New safety innovations for automobiles can be impressive. Side-curtain airbags are a great development for protecting people in a side-impact crash, and are standard on many models, including the Chevrolet Impala. Unless you’re driving an Impala in the Enterprise Rent-A-Car fleet, in which case the airbags were never installed in order to save Enterprise $175 per car. This wasn’t really a problem until Enterprise went to sell their used Impalas, and sort of forgot to tell people that the airbags had been removed.

After checking data on past sales, the company determined that 745 Impalas- model years 2006 through 2008 – sold from Enterprise’s used-car lots “were marked incorrectly, only online, as having side air bags and they did not,” Conrad said.

Enterprise said it will send letters to all 745 buyers, including 15 in the Kansas City area, notifying them of the problem. The company also will offer to buy back the cars, regardless of condition, at $750 above Kelley Blue Book value.

It’s good to hear that Enterprise is making good on the transaction and that this was all an error, but quite scary that cars were sold missing a major safety feature, and customers weren’t told.

Investigation finds Enterprise Rent-A-Car sold Chevy Impalas without standard side air bags [Kansas City Star]

(Photo: wwarby)

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