Posted on 01/01/2007 2:32:49 PM PST by nuconvert
'Self igniting' Iran cars worry police
Jan 1, 2006
TEHRAN (AFP) - Hundreds of Iranian-made cars have suddenly caught fire on Iran's roads over the past months, with police pointing to the Peugeot 405 as the main culprit.
Since the beginning of the Iranian year in March, there have been 125 incidents of cars catching fire without warning and then killing or injuring the occupants, traffic police chief Mohammad Rooyanian said Monday.
"Around 300 people have been killed or wounded and 40 percent of the fatalities were attributed to the Peugeot 405," he told the hardline Kayhan newspaper.
"We are not to going compromise on this issue. We are emphasizing the need to improve the safety of the vehicles, so that our citizens will not be worried any more," he added.
The Peugeot 405 and other well-known models from the French carmaker have been manufactured under licence since 1990 by Iran Khodro, Iran's largest car manufacturer.
"Fire service figures from the first six months of the year have said that 700 cars caught fire in Tehran, out of which 70 percent of them were manufactured by Iran Khodro," Rooyanian added.
Iran Khodro's director of marketing Mehdi Ghasem said the problem was an "occasional technical fault in the fuel system" in cars more than two years old and emphasized that vehicles made in this Iranian year had no such fault.
"Neither us nor the police have received any report on such a fault in this year's cars. Therefore, the registration process will automatically go on," he said, dismissing warnings of a ban on the car.
"Despite the reports, the car still ranks as the best-selling car among automobiles in the Iranian market which are priced above 10,000 dollars," he said.
The state-owned Iran Khodro company has an annual production of about 550,000 cars including Iran's flagship Samand, Peugeot 206 and Peugeot Pars, which is a face-lifted 405.
flammable pong
The Peugeot car-b-que model ... why is that a surprise?
Li'l Satan & Big Satan's fault, yes it is!
Peugeot.
We ignite so your utes don't have too.
badda bing, badda boom.
Is the the Iranian IED/Pinto?
Must have the authorities worried that the car bombs may not reach their destinations.
see all those fires in paris, all spontaneous combustion
Awww . . . how cute. Iranian automobiles so eager to become car bombs that they are not even waiting until they reach Iraq.
HO-mohomad,do not order the detonator option.
It is God's will.
Best post on the thread so far.
It certainly wasn't those "youths" again was it?
Let's see -- I could bash the French, then I could go after French technology. I could go after technological innovation in the Muslim world. I could also make comments about nuclear technology in Iran and how they might make some improvements.
Needless to say that when you mix Islamo-nuts with French crazies then everything self-destructs.
These people can't build copy of an aging French car... which they have to build because they lack the ability to do the R&D for their own designs...
And now they are claiming that they are able to build a nuke program from scratch?!?!??
As I recall, Iran stopped sending their students to US universities around 1978, and many who were here when the Shah fell never went home (if they could help it). I imagine that the brain drain is now taking its toll.
In addition, isn't there a contradiction between an Iranian education which claims that all human thought was perfected in the 8th century, and a desire to use 21st century technology?
And it still smells of sulfur today
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