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In this paper, a proactive vehicle recall is discussed as an efficient strategy preventing corporate crisis by literature review. For this purpose, we got some facts from literatures and statistics and put them into the frame of Fink’s 4 phases of corporate crisis management and found the conclusion. Motor vehicle companies should remedy their vehicles whenever they know some vehicles or items of motor vehicle equipments have any harmful defect, voluntarily or enforcedly. Harmful defects means that vehicles cannot protect lives or assets. Some of motor companies, however, hid the defects information to the public and the defects developed into a crisis. Ford/Firestone and Toyota were the typical cases. Some points reviewed are summarized as follows. If a safety defect is developed to a crisis, indirect costs are more severe than direct costs. But the indirect costs of usual recalls(which are not developed into crises) are not high, and the recalls does not make severe sales drop or decrease of shareholder’s return. Companies can control the consumers’ brand attitude by it’s reaction to the defects. These results show that the cost can not be a reason to hesitate recalling vehicles when motor companies find a safety defect. Instead they can reduce the indirect costs by a proactive recall. Meanwhile, crisis developing process can be classified into 4 phases. At first, some of consumers complain about some products. In the preliminary crisis period, the company can control the situation by proactive recall. The targets of the crisis management could be enhancing reliability and trust at the period. If one failed to control the preliminary crisis and the complaints reach some critical point, the crisis develops rapidly into acute and chronic phase. The company can control the situation very hardly in the zone. The target of crisis management is to minimize the negative effects of the crisis defensively. Important point is to prevent safety defects from developing into a crisis by a safety defect by making usual recalls. Proactive recalls can even be considered to reduce total costs. So, the effective strategy is a proactive recall. Every recall is not necessarily developed into a crisis. The cost of a recall is acceptable compared to the cost of a crisis. It means that proactive recalls are more efficient than managing crises. Crisis usually signals before it comes for a long time. So, corporate leaders have to recognize the signals and to prevent any corporate crisis by proactive recalls.