Stellantis wants this to read like a routine safety notice. Read the paperwork closely, though, and it looks more like a confession: the automaker has now told owners of certain Jeep Grand Cherokees, in writing, three separate times across three years, that their rear suspension had been fixed. Twice, it hadn’t been.
A recall is supposed to be the end of a problem. For this batch of Grand Cherokees, it has become a running bit.
What Just Happened
On September 1, 2026, Chrysler (FCA US, LLC) — Stellantis’ U.S. entity — filed a new recall with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration covering 328,381 vehicles: the 2021-2023 Jeep Grand Cherokee L, the 2022-2023 Jeep Grand Cherokee, and the Grand Cherokee 4xe plug-in hybrid. The rear coil springs, the filing says, may have been installed incorrectly and can detach while the vehicle is being driven. NHTSA’s standard language for what that means is blunt: it can “increase the risk of a crash.”
This time, the remedy actually names a part. Dealers will replace the rear coil spring’s lower isolators, free of charge, once the repair procedure is finalized. Interim letters warning owners of the risk are scheduled to go out September 29, 2026. If you’re the type to check your VIN the day a recall drops, don’t bother yet: NHTSA says these VINs won’t be searchable in its own database until September 9, 2026.
The Same Recall, Three Times
Here’s the detail that should stop you: this is the third time Stellantis has recalled this exact defect on this exact platform.
The first version arrived in June 2023, covering 305,282 vehicles. The instructed fix was for dealers to inspect the rear coil spring assembly and repair it only if something looked wrong. No guaranteed new part. Just a look.
That didn’t hold. In January 2026, Stellantis filed a second recall that formally canceled the first one, covering the same basic defect on the same models, now with the Grand Cherokee 4xe added to the list. Oddly, the count shrank to 80,620 vehicles, as if the company believed it had finally narrowed the risk pool to the vehicles that truly needed attention. The filing noted, in the dry language regulators use to describe a fix that didn’t work, that vehicles already repaired once would need the new remedy performed anyway.
Eight months later, recall number three landed, canceling both earlier campaigns and blowing past even the original scope: 328,381 vehicles, more than either recall that preceded it. Anyone who sat through repair number one, or number two, or both, is now due back a third time.
Why a Rubber Bushing Keeps Beating a Global Automaker
A rear coil spring isn’t held in place by tension alone. It sits in a perch, cushioned top and bottom by isolators, rubber or composite pads that stop metal from grinding on metal and keep the spring from walking out of position over millions of compression cycles. Get that isolator wrong on the assembly line, missing, misaligned, or simply the wrong part, and the spring can work itself loose gradually, sometimes over months of ordinary driving, before it finally lets go. That tends to happen on rough pavement or over a hard bump, which is exactly when a driver has the least warning and the least room to react.
That’s an assembly-line problem, not a design flaw, which explains Stellantis’ first instinct back in 2023: send technicians out to eyeball spring assemblies dealership by dealership and replace only what looked wrong. That approach costs far less across 300,000-plus vehicles than mandating a new part for every single one. It’s also, evidently, why the defect kept resurfacing.
The Paperwork Even Stellantis Couldn’t Keep Straight
Stellantis’ own 2023 Corporate Social Responsibility Report lists a coil-spring detachment campaign of roughly 0.3 million vehicles among the recalls the company credits itself for handling openly. Oddly, the report appears to mislabel the vehicle involved, attaching the Grand Cherokee’s internal WL platform code to the Wrangler nameplate instead. A company that couldn’t keep its own recall straight in a report meant to showcase its transparency has now had two more chances to get it right.
What This Actually Costs Owners
This isn’t really a story about a bad spring. It’s a story about what an inspect-and-repair-as-necessary remedy is worth in a federal safety recall. When a manufacturer can close out a recall by telling dealers to look at a part rather than replace it, the company gets a cheaper campaign. Owners, in this case, got a fix that needed fixing twice more.
The paper trail matters beyond the dealership visit, too. A used Grand Cherokee from these model years may now carry three separate recall entries against a single VIN for what most shoppers would assume was one problem, exactly the kind of history that makes a buyer, or an insurer pricing a claim after a spring shears off in traffic, start asking harder questions.
Stellantis isn’t the only automaker learning that a recall notice and a fixed car aren’t the same thing. The Auto Wire has covered how a software recall with zero injuries still cost the company real money on Wall Street, and the habit of treating a recall as a communications exercise rather than a closed loop shows up across the industry: see how Mitsubishi’s backup camera kept vanishing on the same model years, or how GM handled a leaky coolant hose completely differently depending on which badge was on the hood.
Owners who received a letter in 2023, or another one in early 2026, and assumed the matter was closed should assume nothing until they read whatever arrives this fall.
The spring was never the interesting part of this story. The interesting part is that it took Stellantis three tries, three years, and 328,381 VINs to learn that looking at a part isn’t the same as fixing it.