Faulty Recall
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday November 14, 1998
It's a different kind of road rage. Motoring organisations have been hot on the wheels of Hyundai, demanding prompt action over 46,000 Excels with possible welding defects. But the company says it is not a safety issue and the Federal Office of Road Safety is travelling in the slow lans. PHIL SCOTT reports.
VALERIE Brown was driving past a shopping centre near her home in Newcastle on August 19. The 55-year-old had a load of passengers in her Hyundai Excel. "The lights turned red, I slowed down and I noticed the car starting to turn right. This had never happened before."
A few moments later, things went horribly wrong: "I just lost control of the car completely and it would not steer any more."
The Excel came to a halt against the gutter, in a bus stop. Confused, Brown got out of the car but could not see any flat tyre. "Then I noticed the left-hand wheel was pointing in a straight line . . . and the right-hand wheel was pointing out to the right, as if in a locked position. We were extremely lucky we weren't travelling any quicker because the accident could have been fatal," she said.
Brown is one of 46 Hyundai customers who have had their car's underbody rewelded after contacting the manufacturer. Another 178 cars, whose owners are deemed heavy-duty users - such as courier companies - have been called in for what Hyundai calls "preventative maintenance". All very quietly, all without a public announcement or notification to the 46,000 other registered customers.
That didn't happen until Tuesday, when the story became public. When 3,000 callers an hour jammed an information line set up by Hyundai.
The Federal Minister for Transport was on the phone. "I don't have the power to order a recall," said John Anderson. A confessed car enthusiast, he is caught at the epicentre of a storm that has raged since the Herald broke the story. The minister had cut to the nub of it: although responsible for vehicle safety, he does not have the legal muscle to bring a recalcitrant car manufacturer to heel.
To do it, the Attorney-General must invoke Section 65F of the Trade Practices Act. Such a move would be unprecedented for the car industry in a country where, despite popular belief, all vehicle safety recalls for the past 16 years have been voluntary.
So far, South Korea's biggest manufacturer, Hyundai, is playing hard ball. "We can defend against any kind of recall," said Kim Joong-geol, general manager of overseas service at Hyundai Motor's Seoul headquarters, as he headed for Kimpo Airport, en route to Australia.
At issue is the safety or otherwise of those 46,000 Excels. It is the most popular small car in Australia but has been cited by the Australian Automobile Association for failure of crucial underbody welds. These secure the right front suspension and wheel. In the worst case, the driver loses steering control.
Hyundai disputes that this loss of control can happen, although it admits to a welding problem on its robot production line. "There was some irregular supply of electrical current causing imperfect spot welding at the time," said Kim.
The time stretched from August 1994 to March 1996. The United States National Highway Transport Safety Administration knows these dates well. The NHSTA Internet site records that more than 23,000 Hyundai Excels (known as the Accent in the US) were the subject of a safety recall in Puerto Rico.
The problem: welding failures in the front subframe region. The suggested cause: a local habit of mounting kerbs to park, one wheel on, one wheel off.
By yesterday, an intractable Hyundai had bunkered down against the Australian Automobile Association, a body with no official powers. As this newspaper revealed, for some months now the painstaking (but at times, glacial) Federal Office of Road Safety has been investigating cases of welding failure in Hyundais. Many of those cases were supplied by the AAA after reports from the technical inspectors of its State members: the NRMA, Queensland's RACQ and Victoria's RACV.
The AAA had supplied some of these cases up to four months ago, says the association's engineer executive, Brian Wells. Federal Office of Road Safety officials visited Seoul last month, where they were told of the welding defect in a presentation by Hyundai.
The public, however, was told nothing. The investigation continued.
Frustrated by the delays, Wells contacted his State associations a second time for a further update on incidents. NRMA vehicle inspections and road service managers were advised on September 24 in an internal memorandum from headquarters: "The AAA has requested as a matter of urgency reports from all Australian Motoring Constituents on the apparent weld failures in a significant number of Hyundai Excels. The number is growing . . . Apparently, Hyundai has been fixing the weld failures without a recall campaign. The potential for a serious accident is great as in extreme cases the right front wheel and driveshaft can become detached and jam in the wheel housing. No doubt many of these failures are not reported . . . Brian Wells is going to request that FORS and the AAA call a meeting forthwith, with or without Hyundai, to require a full recall to inspect and fix the problem, even though it is a major repair requiring engine removal and replacement to effect a proper repair."
Hyundai's position appears to be that the matter is not safety related, so there is no requirement for a voluntary recall.
Further, a spokesman for the FORS said on Monday: "Hyundai has signalled that it would resist government intervention should a recall be called for under the Trade Practices Act." The battlelines were clearly drawn.
Then, another woman presented her car for an NRMA inspection. She was not happy with the way it was steering. The inspector reported to head office, which then contacted the AAA. The right front suspension on this Excel had moved significantly, but the woman declined to be interviewed.
The report hit Wells's desk at the same time the Herald obtained a copy of the NRMA's internal memorandum. Wells, 62, a former Leyland and Toyota engineer, was initially reluctant to talk. "Where did you get this information?" he asked.
The memorandum was read over the phone. "The very worst case we've had, the wheel has actually separated from the vehicle, taking with it the drive shaft joint," said Wells.
"We have come to no resolution at all with Hyundai. They have made some sort of presentation to the Federal Office of Road Safety and I've seen part of that. I'm not happy with what they are proposing at the moment, which is a fairly sort of laissez-faire approach to a problem which I think is potentially quite serious. From the liability point of view, we know it's a problem and we have to, as an organisation, do something to get that problem fixed."
At Hyundai's local headquarters at Homebush Bay, the public relations manager, Patrick Lyons, was alerted to the breaking story.
"We haven't contacted all 46,000 customers because of the small number of cars involved and because the matter is in discussion with the Federal Office of Road Safety," he said on Monday.
"The 46 cars that were repaired were not necessarily undrivable: they were generally presented with heavy steering. As for the preventive modifications, the vehicles were chosen based on their likely harsh use and not because of any on-road problem."
He accused the AAA of mounting a scare campaign and denied Hyundai would resist a recall. "It is not a safety issue because the condition will not result in a loss of ability by the driver to control the vehicle," he said.
"The condition becomes very noticeable . . . In an extreme case this condition can eventually prevent the car being driven."
Hyundai maintained that the cars most likely to be affected were "typically vehicles used by security people, couriers and pizza delivery companies with high mileage and rough use".
In many cases, the company said, vehicles had been involved in accidents where the car was repaired but the front subframe, "although damaged in the accident, was not checked". The third category at risk were cars, typically modified by younger drivers, with wider alloy wheels and tyres and, in some cases, lowered suspensions.
Hyundai said there were only seven cases on record anywhere else in the world affecting right-hand-drive vehicles. The 23,070 in left-hand-drive Puerto Rico?
"The campaign . . . was due to local factors unique to that country," said Lyons.
Brian Wells was aghast. He said his case files showed a similar pattern. "Most of them tend to become quite serious and noticeable because the car is actually becoming partially unwelded at one point. Hyundai is saying, `Well, an owner would notice'. We've had experience where the owners don't notice. Most people are not intuitive about driving cars."
FORS in Canberra is regarded as painstaking by the car industry but the pace at which it operates has been labelled everything from bureaucratic to glacial. "They dilly-dally," said the technical chief of one State motoring club.
Before the media got hold of the story, a senior officer wasn't expecting to conclude the Hyundai investigation any time soon: "Obviously, we're still liaising with Hyundai and to say that at the end of November we're going to reach a resolution is not realistic."
Q: But what about the admission of the faulty robot?
A: I think a better way to put that - faulty might be a bit too much in their face - is they had a problem with the voltage regulation.
So the welds weren't sticking in other words? - Some of them weren't, yeah.
And that went on for quite some time? - Whatever it was, from August 1994 through to March '96.
If Hyundai admits it has a faulty robot welder and the things are prone to becoming unstitched under load, is it right the punters are kept blissfully uninformed while this debate is going on? - Well, that's a difficult one to answer . . .
What happens to these cars longer term? They turn up now with 50,000 to 60,000 kilometres but what happens when they've done 100,000 or more? - That's a good question. Don't know. That's why we need to find a common denominator. I can't understand this. From a consumer point of view, if your wheel's going to jam in the wheel arch, presumably you don't have a lot of steering input and yet we're talking about semantics. About whether this is a safety related issue? - If you're travelling in a straight line, the thing will come to a grinding halt. If you're trying to do a steering manoeuvre, well, yeah, it will still respond but at a reduced rate. The other thing in relation to the Hyundai is that in most cases reported to us the vehicle has been modified [the AAA disputes this] so it's got wide wheels, it's been lowered, has stiffer springs. I haven't had time to go right though the file but the ones I have photos of appear that way, the typical thing you see around Sydney.
On Wednesday, the Minister for Transport had raised the temperature: "The Federal Government expects an early resolution by Hyundai."
Twenty-four hours later Kim and a colleague from the Seoul factory arrived for briefings in Canberra. The company's public relations team ensured they drove to the meeting in two Excels built during the questionable period. The engineers showed videotape of tests commissioned in Korea. On one car, 14 of the 17 spot welds were deliberately left off. An independent driver tested the car to destruction. On another, the suspect subframe area was pre-cut to facilitate collapse.
Hyundai's Patrick Lyons said the tape showed both cars pulling to a halt "in a straight line within the lane boundaries" when the car failed.
The essence of Hyundai's argument seems to be if the car fails, it won't lose control, therefore it is not a safety question. Therefore, no recall is needed.
Meanwhile, FORS continues its investigation. "We really need to do a matrix of the ones which have presented with a problem and look at the common denominators . . .
Valerie Brown wasn't thinking much about matrixes and common denominators on August 19: "All I can say is we were lucky."
At the time of going to print, no investigating officer from the Federal regulator had made contact.
© 1998 Sydney Morning Herald