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Posted on Sat, Aug. 15, 2009 10:38 PM
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Investigation finds Enterprise Rent-A-Car sold Chevy Impalas without standard side air bags


Last September, Rachelle Beamer of Gardner bought a Chevy Impala that had been part of Enterprise Rent-A-Car?s fleet. ?I don?t think I thought to ask if the side air bags were there,? she said when told that her Impala, bought from an Olathe car dealer, lacked the safety devices.
Last September, Rachelle Beamer of Gardner bought a Chevy Impala that had been part of Enterprise Rent-A-Car’s fleet. “I don’t think I thought to ask if the side air bags were there,” she said when told that her Impala, bought from an Olathe car dealer, lacked the safety devices.

Enterprise Rent-A-Car, the nation’s largest private buyer of new cars and seller of used ones, chose to “delete” a standard safety feature from thousands of Chevrolet Impala fleet vehicles, saving millions of dollars.

After the company rented out those 2006-08 model vehicles, Enterprise and countless dealers nationwide offered them for sale on the open market — minus the side-curtain air bags that have been shown to dramatically reduce highway deaths.

What’s more, a Kansas City Star investigation found that hundreds of Impalas already sold were incorrectly advertised on Enterprise’s Web site as having the very head-protecting feature that the rental company opted to exclude on General Motors’ factory floor.

“I’ve never seen a standard safety feature removed from a vehicle,” said Sean Kane, who heads Safety Research & Strategies Inc. in Rehoboth, Mass. “That’s what’s so unique about this. I’ve been doing this work for 17 years and, until now, had yet to see this happen.”

Enterprise officials defended their decision to delete the side air bags on roughly 66,000 Impalas as one that did not violate any federal mandate. That decision saved the company $175 on each Impala, which would total about $11.5 million.

But the St. Louis-based company admitted making a mistake in its online advertising.

“There’s definitely a glitch in the system,” Christy Conrad, Enterprise’s vice president for corporate communications, acknowledged when The Star informed Enterprise of the misleading Web postings.

After checking data on past sales, the company determined that 745 Impalas— model years 2006 through 2008 — sold from Enterprise’s used-car lots “were marked incorrectly, only online, as having side air bags and they did not,” Conrad said.

Enterprise said it will send letters to all 745 buyers, including 15 in the Kansas City area, notifying them of the problem. The company also will offer to buy back the cars, regardless of condition, at $750 above Kelley Blue Book value.

Not all Impalas ordered by Enterprise were built without side air bags. And Enterprise acknowledged it also purchased roughly 5,000 Chevy Cobalts and Buick LaCrosses without standard side air bags, but those cars weren’t advertised as having the safety feature.

A Chevrolet spokesman, Brian Goebel, said that in the highly competitive fleet market and rental-car industry, the delete option helped buyers shave costs on features they did not want.

Though standard on the Impala, side-curtain air bags that drop over windows in a side-impact crash were optional in many other vehicles at the time. By 2006, about 40 percent of new passenger vehicles offered side air bags.

According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, an organization funded by auto insurers to research ways of reducing injuries in crashes, side impacts are the second-most common fatal accident, after frontal crashes. The institute said more than 8,000 people were killed in side-impact collisions in 2007.

Studies have shown that side air bags with head protection reduce highway deaths 45 percent among drivers in cars struck on the driver’s side.

‘Big problem for consumers’

Kane, an automotive safety expert who assisted The Star in its research, said he had identified at least five fatal accidents nationwide involving fleet-purchased Impalas, not all Enterprise vehicles, in side-impact crashes. However, he could not determine whether the absence of side air bags contributed to the deaths.

The Star’s Chad Day contributed to this report. To reach Rick Montgomery, call 816-234-4410 or send e-mail to rmontgomery@kcstar.com. To reach Dan Margolies, call 816-234-4481 or send e-mail to dmargolies@kcstar.com. | Rick Montgomery, rmontgomery@kcstar.com

Posted on Sat, Aug. 15, 2009 10:38 PM
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