I worked for Jaguar Land Rover for a number of years and we couldn’t bring the Defender to the US (I was told) because it lacked a proper airbag on the steering wheel. I’m sure it was slightly more complicated than that, but it makes for great story of regulation gone awry.
> it makes for great story of regulation gone awryHow so? A driver side airbag sounds like an important safety feature.
Don’t misunderstand, I’m not saying that I don’t think a driver’s side airbag is not worth it, I’m sure it is. But if that’s all it was, surely we would’ve just put a different steering wheel in the American version. The reality is probably more complicated, but it gets stuffed into this little anecdote.
Airbag unit itself, module, and the calibration for it. They need to smash a bunch of vehicles to do calibration. It’s not really worth it in the case of vehicles where development was shut down a long time ago.