1.5 billion pretax revaluation loss in the fourth quarter related to pensions and other post-employment benefit plans, driven by lower discount rates.
Ford said it expects the revaluation loss to reduce net income by about $ 1.2 billion, but did not change expectations for 2021 pension contributions.
David Shepardson’s report to Washington; Editing by Leslie Adler and Matthew Lewis