How Counterfeit Plastic Led to Aston Martin Recalling 17,590 Cars

How's this for a story about the global economy: Aston Martin, a British automaker with Kuwaiti investors, has recalled around 75 percent of its cars manufactured since 2007 because a Chinese parts supplier apparently counterfeited a plastic compound created by American chemical giant DuPont.

The part in question is the accelerator arm, which was built using a lower-grade plastic than advertised by a sub-supplier. As Aston Martin's North American branch explained to the NHTSA, "if the accelerator pedal arm 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." Hey, at least the brakes are fine.

An Aston Martin spokeswoman told Reuters that the company is recalling "all of its left-hand-drive models built since November 2007 and all right-hand-drive models built since May 2012," which totals 17,590 cars, or about three-quarters of its production over that span. The new Vanquish model, which is just oh-so-lovely, wasn't affected by the recall, nor was the extremely limited-edition One-77.

But how does a luxury car manufacturer get swindled into using counterfeit parts? A January 15 letter to the NHTSA spells things out: Last May, the company began receiving reports of throttle arms breaking, which prompted a recall in June, with a second recall in October. During the second recall, a dealer in Connecticut reported a throttle arm breaking during installation, which prompted a deeper investigation.

After testing the material used, Aston Martin found that a tier three supplier—a Chinese company that molds plastic pedal arms, which are sent to another manufacturer, who then delivers completed pedal arms to a first-tier manufacturer to complete the entire pedal assembly—had been using counterfeit plastic material that was mislabeled as DuPont PA6 plastic, along with some PA6.6 plastic, which can actually be tougher than the plastic specified. But Aston Martin told the NHTSA that poor quality control, fake material, and temperature errors in the molding process are the root cause of the failures.

The sub-supplier listed on Aston Martin's recall letter is Shenzen Kexiang Mould Tool Co. Limited, with the counterfeit plastic supplied by Synthetic Plastic Raw Material Co. of the aptly-named Plastics Logistics Center City in Dongguan. Quartz dug up Shenzen Kexiang's English site, which is about what you'd expect of a company that specializes in plastics manufacturing.

While Aston Martin blamed manufacturing errors, the question remains as to whether Shenzen Kexiang knew it was using counterfeit plastic. The company didn't answer Quartz's call, nor did it answer mine, which isn't particularly surprising as it's currently nearing midnight in Shenzen.

Regardless, the recall is more of an embarrassment for Aston Martin than anything. The company said the non-broken parts it tested passed the minimum strength tests originally specified, and while a broken accelerator would certainly put drivers in an awkward situation, especially when driving a six-figure luxury sports car, worse things could fail.

But the sheer percentage of vehicles covered by the recall remains pretty amazing. It's far from the largest recall in history—that would require tens of millions of cars—but by a proportion of total cars manufactured, this throttle arm debacle has to be near the top. That's by virtue of the small production volumes and Aston Martin's goal of using the same parts across models where possible to save money.

Unfortunately, when most cars roll off the line with the same substandard part, they'll all have to be fixed. For its part, Aston Martin has stopped shipping cars with the questionable throttle arm, and is in the process of notifying all of its customers that, however much they may want to, they shouldn't mash the gas until their cars have been fixed.