Opel under General Motors had a fair share of problems. In addition to the lack of profitability, the corporate culture of Detroit took its toll on the build quality of these vehicles. Vauxhall also suffered from the greed of the bean counters, and not surprising anyone, the Zafira B is being recalled for a third time over the same problem.
Almost 235,000 examples of the breed are involved, vehicles that were also recalled in 2015 and 2016 after more than 300 had caught fire. The latest recall covers the Zafira B from 2005 through 2014, and Vauxhall is aware of one incident resulting in a fire.
The British automaker – now owned by Groupe PSA – found “a small number of vehicles” with wiring that overheated and melted. Vauxhall will write to registered owners to alert them of the issue, which can be summed up as an overheating pin in a wire’s plug.
The British counterpart of Opel expects the repair to take an hour of labor, coming at no cost to the customer. It is a disregard for safety that Vauxhall didn’t stop motorists from driving the car even though the higher-ups knew of the fire risk? Considering that a pattern was obvious by 2014 but Vauxhall took until August 2015 to begin an investigation, you could say so.
Cars at risk of fire are not fitted with air conditioning or they're fitted with the manual air conditioning. Those with electronic climate control aren't affected. Will “the fitment of a revised wiring harness” and “a replacement resistor” solve this issue? Here’s hope it will, otherwise Vauxhall could get in trouble.
Interestingly enough, LHD models for the rest of Europe don’t suffer from this problem. That's because the heating system in these models was designed and manufactured by a different supplier.
On that note, there’s a clear and obvious risk for owners of these people carriers. If you live in the UK and drive such a vehicle, contact Vauxhall as soon as possible. Those with bigger budgets can just scrap the car and call it a day.
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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