My current car is a Buick Lacrosse, less than 2 years old and of course Made in China (actually even Made in Shanghai). A great car, both to drive yourself and with a driver – with controls for everything on the middle console in the backseat. Never had any big problems with it, but that’s probably logical with such a new car and if you drive less than 10.000 km per year.

Until a week ago, that is. On New Year’s Day I drove with my parents through the French Concession behind a taxi. We approached a traffic light that was green, and which turned orange when we were about 50 meters away from it. The taxi was even closer to the light, so I assumed he would speed up and drive through. Wrong. He suddenly braked, and I had to make an emergency stop to avoid hitting him. And that’s when I realized that my brakes did not work well. I did not drive fast, but the car did not slow down fast either. It sort of skidded from left to right and the brakes made strange sounds. I had to steer my car into the other lane, where there was luckily no traffic, in order to avoid hitting the taxi. Scary, but nothing happened.

I decided to tell my driver about it so he could go to the workshop to get my brakes checked, but forgot about it. To my surprise my wife called me two days later, telling me that there was a recall for all Buick Lacrosse cars because of possible brake failure. Seriously, I do not make this up. I never had any problems, and two days after I notice there is a problem we get a phone call from our dealer to bring the car in for exactly that problem. A pure coincidence. I am glad the emergency brake situation did not happen at higher speeds at a more dangerous location. My car will be repaired as soon as possible, that’s for sure.