(Bloomberg) – Takata Corp., the air-bag supplier behind the industry's largest ever recall, routinely manipulated results of air-bag inflator tests reported to Honda Motor Co., according to an ongoing audit commissioned by the parts maker and its biggest customer.
Takata engineers removed some test results to artificially reduce variability in air-bag inflator performance, Brian O'Neill, a former Insurance Institute for Highway Safety president, said in a phone interview. Takata and Honda jointly hired O'Neill to begin the audit in late October, days before Honda first announced findings of data manipulation.
"We have found examples of what I would call 'selective editing,' where they have left out results not because they were bad results, but because the results that remained were better," said O'Neill, whose hiring hasn't previously been reported. "We found evidence that the report that went to Honda was a shorter version of the original version, and it was a prettier shortened version."
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