Mitsubishi recalling 27,000 vehicles in New Zealand

Mitsubishi NZ
Mitsubishi NZ

Mitsubishi Motors New Zealand is recalling about 27,000 vehicles from around the country over safety concerns.

Lancers sedans and hatches, Outlander, Pajero, Triton and i-Miev (PRON: i Mev) models produced from 2007 to 2015 are among those affected.

The move comes after the car brand in Australia announced a recall of around 500,000 vehicles - almost every one of its models sold in the past 10 years.

The company says the concerning issue relates to potentially failing headlights.

"It will affect cars in New Zealand but it's quite a different scale of recall to the one in Australia. There's a collection of recalls in Australia that are under that one banner, so it's quite a complex situation for them," says Daniel Cook, Mitsubishi NZ head of sales and marketing.

"We're impacted by the largest of their recalls, which is on the headlights switch, which could be prone to failure. So we'll be starting a recall shortly on around 27,000 vehicles in New Zealand, so considerably less than the overall recall in Australia."

The Australian recall includes some of the Japanese company's most popular models including the Lancer, Lancer Evolution, Triton, Outlander, Pajero, Colt, Challenger, Ralliart and iMiev electric car.

The issues that prompted the Australian recall include electrical problems which can affect turn signals, wipers and lights, and handbrake cables rubbing on fuel tanks, potentially causing a fuel leak.

Following recent comments by Consumer NZ that less than half of faulty products are brought back when a recall is issued, Mitsubishi urges customers to work with them to ensure vehicle safety.

"We'll be writing to customers and they definitely should take action. One of the things in the recall process we find is it's quite hard to get customers to bring their vehicles back in at times, so we definitely want them to take action when they get their notification," says Mr Cook.

Mitsubishi's recall comes just a day after fellow Japanese vehicle manufacturer Toyota announced that they would be recalling 37,000 cars of their own in New Zealand.

Newshub.