Get Gephardt: Orem man’s auto repairs take 13 months resulting from components scarcity

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OREM — In case your automobile wants minor repairs, be ready to attend. That warning comes from a Utah County man who needed to await greater than a yr for his automobile to get fastened.

“(It) simply hit the tire right here, so not loads of harm, but it surely did trigger sufficient for the airbags to go off,” Grant Clark instructed us again in November, months after his daughter’s Volkswagen spun out on ice and hit a curb.

Multiple yr after the fender bender, the automobile is lastly again on the street. That’s how lengthy it took for Clark to get his palms on alternative airbags. The factor is, these airbags didn’t come from Volkswagen itself; he discovered them at a junkyard.

“They’re making brand-new vehicles,” Clark mentioned on the time. “They provided to promote me a brand new automobile, however they cannot repair my previous automobile.”

After we instructed his story in November, we heard from automobile house owners everywhere in the nation lamenting they’re having the identical difficulty with many alternative carmakers. Their vehicles wanted comparatively small repairs, however the components simply are usually not there.

Jeremy Smith of Steve’s Automotive in Sandy is aware of all about it.

“There’s components of the nation the place apparently they have heaps crammed with 1000’s of vehicles they cannot get again on the street from simply rental firms,” Smith mentioned, “as a result of they cannot get the components for them and get them again on the street.”

These provide chain points are usually not simply impacting individuals who want components for his or her present vehicles; they’re additionally hitting the manufacturing of recent vehicles. Based on J.D. Energy, new “car high quality has notably declined” and the brand new automobile trade “skilled an 11% enhance in issues” in comparison with final yr.

The first purpose?

“Provide chain points,” based on J.D. Energy.

“In the event you had been in a worse accident, you virtually would have been higher off, no?” I requested Clark.

“Yeah, in all probability as a result of it could have been totaled out,” he answered. “If it could have been totaled out, they’d have simply given me the worth of the automobile and I’d have gone on and gotten a distinct automobile.”

As a substitute, Clark needed to get one other automobile for his daughter to get round whereas the Volkswagen sat for greater than a yr ready on components. Volkswagen has but to reply to our a number of inquiries.

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