A leading US car rental company has recently ordered thousands of cars minus side impact airbags in a bid to save money, and then later sold the vehicles to buyers without the safety feature.

Enterprise Rent-A-Car ordered a fleet of Chevy Impalas without the standard side impact protection, choosing not to purchase the optional standard.

Following the rental of the vehicles, the US based Enterprise sold their vehicles on their website, but failed to point out that the vehicles were missing air bags.

The company defended their decision to opt out of the safety device, noting that airbags are not yet required by the government.

It was estimated that the decision to leave out the airbags saved Enterprise approximately $11.5 million on 66,000 cars.

According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, studies show that side impact airbags can reduce highway deaths by up to 45 percent, and 8,000 motorists were killed in side-impact collisions in 2007 alone.

A company spokesperson said:  “In some circumstances a software glitch caused us to describe them incorrectly as having air bags [on our Web site]. When we found out, we immediately fixed the problem.”