Owners of Korean sedans will be warned about the defect, which can be eliminated as part of the recall campaign.
The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has announced that it is preparing to recall Kia vehicles. It affects 257,998 Optima units produced at Kia’s Georgia plant between August 12, 2011 and September 27, 2013.
In the event of an accident, the unreliably fixed ceiling can fall off the specified cars, injuring the driver and passengers. So far, only one such incident is known.
For the first time, the problem became known in the spring of this year. The legal department of the American representative office of Kia received a lawsuit from the owner of a 10-year-old Optima. The man was involved in an accident, and when the side airbags deployed, an element of the ceiling structure fell on him and injured him.
At Kia, they studied the situation and came to the conclusion that the panel on the ceiling is really fixed improperly, and this defect is not a single one, but a mass one. To avoid other lawsuits, the company decided to recall the entire batch of cars of that period, produced in Georgia – they turned out to be more than 250 thousand pieces.
The recall starts on September 26. Traditionally, dealers will warn owners about the need to visit a service center for inspection and free repairs.
