Aston Martin launches global recall

A total of 1,094 Aston Martin cars are affected in China amid the company's most recent global recall, and the company is in contact with the country's quality watchdog, a spokeswoman from Aston Martin told the Global Times Thursday.

The British luxury sports car -producer Wednesday announced a global recall that would cover most of its cars produced since late 2007, after it found that a Chinese sub-supplier was using fake plastic material in building accelerator pedal arms for the company's products, which could cause safety hazards.

The company said that Shenzhen Kexiang Mould Tool Co, a Chinese subcontractor that moulds the affected accelerator pedal arms, was using counterfeit DuPont plastic materials, according to a document filed with the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Due to the manufacturing error, the accelerator pedal arm may break.

"If it breaks, the engine will return to idle and the driver will be unable to maintain or increase engine speed, increasing the risk of a crash," the administration said in an announcement on Tuesday.

Of the Aston Martin cars affected in the recall, 7,271 are in Europe and 5,001 in the US.

Calls to Shenzhen Kexiang made after business hours went unanswered on Thursday, the last day of the Spring Festival holidays.

A Reuters report said Wednesday that Aston Martin plans to shift -production of the pedal arms from China to the United Kingdom as soon as possible in 2014, and the company is now using material supplied by a DuPont distributor.

Sarah Calam, Aston Martin's spokeswoman, confirmed that the company would move the pedal arm production to the UK, in an e-mail sent to the Global Times Thursday.

Around 75 percent of vehicles produced during the period were affected in the recall, according to Reuters, citing Calam.

However, Calam told the Global Times that the financial impact to the company is "small" and "we do not expect sales to be affected by this recall." She also noted that "no cases of failure have been reported in China."

Zhu Bin, a Shanghai-based industry analyst at consultancy LMC Automotive, said that "the news was quite unexpected" to him. "As an extra luxury brand which has a very high price markup, the company should guarantee the quality of its products."

Zhang Yu, managing director at Shanghai-based consultancy Automotive Foresight Co, said that in addition to possible problems in quality control, the recall also revealed that some Chinese suppliers lack business integrity.

Given that luxury sports car brands like Aston Martin and Ferrari only sell several hundred cars in China each year, both Zhu and Zhang noted that the recall will not affect Aston Martin's sales in China very much.

The recall is an expansion of two previous recalls.

Aston Martin announced in May 2013 a recall of 2,832 cars globally due to defective accelerator pedal arms.

In November 2013, the company expanded the recall to 16,825 cars due to the same problem.