- A 2015 Ram 1500’s curtain airbag exploded without warning and with such force it blew a hole in the roof.
- The truck did have an airbag recall outstanding, but the owners say a dealer told them the parts weren’t available.
- Stellantis is refusing to cover the cost of repairs, but is offering the owners a discount on a new truck.
Airbags save lives, but do you ever feel a little unsettled at the thought of driving around with a bunch of explosive charges rigged inside your car? A Ram 1500 owner from Florida isn’t going to forget that in a hurry after a curtain airbag accidentally exploded with such force it ripped a hole clean through her cab’s metal roof.
Fortunately, Jackie Clark wasn’t in the truck when the airbag detonator blew. She remembers hearing a “gigantic boom” over the weekend, but she didn’t discover what had caused the noise until she went to take her truck out a couple of days later and found total carnage inside the cab.
Related: Chrysler, Jeep, Ram Recall 38,000 Vehicles Over Airbag That Might Not Deploy In A Crash
The curtain airbag had fired, which would have been odd enough given that the Ram had been parked up. But this was no normal airbag deployment. The explosion ruined the headlining and punctured the metal roof skin. Terrifyingly, this all happened right above the right-hand part of the back seat where the Clarks’s 19-month-old granddaughter usually sits.
“It blew a hole in the roof, imagine what it could do to a human being,” Clark told WFTV Channel 9.
Recall ignored due to parts unavailability
Ram had issued a recall notice for the 1500’s curtain airbags in 2021, but Clark’s truck hadn’t had the work done, even though she knew about the problem. She told Channel 9 that a dealer had explained to her shortly after the recall was announced that no parts were available.
However, Stellantis claims it had already informed the Clarks that it could now perform the recall work, and because that recall work hadn’t been completed when the explosion happened, the automaker is refusing to pay for repairs to the truck.
Stellantis’ response
“We are responsible for the recall repairs only, we are unable to cover any subsequent damages,” Stellantis told the owners via email. The company has instead offered to give the Clarks a discount on a new car or truck.
Stellantis told Channel 9 that 85,000 owners have had the remedial work completed, but since the original recall listed the number of affected 2015-2020 vehicles as over 212,000, that still leaves a lot of ticking time-bomb trucks on America’s roads.
