Fiat has issued a recall on 21,000 of its best selling supermini the Grande Punto in the UK. Fiat said that the recall was necessary so it could carry out an essential safety modification free of charge.
The modification has been described as a ‘safety upgrade’ whereas Which? magazine have revealed that early right hand drive models had a metal plate missing from the steering column.
The function of the plate is to spread the load should the car be involved in a frontal impact and further prevents the driver sustaining serious knee injuries.
The plate is also partly responsible for the Grande Punto scoring a five-star rating in Euro NCAP crash tests earlier this year, for which left-hand-drive cars were tested.
However, early UK-specification cars built before Fiat began fitting the metal plate would have scored only four stars in the same crash tests.
Fiat has sent out letters to all owners of the affected cars and says the modification takes around 35 minutes per car to complete.
The affected cars have chassis numbers, which covers two different batches running from 00022165 to 00149957 and 01032357 to 01131059 and three individual cars numbered 00001981, 00912000 and 01512500. In all cases, these numbers fall at the end of the 17-digit VIN number.
