The following is taken from a Consumer Reports article published a couple years ago: Recently, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) requested that Chrysler initiate a safety recall of the 1993-2004 Jeep Grand Cherokee to address a performance and design defect. NHTSA is calling for Chrysler to improve the rear-crash protection in approximately 2.7 million vehicles. In a widely distributed press release, Chrysler gave a rare response and effectively said, "No." Chrysler's position is that these vehicles are safe and not defective. NHTSA and safety advocates disagree. Both Chrysler and NHTSA agree that the Jeep in question met federal safety standards in place at the time. But that doesn't mean NHTSA, in its own words, can ignore deadly problems. The NHTSA safety investigation into the Grand Cherokee was launched in 2010 in response to a petition by the Center for Auto Safety (CAS), one of the nation's oldest safety lobbying groups, after CAS shared analysis that found a higher rate of fatal fires in Grand Cherokees in the federal Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) database than other comparable vehicles. In fact, CAS Executive Director Clarence Ditlow said there had been 10 times as many fire deaths in Grand Cherokees