Subaru Recalls Cars as Some Perfumes Cause Malfunctions: Could affect up to 2.3 million vehicles

Wall Street Journal ^ | March 1, 2019 | Chieko Tsuneoka

[billorites]

If you drive a Subaru, you may want to avoid wearing perfume or a sweater treated with fabric softener—they could prevent the engine from starting.

Subaru Corp. said Friday it plans to recall as many as 2.3 million Impreza and Forester vehicles world-wide after discovering that certain chemical compounds released by everyday products such as cosmetics, fabric softener or car polish could cause parts to malfunction.

These malfunctions could affect a brake-light switch that is also involved in starting the engine or cause a vehicle-stability warning light to flash unnecessarily, the Japanese auto maker said.

No accidents related to the problems have been reported, the company said.

If all the affected vehicles were to be recalled it would be the second-largest such action by Subaru, after the recall connected to faulty air bags made by Takata.

Subaru, which generates two-thirds of its sales in the U.S., has been plagued by a series of quality-related issues since late 2017, including falsifying fuel-efficiency data and conducting quality checks improperly. In January, the auto maker shut down its two Japanese factories for nearly two weeks over trouble with the power steering in Forester, Impreza and Crosstrek models.

The problems have contributed to a sharp fall in profitability. Operating profit, which peaked at about $5 billion in the year ended in March 2016, is expected to reach only about one-third of that level in the current fiscal year ending in March.

Subaru filed a recall notice Thursday covering around 300,000 vehicles in Japan made between 2008 and 2017. Nearly two million additional vehicles affected by the latest problem could also be recalled, but the company said Friday it is still weighing its options in the U.S. and other countries.

The auto maker said it received complaints about the issue as early as 2013s.

[catnipman]

“And I admit, I have never known a conservative woman to wear it! “

patchouli must have been invented to cover up body odor from almost never bathing, since that seems like what so many people use it for ..

[catnipman]

seems to me that if a mere smell can disable a car, then the engineering has pretty much gone over the hairy line ...

[dragnet2]

It's amazing the manufacturer's want a computer with wheels on it. New cars can be a pain in the butt. Another reason I prefer paid off older vehicles.☺

[SgtHooper]

LOL!

[TADSLOS]

The Internet of Things haz smellz.

[Larry Lucido]

Jerry: I hate rental cars. Nothin' ever works: the window doesn't work, the radio doesn't work... and it smells like a cheap hooker... [pause] Or is that you?

Elaine: Gimme ten bucks and find out...

[Calvin Locke]

I worked with a guy that bought one in the late 1970s. I think one of the side blinker lights went out, and when he went to replace it, found that the bulb wasn't socketed, but soldered to wires.

Not a problem to most people, just an annoyance. He was a EE, so it was more of a design manufacturing curiosity.

Another guy's wife had the cheaper or earlier model. Some vent or window wasn't working right, and after some disassembly, the found that it wasn't assembled correctly, some part was backwards. Must have been pre-poka-yoke parts design.

[Migraine]

Thanks for that neat dodge.

[DoughtyOne]

Boy are they lucky. It could have been a feminine product instead. Now that would have been a cataclysmic event. It may would have ended the manufacturer's future solvency.

[1Old Pro]

People joke about lesbians’ affinity for Subarus, but what’s often forgotten is that Subaru actively decided to cultivate its image as a car for lesbians.

[nascarnation]

Are there really enough lesbians to make a difference?
And how many have enough dough to buy a decent car anyway?
Now the Subaru dog commercials I can see...that’s genius.

[bert]

Not to worry...... Love will surely overcome the problem.

[1Old Pro]

Now the Subaru dog commercials I can see...that’s genius.

Dogs are buying cars now? maybe the self driving ones.

[Pajamajan]

Perfume can mess with the car? Weird.

[rlmorel]

I wouldn’t care if they weren’t trying to asphyxiate me at the same time.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

I remember an old SAGA magazine article from fifty years ago, in which it was said perfume or cigarette smoke could make a computer choke.
We used to make them choke and stop, at a company I worked for in the 1970s. Light a cigarette, hold it near their air intake, and them machine would choke to death, and then we would have to “reinitialize” it, wiping out all the stored data on the computer.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

I prefer the dollar kind, anyway.

[sauropod]

Nuts. I own one.

[gloryblaze]

I was thinking it had to related to smoke or carbon monoxide activating a detector of some sort. Strong perfume is really nasty stuff, but disabling a modern car is quite a feat.

[ProtectOurFreedom]