Rejection upheld by Ombudsman for Range Rover Sport fire

Being involved in a situation where your car spontaneously catches fire is a frightening experience. Vehicle fires are fierce, causing significant damage to both the vehicle and adjacent property.

For vehicle owners, the shock and distress are only matched by the surprising difficulty in getting car dealerships, manufacturers and finance companies to accept liability.

Often, the refusal to accept liability and the rejection of the vehicle centres around the often misunderstood and the misapplication of the relevant legal principals, in particular three key questions:

• Do you have to prove precisely the cause of the fire?

• Do you have to prove the car wasn’t of satisfactory quality on delivery?

• How can you return a car, if the car is destroyed?

This case, involving a late model Range Rover Sport PHEV fire, illustrates these issues. At the same time, it touches on how safety recalls are sometimes delayed in the UK compared to those in the United States and other countries.

How the car fire refund legal case began

Ms P bought a Range Rover Sport P400e Hybrid from a main dealer for around £70,000.00 by way of a PCP agreement with Land Rover Financial Services (Black Horse).

The Range Rover had been in to a local main dealer for diagnostic checks in relation to the Power Distribution Unit (PDU) and auxiliary battery

A couple of days later and about eight months after purchase while driving, the Range Rover displayed various dashboard warning lights and smoke appeared from the rear of the car, causing Ms P to pull over.

Ms P called the fire brigade but shortly afterwards the car was engulfed in flames.

Ms P complained to Black Horse who instructed ACE to carry out a vehicle inspection. The inspection concluded they did not consider the faults found to have been present or developing at the point of sale.

As a result Black Horse declined to uphold the complaint because of this, and in addition that there had been no evidence of unsuccessful repairs, and therefore the faults appeared to be ‘wear and tear’.

The Range Rover Sport fire recall

The ACE report referenced a United States NHTSA manufacture recall notice N785, which  related to all Range Rover Sport PHEV cars built from 2018 – 2022 which stated:

A concern has been identified on Ingenium I4 2.0L Petrol Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) engines where the coolant pump drive belt can become damaged leading to detachment or destruction. Where coolant pump drive is lost, this leads to a loss of coolant flow in the engine. The lack of coolant flow can cause the engine to rapidly overheat and subsequently ruptures an engine mounted plastic elbow in the cooling circuit. If the coolant elbow is ruptured this leads to a coolant leak onto the turbocharger heatshield which may lead to a fire in the engine compartment which can propagate to the whole vehicle…..

However, because the recall had only been issued in America it was considered not to be relevant to the case.

Ms P obtained her own expert report which concluded that the circumstances and remaining evidence was consistent with the information contained in the Safety recall and it was therefore likely that the Vehicle had suffered from the fault mentioned in it.

How we pursued a car fire refund

Stormcatcher were first instructed to advise Ms P on the recall, the vehicle engineering and the evidence from ACE and the other experts.

We advised Ms P the evidence supported the legal right to reject the Range Rover Hybrid under  Consumer law and she instructed us to correspond with Black Horse and deal with the Financial Ombudsman complaint.

The evidence supported the claim for breach of contract and the likelihood the problems affecting Land Rover hybrid vehicles in the USA were causal of the fire.

This being the case, because this is a JLR self-confessed manufacturing defect, it must have been present on delivery and was unaffected by the vehicle age and mileage.

The remedy was rescission (unwinding) of the finance agreement to which the Range Rover was inextricably linked.

The condition of the car was irrelevant, as Ms P did not cause it, and the evidence proved she did not.

The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) agreed with our legal analysis and directed that Ms P should be allowed to reject the Range Rover Sport, the PCP agreement should be unwound and the deposit and wasted finance payments be refunded.

The full decision can be found below.

Update on recall N785

Any doubt about the relevant of the safety recall being causal of the fire was undermined by Jaguar Land Rover issues Safety Recall N785 to UK Range Rover sport hybrid owners in December 2024.

The disconnect between the time the recall was issued in the USA by Jaguar Land Rover North America and Jaguar Land Rover Canada headed “Global Recall Action” and the time JLR issued it the UK is concerning, made more so by this case.

Finance company refusing a refund?

If you’re struggling to get the refund you know you deserve from your car finance company and wish to know more about rejecting a car on finance, contact Stormcatcher Law for advice on 0333 700 7676.