Aston Martin Lagonda Ltd. announced a massive recall of 1,658 Vantage models as numerous incidents of vehicles stalling and losing power. The problems were reportedly caused by a routine transmission software update.
This decision was made after a team of Aston Martin engineers traveled to China in order to investigate problems that were reported as early as 2014.
Chief Executive Andy Palmer told Reuters “normally (recalls star in America. I don’t think it is the only example, but it’s interesting that it started from China and becomes a global recall.” He adds “it demonstrates the importance of China, the sophistication of the customer and the diligence of the authority there.” The well-known automaker of the James Bong series will recall the 1,658 Vantage cars built between June 2010 and September 2013.
This is not good news for the company which has attempted to go public for several years. Last quarters report finally revealed that the automaker turned a profit in over a decade and the cost of this recall is predicted to cost 300,000 pounds, or $380,769.
Palmer said the problem was caused by various dealerships in China failing the reset the clutch position after software updates on the transmission system. The stalling reportedly caused a loss of power in cares, giving problems to the electric steering and breaking mechanisms.
Since dealers and consumers have less knowledge of super cars such as Aston Martin, Palmer believes that the company should have been more thorough in explaining responsibilities of manufacturing these premium vehicles.
Palmer took full responsibility stating, “I blame us- basically we should have explicitly said within the service action for the software we should re-teach the clutch. We didn’t explicitly say that therefore we take full responsibility for fixing it.”
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