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Economy

Enterprise Rent-A-Car sold Chevies without standard air bags

Rick Montgomery and Dan Margolies - The Kansas City Star

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August 16, 2009 03:14 PM

Enterprise Rent-A-Car, the nation's largest private buyer of new cars and seller of used ones, chose to "delete" a standard safety feature from thousands of Chevrolet Impala fleet vehicles, saving millions of dollars.

After the company rented out those 2006-08 model vehicles, Enterprise and countless dealers nationwide offered them for sale on the open market &mash; minus the side-curtain air bags that have been shown to dramatically reduce highway deaths.

What's more, a Kansas City Star investigation found that hundreds of Impalas already sold were incorrectly advertised on Enterprise's Web site as having the very head-protecting feature that the rental company opted to exclude on General Motors’ factory floor.

"I've never seen a standard safety feature removed from a vehicle," said Sean Kane, who heads Safety Research & Strategies Inc. in Rehoboth, Mass. "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."

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Enterprise officials defended their decision to delete the side air bags on roughly 66,000 Impalas as one that did not violate any federal mandate. That decision saved the company $175 on each Impala, which would total about $11.5 million.

Read this story on kansascity.com

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