Maruti recalling A-Star on fuel leakage

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Leading Indian carmaker Maruti Suzuki India, 54 percent owned by Japan's Suzuki Motor, is recalling 100,000 of its A-Star hatchbacks, potentially undermining future sales of the best-selling vehicle.

The recall of the model, which is mainly exported to several countries including Germany, Britain and France, began in November to fix a fuel leakage problem, a spokesman for the company told Reuters on Tuesday.

Shares in the company ended down 3.2 percent at 1,336.85 rupees on Tuesday in a Mumbai market that rose 0.3 percent.

"I think there has been an impact to sentiment considering what is going on globally," Vaishali Jajoo, an auto-sector analyst at Angel Broking, said.

"Everybody is fearing whether it can spread to other models, but I cannot guess whether that will actually happen," she said.

Maruti's move comes as Japanese rival Toyota Motor Corp is embroiled in a much larger recall of 8.5 million vehicles globally in recent months for problems including sticky accelerators and a braking glitch affecting its hybrid models.

The Maruti spokesman said there had been no customer complaints but an internal analysis had shown that when fuel was filled beyond a certain point, there was a possibility of leakage. About 50 percent of the faulty cars have been fixed.

These vehicles belonged to a lot made until Aug. 22 last year, he said.