Mazda to recall a half million Mazda3 for wiper risks

Mazda Motor Corp has announced that they will be recalling almost a half million of their popular Mazda3 sedan and 5-door over an electrical issue that could cause the windshield wipers to not work properly.

While information is currently in short order, this Mazda3 windshield wiper system recall pertains to vehicles shipped between January 2008 and July 2010 – so it sounds like it will affect Mazda3’s from the 2008-2010 (and maybe 2011) model years. This recall also applies to the Mazda Axela in the markets where that name is used rather than the Mazda3 name that we know in the US.

In these vehicles, there is a “glitch in an electronic part” that could prevent the wipers working but the reports don’t go into any detail whether the glitch is in the windshield wiper system or some unrelated system that is causing problems with the wipers. Regardless of the cause, windshield wipers not functioning in the Mazda3 presents a clear safety risk so the folks at Mazda plan to recall these 494,500 vehicles to address the glitch that is causing the wiper failures. Of those 494,500 Mazda3’s being recalled, 157,700 are in North America while 91,600 are in Europe, 84,000 are in China and 20,000 are in Japan. It is interesting that the smallest number of recalled vehicles are in Mazda’s homeland, serving to show how popular the Mazda3 lineup of compacts has been in foreign markets.

Mazda points out that no accidents or injuries were caused by this wiper problem but Mazda is being proactive – getting these vehicles back into dealerships to fix the problem before anyone gets hurt. We can expect more information to become available once this new Mazda3 wiper recall appears on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as when this article went live, there was still no posting on the government’s official recall website.

Source: Economic Times