2011 Saab 9-5

Ford Motor said it is expanding its safety recall on vehicles that have Takata Corp's airbag inflators after Takata declared that those inflators were defective.

Five million more cars are being recalled in the US due to faulty airbag inflators manufactured by Takata.

The Rangers also were recalled previous year to replace the passenger air bag inflators. This move was prompted in part by a tragic incident, in which a driver of a Ford Ranger pickup lost his life in an accident, as well as new tests run by the regulators on some defective airbags.

"(It) sheds light on the risks of having a supplier be the source for so many cars across so many companies", said Erik Gordon, a business professor at the University of MI.

An official at Japan's transport ministry told Bloomberg that it is looking into the latest recalls, by Ford Motor Co., Honda, Volkswagen AG, Daimler AG, Audi AG, Mazda Motor Corp., Saab AB and BMW AG, over Takata airbags. No decision has been made about whether they will invest in a production joint venture, Hirokawa said.

The shares declined as much as 10 percent to 605 yen as of 9:21 a.m.in Tokyo, its lowest intraday price since March 2009. The company's market capitalization has fallen to about 50 billion yen ($421 million), according to the Wall Street Journal. This was the ninth death in the US and the first one in the world to happen in a non-Honda vehicle.