Your brand logo shattering and injuring people in an accident is, as the kids say, not a good look. So Mazda is recalling 260,915 Mazda3s sold between 2004 and 2007 to fix the problem.
According to a document published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the problem was first noted in a 2015 incident from outside of the U.S. in which an occupant’s face was injured by “scattered fragments of the logo” when the airbag was activated in a crash.
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An investigation run by Mazda‘s part supplier determined that hydrolysis was confirmed to have occurred on the broken logo, which was made of polyurethane. It was hypothesized that the reaction accelerated the deterioration of the logo, making it likelier to shatter.
The supplier made a change to the logos’ chemical makeup in 2006, so vehicles produced after that (model year 2007) are not included in the recall.
Early on, Mazda assumed that the degree of the injury to the face was low, reasoning that the facial injuries in early reports were similar to those incurred during the normal deployment of an airbag. In 2019, though, an occupant’s eye was injured by the shattering logo.
This year, Mazda received its tenth field incident globally and became worried that injuries might only become worse as time went on, per the document, and decided to initiate a recall.
Owners of Mazda3s from model years 2004 to 2007 can expect notification letters to be mailed out on August 28. Mazda will replace the logo on the steering wheel free of charge.
