Friday, February 18, 2011

CRISIS MANAGEMENT: HONDA MALAYSIA TO RECALL 21,956 CITY AND 1,680 JAZZ VEHICLES

As most of you should know if you’ve been keeping up with the news on this site, there has been a recall for the 1st generation Honda Jazz and the 2nd generation Honda City (based on the 1st gen Jazz) worldwide due to a issue where water could possibly enter the power window switch and potentially cause a fire.

Honda Malaysia Sdn Bhd will be participating in the exercise, but they also reported that there are currently no reported incidents in Malaysia. There are currently 12,935 units of 2nd Generation City 2008 YM with 7,713 units of V-TEC and 5,222 units of i-DSI respectively. As for the Jazz, there are 3,090 units of 1.4-litre Japan made 2003 YM.





Honda Malaysia says that when the power window master switch is exposed to excessive amount of water (such as rainwater), especially when windows are left open for prolonged period of time, electrolyte materials from rainwater would sip into the power window switch unit. This would decrease the insulation resistance between the electric circuits, which could lead to current leaks. In severe cases, the switchboard would melt or burn. According to Honda Malaysia, there are a total of 3 burn cases reported so far, 2 in the US and 1 in South Africa.

“We sincerely apologise to our customers and deeply regret the inconvenience caused by this predicament. It is our priority to put our customers first. We will be writing to all our customers directly and inform them of the preemptive measures to address this situation. We are in the midst of preparing the replacement parts and we will then carry out the necessary inspection and replacement when the parts are ready. All charges incurred in the inspection and replacement work will be borne by the Company. We would like to assure our customers that all current selling models are not affected,” said Toru Takahashi, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Honda Malaysia.

For more information, please call Honda Toll Free number at 1-800-88-2020, or visit any authorised Honda dealer. Of course, this recall exercise should logically only apply for customers who bought their Jazz from Honda Malaysia. But being a popular JDM model, there are most likely be grey import units out there as well. These owners have to somehow do something about it as well.

The company is in the midst of preparing the replacement parts. Necessary inspection and replacement will be carried out when the parts are ready, and all charges incurred in the inspection and replacement work will be borne by the company. Honda Malaysia added that all its current selling models are not affected.

They will assist owners of grey import cars without discrimination but they are unable to confirm at time of publishing whether any work on grey import customers cars regarding to this update will be subject to any charges or not.