Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Mazda recall 3.4 million vehicles

Michael strong, the Detroit Bureau - 2 days

Four Japanese automakers - Honda, Toyota, Nissan and Mazda - fire are recalled 3.4 million vehicles for faulty airbag systems, because she could catch or inflate accidentally injured passengers.

The danger of a global supply chain shows leave issues such as automakers are increasingly turning to a small number of suppliers for common or similar parts this product recall.

The recall is the largest ever for airbags made by TAKATA Corporation, the world's second largest supplier of air bags and seat belts. Due to a design in the propellant for the inflator, it can incorrectly blow airbag for the front passenger seat. As a result, the risk of fire from or passengers is injured. The faulty airbags were produced between 2000 and 2002 in TAKATA factory in Mexico.

The recall includes some of the top-selling Japanese cars, including Toyota Camry corolla, and Nissan Maxima and Honda Civic. All vehicles manufactured in or after the year 2000. In addition to Honda, Toyota, Mazda and Nissan, the supplier on the basis of Tokyo said it delivers even air bags and seat belts, the Daimler AG and Ford Motor Co. Some non-Japanese automakers also with faulty airbags were delivered during the decline of the auto manufacturer to call the company.

INFORMATION TO REMEMBER

The callback is called October Toyota in more than 7 million vehicles in the past the biggest. There is only one in a growing list of embarrassing recalls, the Japanese automaker, long known as a benchmark for quality, have spent in recent years. Toyota recalled in fact more individual than any manufacturer worldwide in three of the last four years issued.

Toyota is recalling approximately 1.73 million vehicles sold from November 2000 to March 2004 including 580,000 vehicles sold in North America and 490,000 vehicles in Europe. Honda is around 1.14 million vehicles to call back. Nissan about 480,000 vehicles will recall worldwide, although it said that the number of vehicles under recall could. Mazda said that it was reminded of 45,500 worldwide vehicles.

The Toyota models covered by the recall include corolla, Camry, tundra and Yaris. Nissan models include the Maxima and cube.

Honda has announced that more than 470,000 sedans, minivans and crossover utility vehicles, will remember it due to defective systems. The problem is associated to such incidents in the past in other vehicles, which had to remind the manufacturers for similar problems. In fact, Honda reminds 750,000 other vehicles due to airbag defects this year.

Airbag problems are a serious embarrassment for Honda - made more difficult the fact that the manufacturer is already on record last as one of the highest recall sums by any manufacturer in the United States in the years acted.

The latest US-Honda recall includes about 426,000 subcompact civic sold models in model years 2001 to 2003 43,000 CR-V crossover in 2002 and 2003, offered and another 92,000 of Odyssey minivans in 2002 model year.

"It is possible that the passenger who can front Airbag inflators in affected vehicles with too much pressure to guide that casing can provide to break inflator and could cause that the violation," the manufacturer confirms in a statement.

It added that it "deliberately" a crash, in which the front airbag deployed to enforce, but there were no injuries or deaths related to the issue in the models of the most recent recall was affected.

In January ordered the Japanese manufacturer of the recall of 748.000 pilot crossover and Odyssey minivans not properly deploy due to missing rivets, the airbags could cause in an accident. (This figure covered the U.S. market with an another 29,000 vehicles recalled in Canada.)

Has experienced reminded a number of earlier for other airbag problems, which have now added up to millions of vehicles.

Dealer handles the repairs without charge to owners.

Copyright © 2009-2013, the Detroit Bureau

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Mazda built its last car in the United States

Small Mazda Motors has long been known for its own way of doing things, sticking with the rotary engine, for one thing, decades after other manufacturers there on the fuel inefficient technology. And the step, today companies are expected to again thwarted general industry trends. But it leaves many industry watchers questions, whether it a serious competitive disadvantage will leave the Japanese producers.
At some point today is the very last Mazda6 wagon in flat rock, Michigan by the band he international roll. Mazda builds built since cars at the factory in a suburb of Detroit for the last quarter century, AAI, a joint venture with the long-standing partner Ford Motor Co.

But Ford has all but completely selling out all except on a small proportion of Mazda in the last few years and decades product development sharing ending went away of this trans-Pacific partnership programs. Mazda, which is looking for a new partner and with sales decreases of the Mazda6, joint venture - go plant away from the Assembly in terms of a factory in Japan for the soon to be updated Mazda6 decided model.

The work of AutoAlliance remains open - but now only Ford's under control. In fact, the manufacturer has big plans for the plant and invested $550 million in it, adding 1,200 jobs to 1,700 employees already are.
Mazda actually keep their 50% stake, but everything there build going forward has no plans.

Flat Rock really began as a Ford casting plant was in 1972 under nine years later closed and by Mazda, Honda and Toyota, other Japanese makers so-called transplant assembly plants in the United States was opened then bought the Japanese company first turned to their own employees for a large part of the factory management team - even building one of Detroit of's first sushi bars in the vicinity.

Halt get Mazda's finance, advanced Ford quickly its stake in the Hiroshima-manufacturers - ultimately naming their own CEO the Japanese company running. Ford bought shares in the plant.
AutoAlliance has a variety of products over the years especially from the perspective of the Ford including small sporting sample produced Coupe and later the Mustang. Mazda has long focused on mid-sized models, known for a number of years as the Mazda6.

The problem, Mazda, officials have said, the volume is so steep be slipped, that it not more economically still although Mazda6 is the next generation comes into work - next year is most hampered by uneven exchange rates, other Japanese manufacturers rapidly production shift from the Japanese islands have.
Japan's big three, Toyota, Nissan and Honda, in fact have announced significant expansion plans for North America in the past few months.

And Honda, the first Japanese company to open a transplant factory, is marking the 30th anniversary of its Marysville, Ohio assembly plant this month with the introduction of the production of his ninth generation accord. Posted by mid decade John Mendel, American manufacturer's top executives, about 85% of the vehicles in North America is the manufacturer sold here are built.

Mazda is not completely retrenching. It plans a new plant in Salamanca, to set up Mexico to smaller products such as the Mazda2 and MAZDA3 to build, but if it returns its level on flat rocks it seems unlikely that it build vehicles in the United States for the foreseeable future.

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Mazda's famed rotary engine sputters and dies

Dan Carney

The 1967 Mazda Cosmo was the first production car powered by a rotary engine.

By Dan Carney, msnbc.com contributor
The new and improved always prevails over the old and stale, doesn’t it? Surely the ancient contraption called an internal combustion reciprocating piston engine – a design that is approaching its 150th anniversary – must be superseded by something newer and simpler.

Maybe. But that replacement won’t be the rotary engine design invented by Felix Wankel in 1957 and popularized by Mazda since its introduction 10 years later. Mazda has announced that it has ended production of the company’s signature engine in favor of concentrating on its trademarked SkyActiv improvements to the piston engine.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The 1950s were the future, and when Wankel finally built a running rotary engine after nearly four decades of development, it seemed the engine would doom piston engines the way internal combustion engines killed external combustion steam engines.

Consider the advantages. The rotary, with its spinning triangular rotor is inherently smoother than the reciprocating engine, whose pistons start, stop and reverse direction twice with every single rotation of the crankshaft. The rotary has many fewer parts than the incredibly complex piston engine, especially in these days of variable valve timing, double overhead camshafts, intercooled turbocharging and direct fuel injection.

Mazda

The rotary is compact and light, which makes packing it into small cars easier and it leaves room for crush space in cars that must meet pedestrian protection impact standards. Finally, in this age of interest in diversifying fuel supplies, the rotary is able to burn a range of fuels, including diesel, gasoline, alcohol and hydrogen gas without modification. The only Japanese car to ever win the 24 Hours of Le Mans sports car race? The rotary-powered Mazda 787B.

Recognizing the engine’s potential, more than 100 companies rushed to license Wankel’s rotary design, but very few saw the engine to fruition.

Mazda has sold rotary-powered cars since introducing the Cosmo Sport in 1967, while Suzuki briefly sold a rotary-powered motorcycle in the ‘70s and Norton sold some rotary motorcycles in the ‘80s. During its heyday, Mazda even sold rotary-powered pickups.

But most companies found that manufacturing rotary engines that would run for more than a few hours an insurmountable task. The apex seals, the part at each tip of the triangular rotor, are an engineering nightmare. The seals are prone to wearing out and to developing vibrations that cause them to gouge the inside of the engine. They can even break off entirely, wrecking the engine. The oil seals on the rotors have also proved challenging to perfect.

Wankel’s employer, the German company NSU, made a short production run of rotary cars but quickly abandoned the technology. General Motors planned to make the Corvette rotary powered in the ‘70s, but gave up. Ford engineers, even while the company held a controlling stake in Mazda, found they couldn’t build successful rotary prototypes. American Motors Co. planned for the much-maligned Pacer to use a super-compact front-drive rotary arrangement, a design that would have made the bloated-looking Pacer’s styling more acceptable because of the resulting huge cabin.

Mazda got the rotary to work, barely. The engines have never lasted as long as piston engines, and along the way they were prone to consuming too much gas and oil. Burning oil led my own ’87 RX-7 to foul its spark plugs monthly. Sometimes I could clean them successfully, but other times I had to replace all four of them at $10 a pop. While getting 16 mpg in a two-seat sports car.

So that’s what it came down to. The rotary, as lovely a device as it is, proved too thirsty and insufficiently durable for widespread adoption. The struggle to preserve its signature technology has contributed to Mazda’s financial struggles, so the company finally had to retire its powerplant, at least until its finances improve.

Mazda’s advances in piston engine technology with its SkyActiv gasoline and diesel piston engine are impressive, especially considering the company’s small size and its long adherence to the rotary religion. But the company says it hopes the rotary is merely on hiatus, not dead.

“Work does continue on the next-generation rotary,” explained Mazda USA spokesman Jeremy Barnes. “Additionally, work continues on the use of fuels other than gasoline, taking advantage of the rotary’s unique ability to operation on multiple fuels without extensive reengineering. We’ll share more information on the next generation of rotary when we can.”

Fans who have experienced the rotary’s effortless rush to redline are surely keeping their fingers crossed. But it may be that the future has slipped into the past.

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Mazda may have lost some of its 'zoom-zoom'

Fabrice Coffrini / AFP - Getty Images

Visitors play a videogame at the Japanese carmaker's booth Mazda during the second press day ahead of the 82nd Geneva Motor Show on March 7, 2012, in Geneva.

By Paul A. Eisenstein, The Detroit Bureau

The “zoom-zoom” company may be running out of gas.

Hammered by last year’s Japanese earthquake and tsunami, all but abandoned by long-time partner Ford Motor Co., and largely ignored by American buyers, Mazda has been struggling to reverse its waning momentum.  Profits are down -- even though sales in the key U.S. market are running ahead of the overall American automotive recovery -- forcing the maker to begin a series of “substantial” employment cuts later this week.

Hoping to stand out in an increasingly crowded and competitive market, Mazda is doubling down on a new technology, dubbed SkyActiv, that it claims can deliver most of the benefits of a hybrid at a fraction of the cost. 

It may be too little too late.  With Ford having sold off all but a minimal stake in its Japanese partner and no longer sharing the hefty cost of developing new products, some observers fear that Mazda can no longer go it alone -- something even its CEO grudgingly admits may force it to share the SkyActiv system to get some much-needed assistance.

“It’s a very serious situation because they don’t have a Ford to fall back on or another partner in the wings,” said George Peterson, chief auto analyst with AutoPacific, Inc. He describes the cuts set to begin at Mazda’s U.S. headquarters in California this week as “substantial.”

The maker isn’t yet saying how many of its employees will be offered voluntary buyouts, but it is expected to follow with additional, involuntary cuts in the coming weeks.

The news has taken few by surprise.  From its global headquarters in Hiroshima, Mazda Motor Corp. has predicted a dismal 100 billion yen loss -- or $1.2 billion at current exchange rates -- for the current fiscal year.  The company plans to raise 151.2 billion yen in a record share sale in hopes of offsetting what will almost certainly be its worst loss in 11 years.

A sizable share of that red ink is due to the impact of Japan’s natural disaster last March.  It reportedly cost the maker 80,000 units of production and $433.2 million in overall losses -- the fourth-largest figure among all Japanese makers.

But the situation has been complicated by lopsided exchange rates, which fell as low as 76 yen to the dollar earlier this year. Rates have now rebounded only slightly to about 83 yen to the dollar.

Yet ironically, Mazda is now more dependent upon its cost-disadvantaged Japanese production base than any other manufacturer.  And the situation is going to get worse when it walks out of a decades-long joint venture in Michigan, dubbed Auto Alliance, where it is currently producing the midsize Mazda6 alongside Ford’s Mustang.

Mazda hopes to offset that by building a new plant in Mexico to handle smaller models, such as the Mazda3, that are especially sensitive to exchange rates. Peterson says the company simply doesn’t have the money to open that plant right now, however.

“It’s not the first time Mazda has been in trouble,” the analyst points out. Indeed, Mazda nearly folded in the 1970s when it turned out that the maker’s distinctive Wankel rotary engine had serious quality problems. It slowly dug itself out of that crisis but fell into another financial hole barely a decade later. 

Salvation came from Ford, a long-time affiliate, which began building up equity in the small Japanese firm. Eventually, Ford held a 33 percent stake and, under Japanese law, was able to appoint its own management team, which at one point included Mark Fields, now Ford’s President of the Americas.

After joining the U.S. maker in 2006, however, new CEO Alan Mulally decided to draw down that stake. Ford now holds a minimal 4 percent and is largely severing product and powertrain development ties.

Mazda officials have put on a game face, insisting that this has freed them up to follow their own path without the compromises inherent in an alliance.  The payoff has been SkyActiv. 

The comprehensive system involves the transformation of just about every element of the automobile, from chassis design to the smallest water pump. But the key features are a lighter yet stronger body and more efficient gasoline and diesel powertrains.

The first full example of the new approach is the CX-5 crossover which recently began rolling into U.S. showrooms. With highway fuel economy of up to 32 mpg, the new model is nearly as efficient as comparably sized hybrids -- but at a base MSRP of $21,490, the CX-5 has a significant cost advantage.

If anything is being spared Mazda’s budget-cutting knife, it’s the marketing department which is heavily advertising the new technology. The good news for the maker is that U.S. sales are up 48 percent for the first two months of 2012. Product chief Robert Davis noted, during a recent interview, that 60 percent of the initial buyers traded in other brands.

While an automaker might hope to leverage such a high-tech system to its own advantage, Mazda CEO Takashi Yamanouchi recently acknowledged the maker might have to offer SkyActiv up as a bargaining chip as it “actively” searches for a partner to replace Ford.

“We are considering every option,” the executive acknowledged last month.

Part of the problem is that as good as Mazda claims SkyActiv is, the company also concedes it will eventually need to add hybrids to its powertrain line-up due to ever tightening fuel economy mandates in Japan, Europe and the U.S.

“It’s partner or die,” said David Cole, chairman-emeritus of the Center for Automotive Research, in Ann Arbor, Mich. 

Mazda has shown a surprising ability to maneuver itself out of trouble over the years, and SkyActiv could be the weapon it needs to battle back.  But the situation is “tenuous at best,” adds Peterson. There is little room for mistakes -- or more losses.

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Regulators consider SUV Mazda brake problem

NEW YORK-U.S. Security regulators have an investigation into claims regarding the effectiveness of the brakes of a 2008 Mazda Motor Corp. sport utility vehicle opened.

The probe deals with leaky brake fluid, which affected the brakes Mazda could be 2008 model CX-9 car, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a filing.

No injuries or crashes have reported, the NHTSA said.

An estimated 37,000 cars could be affected.

A Mazda spokesman was not immediately to comment available.

The NHTSA said that it had received data from Mazda from a period of the first quarter of 2008 to the third quarter of 2010 with an indication of a "large number" of warranty claims and reports.

"If fluid leaks into the vacuum amplifier of the driver reduced brake can experience effectiveness, which can result in extended stopping disc brakes," the submission said.

A preliminary study is the first step in a process that can cause the callback, if regulators determine that a security aspect of a manufacturer needs to be addressed.

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters.

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Mazda to stop building medium-sized car in us

DETROIT - Mazda Motor Co. has decided to stop building the mid-sized sedan Mazda6 in the United States, questions about the future of a US factory, which he runs together with Ford Motor Co.

The Japanese automaker said Monday that also the 6 in the factory in flat create it rock, Michigan, near the city of Detroit, to the end of the life cycle of the current model. But the next version of the 6 Mazda's Hofu plant in Japan is built the company said.

A company spokesman would not say, when U.S. production would cease, nor would he say whether Mazda from the joint venture, name would bring auto Alliance International.

The company says that it change the decision, taken in particular due to the demand in North America. Mazda's when people are more crossovers and small cars instead of mid-sized sedans, buy spokesman Jeremy Barnes said. Crossovers are SUV-like vehicles, which are based on car basis.

Sale of the Mazda6 were late, slow 13,604 9 percent until May.

The factory, flat rock, which employs 1,700 people, about makes also the slow selling Ford Mustang, which has seen a decline of 3 per cent to may.

Mazda future uses for the factory studied with Ford, and both companies are determined, which Mazda said partnership continue.

Barnes could not say whether Mazda will build another model in the factory in the future.

"Everything is open for discussion at this time," he said.

The current version of the Mazda6 debuted in 2007. The company updated its models usually every four or five years, which means that the production of the new version as early end of this year could adjust like that.

Ford said in a statement that the plant is essential for its US factory system, and it works with Mazda and the United Auto Workers Union options a study for the Mazda6 production ends.

The works for Mazda factory started in 1987 and was a joint venture with Ford in the summer of 1982. It has built 1.7 million Mazda in its lifetime.

Mazda and Ford have partner since 1979 when Ford bought 25 percent of the struggling Japanese automaker. Ford increases its stake to 33.4 per cent in 1996. But Ford began cutting relations in 2008, when he tried, the brands and reduce costs. Last year, Ford lowered his property by 3.5 percent.

Copyright 2011, the associated press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or distributed.

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Spider weaves a Web of concern for Mazda

WASHINGTON-Mazda has an unusual offender in its new safety recall fingers - a spider.

The Japanese automaker is more than 50,000 Mazda6 cars from the years 2009-2010 model referring to. The company says, a spider a Web in a fuel tank vent system and clog up the tank ventilation was weaving. Pressure on the tank could lead to a crack which cause fuel leakage and the risk of fire.

Mazda said the Government that two reports of problems with the tank had received it. A spider web in vent found in one of the cases.

The recall affects vehicles from the April 2008 to February 2010.

In a separate callback, Chrysler Group LLC said more than 248,000 crossover cars and minivans have a defect in which the key to the slip while driving caused the engine silently exits can.

Chrysler, which is managed by the Italian Fiat SpA, said he knew published according to a statement on Thursday on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration website of two rear-end collisions, which can have countered this problem.

The affected models are the Dodge journey crossover and the Grand Caravan and Chrysler Town & country of minivans. The year 2010 model vehicles were 17 between August 3, 2009, and June, 2010.

About 3 percent of the 248,437 recalled vehicles are likely to have the problem, Chrysler said in the notice.

According to the statement, the company started last year, an increasing number of reports about the engine assess an internal investigation into the September shutdown or stalling.

The associated press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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