More bad news for Fiat Chrysler: After today’s announcement that the company must pay up to $105 million in fines for improperly handling 23 separate recalls, the automaker has announced that it will buy back as many as 578,000 Dodge and Ram pickup trucks and Dodge and Chrysler SUVs that it failed to fix during numerous recalls.
The Detroit News reports that Fiat Chrysler has agreed to buy back 578,000 vehicles after some owners waited more than 18 months for repairs stemming from three separate recalls for steering issues. The complete list of vehicles eligible for the buyback is below.
As part of the agreement, FCA must buy the affected vehicles at a price that includes “a reasonable allowance for depreciation,” with a 10-percent bonus given to owners who have not gotten the recall repairs completed, The Detroit News reports. NHTSA has recorded one death and 32 crashes stemming from the steering issues involved in the three recalls. FCA admits that it violated the law in the three recall campaigns by failing to fix vehicles in a timely fashion—NHTSA reports that come owners have waited as long as two years for the recall repair.
The vehicles eligible for buyback are as follows:
- 2008-2012 Dodge/Ram 1500 pickups (265,000 vehicles)
- 2008-2012 Dodge/Ram 45oo and 5500 heavy-duty pickups (35,942 vehicles)
- 2009-2011 Dodge Dakota
- 2009 Dodge Durango
- 2009 Chrysler Aspen
The buyback comes at the tail end of a particularly rough patch between FCA and the NHTSA. Last week, FCA agreed to recall 1.4 million vehicles after a Wired report revealed that hackers could wirelessly take over the steering, brakes, and engine management software remotely. Just one day later, the automaker agreed to two additional recalls, covering 2.2 million trucks with reports of inadvertent airbag deployment. And the automaker has been in a constant struggle with safety regulators over how it handled recalls on Jeep Liberty and Grand Cherokee models found to pose an increased risk of explosion in rear-end collisions.
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