Land Rover has already issued a recall on the brand-new L460 Range Rover. Nineteen specific vehicles built in February have been recalled over front crash sensors that aren’t torqued down enough and can come loose. But far from being a major build-quality problem, this kind of to-the-specific-vehicle quality control is a major step forward in overall build quality.
The recall involves nineteen specific Range Rover L460s that may not have had their front crash sensor fasteners installed to the specified torque level. The vehicles were all built between 2/2/22 and 2/22/22. If these sensors were to one day come loose, the active safety systems might not behave properly, and the vehicle might nullify or exacerbate its inbuilt lifesaving technologies.
No issues have been announced yet, and any owner who came upon the recall information before they are formally informed by mail in July could probably just call their Land Rover dealer and have the recall repaired quickly.
The rapid response and pinpoint VIN callouts are a triumph of modern automotive engineering and construction. Range Rovers are all built on a brand-new line in Solihull’s Block 1, the same facility where the Series and Defender were built for 68 years. These new lines are high-tech, with automation and data logging along the way. While we don’t know exactly how these systems didn’t catch these mis-torqued sensors immediately, presumably some degree of data logging helped cherrypick them out of the hundreds of Rangies made in that time.
Go back a few decades, and a recall like this might require an olly-olly in come free on weeks’ worth of production if an issue was found weeks later. Instead, some degree of logged data apparently allowed them to pick nineteen trucks built over almost three weeks.
It’s a far cry from the days of old when it comes to build quality and widespread recalls and another marker of how far Land Rover – and automaking overall – has come.
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