Interpretation ID: nht72-3.29

DATE: 03/23/72

FROM: AUTHOR UNAVAILABLE; Robert L. Carter; NHTSA

TO: Universal Oil Products Company

TITLE: FMVSS INTERPRETATION

TEXT: This is in reply to your letter of March 3, 1972, in which you asked several questions concerning the effects of Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 207 on a type of center console seat manufactured by your company.

Before answering your specific questions about the standard, I want to clear up what seems to be a misconception in your letter about the obligations created by the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act. The Act (Illegible Word) us authority to issue safety standards and provides, in Section 108(a), that no person shall

manufacture for sale, sell, offer for sale, or introduce or deliver for introduction in interstate commerce . . . any motor vehicle or item of motor vehicle equipment manufactured on or after the date any applicable Federal motor vehicle safety standard takes effect. . . unless it is in conformity with such standard.

A dealer or distributor of a vehicle manufactured after the effective date of an applicable standard is thus obligated to maintain the vehicle in conformity with the standard, even though he might be in the "after-market" according to your terminology.

To answer your specific questions:

1. A seat installed on or after January 1, 1972, on a truck manufactured before January 1, 1972, will not have to conform to the standard. A truck manufactured before January 1, 1972, would not have had to conform on the date of its manufacture. Since the standard applies only to the vehicle and not to the equipment separately, the date of the vehicle's manufacture is controlling.

2 and 3. A seat installed on a truck manufactured on or after January 1, 1972, will have to conform to the standard, except that a person who has purchased a truck for his own use and not for resale may have a seat installed after purchase even though the seat does not conform. The standard does not regulate seats as a separate item of equipment and therefore does not expressly prohibit their sale and installation in this fashion.