FRANKFURT -- Volkswagen has been forced to reduce production of Passat cars at its Emden plant in northern Germany for four days starting Thursday because of a shortage of glove-box doors caused by a fire at one of its suppliers, a German report said.
Recitel suffered an extensive fire several weeks ago at its plant in Most in the Czech Republic and has been unable to deliver a number of urethane components used by VW and other automakers, Automobil Produktion reported on Wednesday.
According to the report, VW has managed to source some glove-box doors from another supplier in China, but the new supply is expected to last just a few days.
"It is not possible to quickly replace the tools needed by the [Czech] supplier," a VW spokesman was quoted as saying by the report.
As a result of the shortage, VW now has the problem of finding storage space for 20,000 new Passats that cannot be shipped until the missing part has been fitted.
"We are looking for a large parking space within 100 kilometers of the factory," the VW spokesman was quoted as saying in the report.
The VW Passat was the top-selling mainstream midsize car in Europe through November with sales of 190,736, a fall of 8 percent, according to data from JATO Dynamics.
