Car dealer company Van Mossel in Waalwijk thinks that the repairs for the large recall of Citroëns in the Netherlands will take about seven to ten days in the Netherlands. According to a spokesperson, the Citroën dealers of the group expect to repair around 3300 cars to defective airbags.
“When we have the airbags, and they will be coming quickly, we need a week to ten days to help customers replace,” says the spokesperson. Van Mossel has set up an extra call center due to the recall. Citroën mother company Stellantis reimburses the repairs.
The recall is 33,260 Citroëns C3 and DS3 that were made between 2009 and 2019. Stellantis calls on owners not to go on the road with this car before a defective airbag has been replaced. Airbags from manufacturer Takata can explode if they are activated, with metal parts flying around.
The recall follows an accident in France last week, in which a woman in Reims died of injuries caused by one of these airbags. She was in a Citroën C3 from 2014.
High -priority
Van Mossel sold a total of 7,000 of the Citroëns in question. But part of it drives in an area where it makes more sense to take the cars to other garages, the spokesperson explains.
With the summer vacation approaching, it is often a busy period for car garages. But branch organization BOVAG says that repairs with a higher priority, such as recall actions, are given priority.
The umbrella organization could not give an overall expectation about the duration of the recall. Stellantis also did not respond directly to the question of how long the recall takes.
STOP Drive-back group campaign
Stellantis came up with a so-called Stop Drive-Top promotion, where motorists are stuck with the car not to drive the car. Those who do that and get an accident, according to a spokesperson for the Dutch Association of Insurers, will probably not get any problems with the insurance.
“Unless very crazy things happen, people are just covered. In theory it is possible that an insurer thinks someone has been negligent. But then you should be able to prove very well that the damage was caused by the defect for which the recall was applied and someone knew about it. In practice that will be very difficult,” he says.
The majority of motorists are also a legal liability insurance, for damage or injury that a motorist causes with someone else. Those cases are covered anyway.