Sub­aru is re­call­ing as many as 634,000 ve­hi­cles in the Unit­ed States for po­ten­tial light­ing prob­lems that could lead to smoke or fire, ac­cord­ing to US safe­ty reg­u­la­tors.

The re­call by Sub­aru, owned by Fu­ji Heavy In­dus­tries Ltd, po­ten­tial­ly af­fects some Forester ve­hi­cles from mod­el years 2009 through 2012, all Lega­cy and Out­back ve­hi­cles from mod­el years 2010 through 2012, and some Tribeca ve­hi­cles from mod­el years 2006 through 2012, ac­cord­ing to doc­u­ments filed with the US Na­tion­al High­way Traf­fic Safe­ty Ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The 633,842 ve­hi­cles po­ten­tial­ly af­fect­ed by the re­call may be equipped with ac­ces­so­ry pud­dle lights that when lit, bright­en the ar­eas un­der the doors, ac­cord­ing to NHT­SA doc­u­ments. A Sub­aru spokesman said the re­call in­volves on­ly 53,999 cars equipped with the lights, but the wider num­ber of own­ers must be alert­ed be­cause the com­pa­ny does not know which cars have them.

A short cir­cuit can de­vel­op when the light or con­nec­tor are ex­posed to an elec­trolyt­ic mois­ture source, such as road spray that has road salt in it, the NHT­SA said. That can cause heat that could melt the plas­tic, re­sult­ing in smoke or fire.

Sub­aru will no­ti­fy own­ers, and deal­ers will in­stall an ad­di­tion­al har­ness, the NHT­SA said. The re­call is ex­pect­ed to be­gin next month. (Reuters)

Neal and Massy Au­to­mo­tive re­sponds

Yes­ter­day, Neal and Massy Au­to­mo­tive Ltd, the agent for new Sub­aru ve­hi­cles in T&T, said it has had no com­plaints of the na­ture iden­ti­fied in the US, but if it re­ceives any in­for­ma­tion about af­fect­ed ve­hi­cles, it will di­rect­ly con­tact cus­tomers to arrange re­pairs.

In a state­ment, the com­pa­ny said it wished to con­firm it has not had any in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing ve­hi­cles made by Fu­ji Heavy In­dus­tries about ve­hi­cles shipped to Trinidad be­ing af­fect­ed by the re­call.

"It should be not­ed that Sub­aru's US op­er­a­tion is sched­uled to com­mence the re­call in Feb­ru­ary 2013. We wish to al­so en­dorse that in the event there is a need to re­pair any af­fect­ed ve­hi­cles, NMAL would not be able to treat with for­eign-used Sub­aru ve­hi­cles which were im­port­ed over the years by for­eign used deal­ers, since these would not be on our data­base," read the state­ment.