Enterprise rented and sold cars without side curtain air bags

“ Side curtain airbags are standard on Chevrolet Impalas and Cobalts, but when Enterprise Rent-A-Car ordered 66,000 of those models for its fleet the air bags were not installed as a cost-saving measure, according to the group Safety Research & Strategies…

Enterprise then compounded the safety hazard by reselling some of the 2006, 2007, and 2008 Impalas and the 2008 and 2009 Cobalts to unsuspecting used-car buyers…

Ads for some of the cars on the Enterprise Web site mistakenly claimed they had side curtain air bags…

“I’ve never seen a standard safety feature removed from a vehicle,” said SRS’s Sean Kane in a report on his group’s work in the Kansas City Star. “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 Rent-A-Car, according to the Star, is the nation’s largest private buyer of new cars and seller of used ones. The company saved $175 per car by not having the side curtain air bags installed, a total of $11.5 million.

“We were quite frankly surprised by the whole situation,” said Tony Di Viesta, another safety expert at SRS. “If you had gone to a GM dealership and bought one of these cars you would have gotten the side curtain airbags as a standard feature. It’s really troubling they were selling them as fleet vehicles without the side curtain air bags.” ( Via consumerreports.org)

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