BMW recall of 470 cars in Vietnam may be due to fire risk

May 23, 2018 | 15:00

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German car manufacturer BMW’s sudden recall of 470 cars in Vietnam may be related to the car giant’s re-exporting of 88,000 vehicles in the UK due to fire risk.

bmw recall of 470 cars in vietnam may be due to fire risk

BMW cars at Cai Mep Port. Photo: tienphong.vn

AFP stated that on May 18, BMW expanded a British safety recall for another 88,000 vehicles because of a fire risk.

At the same time, BMW Asia Group made a press statement announcing to re-export 470 cars, 106 MINI vehicles, and 55 motorcycles (BMW Motorrad) from Vietnam back to Germany. Accordingly, these vehicles are still in containers at VICT (Ho Chi Minh City) and Cai Mep Port (Ba Ria-Vung Tau).

“The Vietnamese General Department of Customs approved BMW and BMW Asia to re-export these vehicles back to Germany. Currently, we are tightly co-operating with the Ho Chi Minh City Customs and the Ba Ria-Vung Tau Customs to complete procedures to recall these BMW vehicles,” stated BMW Asia’ press release.

However, the press release did not mention the reason of the recall. To clarify this issue, VIR contacted to representative of BMW in Vietnam who refused to immediately answer questions.

According to the General Department of Customs, in last December when BMW became Truong Hai Corporation (THACO)’s partner, the number of German cars imported to Vietnam was 480, far higher than in the other months of 2017.

According to AFP, last Friday’s press release was BMW’s second press release in two weeks, expanding BMW’s initial recall of 312,000 diesel and petrol vehicles on May 9 due to a risk of the engines cutting out.

BMW will now examine another 88,000 cars, plus 200,000 cars that have already been checked.

“We are taking the opportunity of the existing recall to proactively check for other issues,” BMW’s spokesman added last Friday.

Previously, BBC also stated that BMW is focusing on recalling the BMW 1 Series, the 3 Series, the Z4, and the X1 cars that were produced between March 2007 and August 2011 to check speed brakes.

In 2013, BMW also recalled about 500,000 vehicles in the US, Australia, Canada, and South Africa.

By Van Anh

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