(Newswire.net — February 16, 2014) Anaheim, CA — Luxury car manufacturer Aston Martin took a big hit, announcing on February 5th a recall of over 17,000 cars it had manufactured since 2007. James Bond would not be impressed. The reason for this recall comes as quite a shock. Aston Martin became aware the accelerator arms of most cars were made with counterfeit DuPont Plastic, which could result in breakage while driving. This recall is estimated to impact 75% of the cars made between 2007 and 2013. So far, out of the 22 reported failed parts, there have luckily been no accidents.
The reason for the recall is the accelerator arm runs a risk of breaking. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration stated the accelerator pedal arm may break which disables the ability to speed up or maintain speed, increasing the risk of a crash. Of the estimated 17,590 cars affected, 7,271 are in Europe and 5,001 in the United States.
Aston Martin Recall
Since May of 2013, Aston Martin has had a recall for this exact problem, and until recently this problem was relatively small. That all changed when a mechanic was replacing the defective part with a new one, and the new pedal arm broke during installation. Now, even the 1000 or so pedal arms that were already replaced run a risk of breaking as well. Aston Martin was forced to expand upon its previous recall based on these findings. These pedal arms were engineered to use very specific DuPont Plastic resin, which was not used by the third tier Chinese supplier. One small plastic rod, made from the wrong material has caused this massive recall.
China’s Shenzhen Kexiang Mould Sells Counterfeit Plastic
Aston Martin began to investigate, and was shocked when they learned that a third tier manufacturer tasked with making the parts, was using counterfeit material. Shenzhen Kexiang Mould Tool Co. bought its “counterfeit material” from Synthetic Plastic Raw Material Co. in the Chinese factory town of Dongguan. No one from Synthetic Plastic Raw Material Co. was available to respond to this incident.
Using off-brand or off-spec grade materials is not new. Many off shore products are made with inferior grade materials. This is one reason that the ‘materials’ get the bad reputation. It should be on the factory that made the changes.
Plastic Reshoring For Quality Control
Besides launching their investigation, and a massive recall, Aston Martin is making plans to relocate their injection molded parts facility back to Britain. Speaking of that, we wrote an article not too long ago on reshoring. This is a perfect example of how reshoring can greatly benefit a company. This is also a perfect example on how plastics can get a bad reputation. The plastic that Aston Martin agreed on was a high quality DuPont plastic. What they got was something different entirely, but still gets looped into the plastic category. DuPont produces some the finest plastic resins in the industry, including: Delrin (Acetal), Teflon (PTFE), Vespel (Polyimide) and Nylon (Polyamide).
DuPont Plastics Lead The Field
Aston Martin and DuPont are working to correct this issue. DuPont has already contacted and set up a supplier for Aston Martin, to avoid any further issues. Both companies are also looking into where the counterfeit material came from, and how to avoid problems like this in the future. The thing to remember is Aston Martin did not knowingly purchase counterfeit product, or sign off on any use of counterfeit material in their vehicles. They are doing everything in their efforts to fix this mistake. So if you are the proud owner of Aston Martin, please take it in to get serviced.
Quality plastics engineered correctly will outperform most other materials.
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