Car recalls - Will Indian Manufacturers ever do that Hi,
I just read in the newspapers that Honda had recalled its cars for a manufacturing defect in a Power Window Switch. The also mention that the switch has not caused any problem or failure till now, but since they have found a manufacturing defect, they will recall and replace. Now it's bad that manufacturing defects do crop up in cars, but I think the Japanese Car Manufacturers at least own up responsibility and recall and replace the faulty parts.
Compare that with Indian Manufacturers. I own a Scorpio 2003 Non-CRDE and it is a known fact that the brake boosters in some lots of Scorpios were defective, and this was confirmed to me by an engineer from Mahindra who I met at a free service camp. My brake booster failed near Rohtang pass, and it was a lucky escape. Others on this forum will be able to bring to notice numerous other Manufacturing Defects specially in Tata and Mahindra vehicles. Sadly even though there are numerous times that vehicles have manufacturing defects, we have never heard of a recall for replacement of parts from Mahindra or Tata. They will wait for the defective part to fail, and when that does happen, and the customer takes the vehicle to the Service Center he is happily told that this was a manufacturing defect.
The question that comes to my mind is - Will Indian Auto manufacturers ever own up to the manufacturing defects in parts and their vehicle ? Will they ever be responsible enough to publicly acknowledge defects and call for recall of vehicles to fix these defects ?
Another thing that comes to mind is, if manufacturers take responsibility world over, why not in India. The answer it seems is this. If a manufacturing defect causes a mishap in sat USA, the company will have to pay millions of dollars as compensations and fines. In India these companies know that even if there are mishaps due to manufacturing defects, and even if people die, they are not going to be held accountable, so why spend money on recalls.
If there are any high-ups from the Indian Auto Industry reading this, it will be nice to hear their views on this. I am sure the Auto Industry in India aspires to become world class, but to achieve this, they first need to look at issues like this very seriously.
Styler |