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TOKYO-
Subaru
Corp.
FUJHY 0.75%
is seeking to recall over 400,000 vehicles worldwide to repair a defective engine part that could cause a stall.
The recall concerns its popular Forester sport utility vehicle and Impreza compact, as well as the BRZ sports car. It also relates to the Toyota 86 sports car manufactured by Subaru, sold in the United States as Scion FR-S during the recall period. All cars were manufactured in 2012 and 2013.
Last week, Subaru lowered its forecast for April-September, the first half of the Japanese fiscal year. The company is now expecting operating profit of 61 billion yen ($ 540 million), a reduction of 49 billion yen from previous expectations, mainly to cover the costs of recalls. The company announced that it would expose the impact of the recall for the entire year by announcing Monday the results of its second quarter.
Subaru said that the valve springs in the recalled cars could break and cause the engine to stall, which could lead to an accident. These springs keep the engine valves closed during fuel combustion. Failure can cause significant engine damage.
Repairs may be expensive. Subaru thinks that the work will take more than 12 hours.
Toyota said its vehicles represented about 80,000 vehicles in total. In the United States, Toyota is recalling approximately 25,000 Scion FR-S models manufactured between March 2012 and July 2013. The company announced that it would contact US owners affected by the mail from December.
The recalled Subaru vehicles were manufactured between January 2012 and September 2013. According to Subaru, 101,000 of the recalled vehicles were sold in Japan. A spokesman for the company declined to say how many people had been recalled to the United States. Subaru sold nearly 270,000 of the three models in the United States during the recall period.
The release of last week's results, after the markets closed in Japan, surprised investors. The next day, Subaru's share price fell nearly 7%.
On the day of the announcement, Takaki Nakanishi, a Tokyo-based auto analyst, criticized Subaru for its lack of detail, saying in a customer note that it "raised questions about the quality of its relations with the companies. investors. " recall between 1 million and 2 million vehicles, a number included in some Japanese newspaper articles.
A Subaru spokesperson stated that he had not been able to provide more details in his initial disclosure because he had not yet filed the required documents with the regulators.
Write to Sean McLain at [email protected]
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