Here’s how to find out if you are affected by the recall of hundreds of thousands of Citroën and DS Automobiles cars.
“Citroën asks you to stop driving your vehicle immediately.” This is the injunction received a few weeks ago by nearly 200,000 French customers of the chevron brand. This might look like a fraudulent message sent by scammers but no, it was in an official letter dated May 3 that many Citroën C3 owners learned that a danger on their car could cause “serious injuries, or even fatal. The nature of the problem? Defective airbags manufactured by the Japanese company Takata, which had to file for bankruptcy in 2017 following previous recalls on millions of vehicles around the world. Although today no new car is equipped with these faulty airbags, a very large number are still in circulation.
This is therefore the case for at least 187,000 Citroën C3s in France as well as 65,000 DS3s, from the DS Automobiles brand which, like Citroën, belongs to the Stellantis group. All the owners of these vehicles therefore potentially find themselves without a car – not easy when you need one to get to work every day – and very often in total incomprehension. Many drivers of these two models are worried and wonder what to do. If the Rappel Conso site has produced a long list of serial numbers, it is not easy to navigate to know who must urgently stop using their car. Fortunately, there is a much simpler way to find out.
Faced with the scale of the affair, Citroën, for which the publicity is disastrous at the time of the release of its new…electric C3, has opened an online page to allow its customers to quickly find out if they are affected by this recall. If you own a Citroën C3 or a DS3, and it was produced between 2009 and 2019, then go to this site: https://www.citroen.fr/maintain/Recall-campaigns.html.
Take the vehicle’s registration document and enter the 17 alphanumeric characters of the VIN (Vehicle Identification Number) which is located opposite the letter E. If your city car is indeed affected by the recall, the manufacturer will contact you to schedule the repair at a dealership. The cost of changing the airbags is fully covered by the brand but the operation takes around 2 hours. Needless to say, dealerships are somewhat overwhelmed these days.
If vehicle recalls are commonplace in the automobile industry, this one is particular in that it targets a manufacturing defect which has already caused around ten deaths worldwide. At the origin of the problem with Takata airbags, the degradation of the gas, the propellant, which would degrade due to heat and humidity. This can cause the airbags to deploy and explode, throwing metal parts at the driver. Moreover, the current recall mainly targets cars “residing” in the southern half of France, which is generally warmer. But how can you be sure if you live in the northern part of the country that the C3 or DS3 you drive hasn’t already had another life further south? This is sure to worry many other customers of the brands concerned…