1:33 pm, December 9, 2016
VAUXHALL has been put under more pressure after a BBC Watchdog investigation examined 10 Corsas and found three posed a fire risk.
The show, aired on December 7, found degradation in the heater wiring that is now known as the cause for these fires. Forensic vehicle investigator Mark Brown went to a scrap yard to examine the 10 Corsas for the BBC, which had not yet caught fire.
Of those 10, Brown found three were faulty. In the first car examined the heater wires were damaged, in the second they were starting to melt. As explained in the programme, there appears to be a link between these cars that don’t have air-conditioning but instead a four-speed fan and those which have caught fire.
The BBC One TV show also revealed six fires in Corsa D models that had not been covered under recalls of the 1.4-litre turbocharged engines in April.
On a dedicated webpage within the Vauxhall website, the manufacturer has responded to these cases, saying that in three of the six cases there is no record of the customer contacting Vauxhall. In two of the cases where contact was made a vehicle inspection was rejected by the customer in one and the insurer in another. In the final case, the insurer made contact after the four months for an inspection and the vehicle was no longer available.
Vauxhall’s response to Watchdog reads: ‘Vauxhall Corsa D is one of our most popular models, with over 700,000 sold in the UK between 2006 and 2014. Earlier this year we identified a potential fire related issue with a specific Corsa D variant equipped with the 1.4 Turbo petrol engine. Nine cases had previously been reported to us, which we investigated. Two of these cases had resulted in a fire. A Safety Recall to address this issue was initiated in April 2016 for the 2,767 vehicles affected.
‘Vauxhall is not aware of a fire risk to any other variant of Corsa D. Fires can occur in all makes of cars and it is important that thorough investigations are carried out before determining if there is a manufacturing defect that can relate to fire.
‘Fires can occur for a wide variety of reasons and it’s worth noting that, on average, there are 18,000 vehicle fires a year across all manufacturers in the UK. It is estimated that there are c35 million vehicles registered in the UK.’
Earlier this week Vauxhall faced more damaging accusations, as the Sun newspaper published the results of an investigation into fires breaking out in Corsas. According to the paper, analysis of a burnt-out Corsa D, a model introduced in 2006, found the fire had broken out ‘in the region of the heater system’.
MORE: Firegate: More damaging headlines for Vauxhall after Sun investigation
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