Subaru of America (SOA) has announced that a defect, which relates to the safety of the passengers, may exist on certain 2003-2004 model year Legacy's, Outback's and Baja's,  as well as 2004 Impreza's, including the WRX and STI vehicles.

Subaru reports that this affects 8,557 vehicles.  The defective airbag was manufactured by Takata Corp.  The announcement was first made on July 9, 2014.

Description:  The subject vehicles are equipped with front passenger air bag inflators.   These systems could have been assembled using improperly made propellant wafers.  There is the potential that in a crash situation which require the air bags to deploy, the inflator could rupture, causing metal fragments to break off and potentially hit and seriously injure a passenger.

It is not known what percentage of the subject vehicles would fail,  but the recall involves replacing the front passenger air bag inflator in all potentially affected vehicles.

Not all of the vehicles manufactured in the 2003-2004 period are affected. Recall coverage can be identified based on the serial number.

Model Year	Model	Start Production Date	End Production Date
2003	Legacy	1/22/03	5/14/03
2004	Legacy	3/17/03	2/10/04
2003	Outback	2/18/03	4/15/03
2004	Outback	2/28/03	2/11/04
2003	Baja	1/22/03	5/6/03
2004	Baja	2/2/03	7/21/04
2004	Impreza, WRX, STI	1/08/03	5/15/03

 
Owner Notification:   Notification letters will be sent to owners of all potentially affected vehicles, starting on August 14, 2014.

To date, no injuries or accidents have been reported or linked to this recall.

Please talk to Patriot Subaru if you have questions surrounding this recall program.  Patriot Subaru urges you to bring your vehicle in if you have any questions as to whether it is a vehicle up for recall.

Overview:  Over 6 million vehicles are involved in the Takata airbag recall.  Many auto manufacturers are affected by this situation, including: BMW, Chrysler, Dodge, Ford, GM, Honda, Mazda, Nissan, Pontiac, Subaru, and Toyota. 

Latest News:  There is concern that Takata may have trouble manufacturing enough replacement bags to cover all of the vehicles under recall.

Toyota received permission from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to disable the airbags, which would otherwise be illegal.  This has raised concerns since having no airbag in a crash may result in more injuries than just having the defective bag.