PARIS (Reuters) – Stellantis announced Thursday to ask 82,000 additional Citroën C3 and DS3 customers in France to lead their car until the change of their Takata airbags, questioned in a dead road accident on June 11 in Reims (Marne).
The 82,000 vehicles concerned by this measure are already part of the recall campaign currently being deployed in France and which started in the south just over a year ago and was extended to the northern half of the country in January 2025, the automaker said.
All the C3 and DS3 produced between 2014 and 2019 and marketed in France have been the subject of a so -called “stop drive” recall – the manufacturer’s injunction to no longer use the vehicle, said a spokesperson. Of these 690,000 vehicles, 481,000 have already been repaired and approximately 200,000 must still be.
Stellantis provisioned 941 million euros in 2022 and 2023 to finance Takata reminders throughout its markets.
On a European scale, the “Stop and Drive” injunction, already in force in southern Europe where climatic conditions aggravate the defect, has been extended to all current reminders in Northern Europe. In total, 860 cars will have been recalled on the southern part of the continent – essentially already repaired – and 560 on the northern part, a total of 1.4 million vehicles.
A judicial source said to Reuters on Wednesday that the autopsia of the driver who died in Reims had confirmed the responsibility of the Airbag in serious injuries that led to her death. After a collision, the airbag was ejected from the vehicle and found on the road, projecting a metal part in the victim’s larynx.
Airbags manufactured by the Japanese company Takata are accused of having caused many deaths around the world and have led to the recall of more than 100 million vehicles since 2009. The gas used then to inflate the safety cushion – the ammonium nitrate – is getting badly and can degrade the system with a risk of projection at the time of the airbag explosion.
The French Minister of Transport Philippe Tabarot, who had claimed the expansion of the “stop and drive” after the accident of June 11, was to take stock of the situation Thursday evening with the director general of the Citroën brand, Xavier Chardon.
(Gilles Guillaume report, with Makini Brice, edited by Sophie Louet)
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