Honda Motor Company, Ltd. is planning to WORLD-WIDE recall of about 2.49 million of their vehicles, including cars, minivans, and sport utility vehicles. The defect lies in the automatic transmission’s electronics. 1.5 million vehicles in the United States are being recalled, 135,142 in Canada and about 760,000 in China.
Some speculate that this maybe a symptom of something deeper, but one of Honda’s U.S. spokesmen, Chris Martin, denied analysts’ speculations and suggested that the defect arouse out of “extremely unusual circumstances,” going on to say, “Its software programming. Its not a weakness in the transmission per se.”
But it CAN cause weakness in the transmission, especially in regions with harsher weather conditions. Jesse Toprak of TrueCar.com explained, “If you are stuck in mud or snow and you are rocking back and forth very quickly between gears, and the transmission software cant keep up and you can potentially damage the transmission.” Shifting too quickly could damage the automatic transmission, causing the vehicle to stall or causing difficulty shifting the stick shift into the “park” position. If shifting rapidly between drive, neutral and reverse, as one mite do stuck in mud or snow, the transmission’s secondary shaft bearing could be damaged.
The recall affects 4-cylinder model year 2005-2010 Accord sedans world-wide, and also includes model year 2007-2010 Honda CR-V Crossovers and 2005-2008 Element SUVs in the United States and Canada. Honda will start informing owners towards the end of August.