In the space of about three weeks this summer, Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Commerce published safety recalls covering three of the European marques most common on Jeddah roads. If you drive a BMW 5 or 7 Series, any recent Range Rover, Defender or Discovery, or an Audi Q5, it is worth two minutes of your time to check.
We do not perform recall work — by design, that goes through the authorised dealer and it is free. But we see these cars every day, and an owner who does not know their car is subject to an open recall is carrying a risk they did not choose. So here is the plain version.
BMW 5 Series and 7 Series — fire risk from seat wiring
6,574 vehicles, 2023 to 2025 model years.
The defect is in the driver's seat wiring harness, which may cause an electrical short circuit — the stated risk is smoke emission or a vehicle fire. Repairs are handled free of charge through Mohammed Yousuf Naghi.
This is the one on the list we would treat with the most urgency, simply because of what the failure mode is. A wiring fault that can produce smoke or fire is not something to leave until the next service.
Land Rover — airbag may fail to deploy
14,470 vehicles across Range Rover, Defender and Discovery, 2020 to 2026 model years.
The fault is in the driver's airbag connector, which may prevent the airbag from deploying in a crash. Nothing about the car will feel different — that is precisely the problem. An airbag that does not deploy gives no warning that it will not deploy.
This is by far the largest of the three by volume, and the model year range is wide. Repairs go through Mohamed Yousuf Naghi Motors.
Audi Q5 — seat belt tensioner
96 vehicles.
A defect in the seat belt pretensioner, the mechanism that pulls the belt tight in the instant before an impact. A small number of cars is affected, but if yours is one of them, the number being small is not much comfort. Handled through Samaco.
Range Rover Evoque — airbag may tear and release hot gases
717 vehicles, 2021 to 2025 model years.
A separate Land Rover recall from the one above, and a different failure entirely. Here the concern is that the airbag could tear during deployment and release hot gases — so the risk is burn injury to an occupant in a crash the airbag was supposed to help with.
Repairs are free through Mohamed Yousuf Naghi Motors, and you check by VIN at recalls.sa like the others.
Worth being clear that this is a second, distinct Land Rover action. If you own an Evoque of this age and you checked your VIN earlier in the summer against the other recall, check it again — a clear result then does not cover this one.
How to check whether your car is affected
Recalls attach to the vehicle identification number, not to the owner and not to the model. Two cars of the same year and model can have different outcomes depending on when they were built and which parts went into them. So a model-year list tells you whether to check; only the VIN tells you the answer.
Your VIN is on the vehicle registration, and usually visible through the windscreen at the base of the driver's side, or on a plate inside the driver's door frame.
With it, you can check on the Ministry of Commerce recalls service, or on the manufacturer's own Saudi recall page — BMW Saudi Arabia and the other importers publish VIN checkers for exactly this purpose. If you would rather not, ask the dealer's service line directly; they can look it up in seconds.
Four things owners routinely get wrong about recalls
"My car is out of warranty, so I'll have to pay." No. A safety recall is free regardless of the car's age, mileage or warranty status. There is no expiry on the manufacturer's obligation to fix a safety defect it identified.
"I bought it used, so it doesn't apply to me." It applies to the car, not the buyer. In fact used buyers are the most exposed group, because the recall notice went to whoever owned it at the time — and there is a good chance that letter reached someone else entirely, or nobody at all.
"I didn't buy it from that dealer." Irrelevant. Any authorised dealer for the marque handles the recall, regardless of where the car was originally sold — including grey imports, in most cases.
"The car drives fine, so it must be fine." Two of these three recalls are for components that do nothing at all until the moment you need them. An airbag connector fault and a seat belt pretensioner fault are both entirely invisible in normal driving. That is what makes them worth checking rather than waiting to notice.
What we can and cannot do
To be straightforward about it: we cannot carry out recall work. It has to go through the authorised dealer, and it is free there — you should not pay anyone, including us, for a repair the manufacturer owes you.
What we do is tell you. When a car comes in and we can see it falls inside an open recall's model range, we say so, and we would rather send you to Naghi or Samaco for that specific job than stay quiet about it.
Everything else — the service, the diagnosis, the repairs the manufacturer does not owe you — is the part we are here for. And if you would like a second opinion on something a dealer has quoted you separately from the recall work, we will read the car and tell you what we find.
Check it today
If you own one of these four, take the two minutes. If you are not sure whether your car falls in range, send us the VIN on WhatsApp and we will tell you what we can see — and point you at the right dealer if it does.
The national picture
For scale: more than 36,800 vehicles were recalled in Saudi Arabia in the first half of 2026, against 87,290 in the same period of 2025 — so recall volume is running well below last year. Across that period the brands involved included Toyota, Hyundai, Honda, Chevrolet, Land Rover, Audi, Ford and Lucid, covering airbags, seat belts, rear cameras, transmissions, fuel pumps, brake boosters and battery systems.
A recall is not a scandal. It is the system working. The failure is not the recall being issued — it is the owner never hearing about it.