Two reports that steering wheels detached from 2018 models of the Hyundai Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Sport have prompted a safety recall of 43,941 of the SUVs in the United States. The recall affects 31,367 Santa Fe Sport and 12,574 2018 Santa Fe vehicles, according to documents filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which put the estimated proportion of vehicles with the defect at 1 percent.
The documents say the automaker filed a field report in the United States that said the steering wheel detached from a 2018 Santa Fe Sport. Hyundai spokesman Michael Stewart told C/D in an email that, according to the field report, “The customer was stopped, reaching for his wallet from his rear pocket and using the steering wheel as leverage to lift his body from the seat.” The hub can break away from the steering column, according to the NHTSA filing. So far, no other reports of the steering wheel coming off have been made in the United States. But in January, there was a similar incident in South Korea. An investigation by Hyundai traced it to steering-wheel assemblies from a certain production lot from a supplier. The assemblies could have been built with “insufficient breakage strength,” according to NHTSA documents, which add that molding temperatures may have increased during the production process, causing damage to the parts.

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