Suzuki has issued a voluntary safety recall and paused sales of its Fronx SUV after crash testing exposed a serious failure with a rear seatbelt.
The Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP) discovered the fault during a frontal crash test at 50km/h, where the seatbelt retractor failed, leaving the belt completely slack and unable to restrain the dummy.
Warning issued over vehicle's 'serious' safety failure - Watch on TVNZ+
ANCAP chief executive Carla Hoorweg said the failure was significant.
"The seatbelt retractor, which holds the belt tight, didn’t work as expected. That meant the belt became completely lax during the test and didn’t restrain the dummy the way we would expect," she said.
The Fronx scored one star in ANCAP’s safety rating, which Hoorweg said was a rare result.
"It is much less common for a vehicle to score a low one-star rating. Over the past five years we’ve had three zero-star ratings. This one scraped a one-star rating, very close to zero."
Suzuki NZ said though the investigation was continuing, it had identified a VIN range of potentially affected vehicles for which the voluntary safety recall was announced.
It had identified 215 potentially affected vehicles out of 1115 Fronx SUVs in New Zealand.
The company told 1News in a statement it was contacting all customers and would advise whether their vehicle is affected.
"It appears that the functionality of the rear seatbelt retractor mechanism may not perform as designed, and as a potential consequence, excessive belt length may release in the event of a collision. This may result in injury."
The recall has disrupted holiday plans for some owners, including one who told 1News they can no longer travel for Christmas.
Around 100 Fronx vehicles in rental fleets would also be unavailable over the holiday period.
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