Subaru, too, lets unqualified workers check vehicles

October 27, 2017

Like Nissan Motor Co., Subaru Corp. used unqualified workers for inspections of finished vehicles at its plant in Gunma Prefecture, eastern Japan, informed sources said Friday.Subaru detected the misconduct during an in-house investigation launched at the transport ministry's direction to automakers in the country in the wake of the revelation in late September of similar irregularities at Nissan plants.

The ministry asked the companies to report their probe results by the end of the month.

Subaru will inform the ministry of its wrongdoing shortly, the sources added.

The widening of the scandal is likely to put the Japanese auto industry's quality management under severe scrutiny, pundits suggested.

In Japan, designated workers at automakers must make inspections of assembled vehicles before shipment.

According to the sources, employees still under training for the inspection work took part in checks of finished vehicles at the Gunma plant in the city of Ota. The automaker has yet to decide whether to recall the affected vehicles.

The sources also said Subaru has a total of some 250 qualified workers, more than enough for the preshipment inspection process requiring a workforce of about 160 at the company.

In Nissan's case, some 1.16 million vehicles were recalled initially following the company's confirmation of illicit inspections at all of its six assembly plants in the country.

But Nissan moved to expand the recall and entirely suspend product shipments to the domestic market, after it found that the misconduct continued at four of the plants even after the scandal came to light.

Meanwhile, officials of six major Japanese automakers, including Toyota Motor Corp., have told the ministry that they found no cases of such fraud in their pre-shipment inspections.

The other automakers are Honda Motor Co. , Suzuki Motor Corp. , Mazda Motor Corp. , Mitsubishi Motors Corp. and Daihatsu Motor Co. Jiji Press

TOKYO- Subaru Corp. President Yasuyuki Yoshinaga (2-R) bows in apology after speaking to the press about the company's car final inspection scandal, at the Toyota headquarters in Tokyo, Japan, Friday, 27 October 2017. Japanese automaker Subaru may recall about 300,000 cars, including OEM deliveries to Toyota Motor., due to allowing uncertified technicians to perform final inspections of automobiles at its main production complex in Gunma. Jiji Press