Roy Cokayne
It is unclear whether vehicles distributed and sold in South Africa by Chery Automobile and Great Wall Motor (GWM), two of China’s biggest vehicle exporters, will be affected by the recall of their vehicles sold in Australia.
Bloomberg News reported yesterday that the vehicle recall in Australia followed authorities finding cancer-causing asbestos in some models.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission warned owners to avoid “do-it-yourself” maintenance that might disturb contaminated engine and exhaust gaskets.
The commission said the recall affected 23 000 vehicles in Australia and involved GWM’s SA 220, V240, X240, V200 and X200 models and Chery’s J11 and J3 variants.
Brett Soso, the managing director of Chery South Africa, a division of listed Imperial Holdings’ Amalgamated Automobile Distributors subsidiary, said on Wednesday that the group was waiting for the results of an investigation to see whether any Chery vehicles distributed and sold in South Africa had the same problem.
“As soon as we have got that, we will take the necessary action,” he said.
Soso was hopeful the company would get a response from its supply chain by the end of this week and stressed that at this stage management did not know the magnitude of any possible problem.
He said the Tiggo, known as the J11 in Australia where it is affected by the recall, was “quite a big seller in South Africa”.
But Soso said the Chery J3 would only be launched in South Africa in November and there were only one or two test cars currently in the country.
RGT Smart, which administers the new vehicles sales statistics for the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of SA, said an estimated 963 Chery Tiggos were sold in South Africa in 2010 and 866 units last year.
Tony Pinfold, the chairman of GWM South Africa, said he was unaware of the recall in Australia and was unable to comment now because of the time differences between China and South Africa.
None of the GWM models sold in South Africa have the same model name as those listed by Bloomberg. However, vehicle brands are known to market their vehicles in different countries under different model names.
Shang Yugui, a spokesman at GWM, said the company became aware of the issue about a month ago and then stopped using the parts in question.
“We will actively proceed with the recall,” he said. “The incident won’t have much impact on our export and overseas expansion plans.”
Fifty-five countries including Japan and the EU members have banned asbestos in factories, buildings and car parts.