Industry News: New Legislation Would End The Rental Of Recalled Vehicles

[William Maley]

William Maley

Staff Writer - CheersandGears.com

August 7, 2012

New legislation introduced into the House and Senate this week aims to end rental car companies renting or selling vehicles that are under recall.

The legislation, co-sponsored by U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) want to prohibit the rental of vehicles under a safety recall. The bill was introduced after two people were killed in 2004 when their unrepaired recalled Chrysler PT Cruiser,rented from Enterprise, caught fire and crashed.

Rental car companies have been under immense pressure for some time to make these rules standard. Earlier this year, Boxer sent a letter out to several rental car firms urging them to stop renting recalled vehicles. Only Hertz agreed to stop.

Enterprise, Avis and Dollar Thrifty say they repair their vehicles whenever it is practical to do so and park vehicles when a manufacturer recommends it. They argue some recalls are for only minor issues and with vehicles parked, it would disrupt their business.

General Motors and Chrysler have told the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that only about 30% of cars sold to rental companies were repaired within 90 days of a recall and more than 50% were repaired within a year.

Source: The Detroit News

William Maley is a staff writer for Cheers & Gears. He can be reached at [email protected] or you can follow him on twitter at @realmudmonster.

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[Drew Dowdell]

All of the rental car companies have enough "float" in their fleets that if there is a national safety recall, there should be no issue cycling these cars through to be repaired within a reasonable amount of time. That just under 50% are essentially never repaired by the rental car companies is shameful. Sorry Avis, Alamo, Enterprise, etc, you brought this on yourselves by not doing the right thing in the first place.

[G. David Felt]

As much as I hate regulations like this, I agree with Olds, they brought this on themselves. There is way more than enough float on the lots that they should have ALL recalls done within 30 days.

There is NO excuse for NOT getting a safety recall done.

I feel this is a bit excessive in that they cannot rent or sell a recall vehicle as they should be able to do this once the recall issue is addressed.

This law with this stipulation is going to create a grey market where the rental companies are going to either be demanding to return the car back to the OEM and then they will fix it and dump it or we will see shell companies pop up that will deal with unloading recalled auto's.

[Drew Dowdell]

This law with this stipulation is going to create a grey market where the rental companies are going to either be demanding to return the car back to the OEM and then they will fix it and dump it or we will see shell companies pop up that will deal with unloading recalled auto's.

I think you may have misunderstood. The car is no longer "under recall" after the repair work has been done. If they want to rent or sell the car, no problem, just have the recall work done first.

[G. David Felt]

This law with this stipulation is going to create a grey market where the rental companies are going to either be demanding to return the car back to the OEM and then they will fix it and dump it or we will see shell companies pop up that will deal with unloading recalled auto's.

I think you may have misunderstood. The car is no longer "under recall" after the repair work has been done. If they want to rent or sell the car, no problem, just have the recall work done first.

Yup, after rereading the Detroit news story they can rent or sell the auto once it has been fixed, but only Hertz is actually doing it and pledged to do it world wide. Enterprise and Avis are willing to do it for major safety issues but want an exemption for all others as it is a burden on them.

What threw me in rereading it is that they only mention this in one place and the rest of the story as well as the legislation just mentions over and over they cannot rent or sell recalled auto's.

After rereading the newspaper story and looking at the legislation online, they truly have brought this on themselves.

[A Horse With No Name]

All of the rental car companies have enough "float" in their fleets that if there is a national safety recall, there should be no issue cycling these cars through to be repaired within a reasonable amount of time. That just under 50% are essentially never repaired by the rental car companies is shameful. Sorry Avis, Alamo, Enterprise, etc, you brought this on yourselves by not doing the right thing in the first place.

typical of a lot of corporate America, IMHO.

[Justin Bimmer]

Hertz gold club for life