GM To Recall 1.3 Million Cobalt/G5s

by Cammy Corrigan

Published: March 2nd, 2010

We at TTAC, (well, me, only) have said that since everyone is raining a storm down on Toyota other recalls are slipping by without equal scrutiny. So when I read this article, I thought it fair, in the interests of journalism, to blog it. Not because of who it is, but the reasoning around it.

The BBC reports that General Motors are going to recall 1.3 million vehicles which are affected by the power steering problem which the NHTSA has been investigating. This problem has been linked to 14 crashes. The vehicles affected are the Chevrolet Cobalt, the Pontiac G5, Pontiac Pursuit and Pontiac 4. Some of these recalled cars were also sold in Canada and Mexico. The fault was that at low speeds, greater steering effort may be required but that the cars still could be “safely controlled” (try telling that to the 14 people who crashed). The steering part which failed, apparently, came from a supplier which is part owned by Toyota, but “Maximum” Bob Lutz, naturally, accepted the blame on behalf of GM. He said “This is a case where, yes, we would blame a partially Toyota-owned supplier.”. He went on to say that the supplier had not met “all requirements for reliability and durability”. Hang on a cotton picking minute…

Are you saying that GM didn’t supply a drawing and specification to the supplier? And if they didn’t, GM didn’t approve the supplier’s unit? Didn’t GM perform any quality control on the units delivered by the supplier? This sounds awfully like another company. GM’s Vice President of Quality, Jamie Hresko said (via Reuters) that ” After our in-depth investigation, we found that is a condition that takes time to develop. It tends to occur in older models out of warranty,”. While I’m not expecting a full congressional hearing or a suspension of sales of cars, it will be interesting to see if a similar amount of media scrutiny will ensue over this issue. Or will the press file this under “dog bites man”?

#Chevrolet #Cobalt #GM #PR #Quality #Recall #Safety

Cammy Corrigan

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2 of 38 comments

Loser on Mar 02, 2010

I don't understand why people make such a big deal out of recalls. These are mass produced machines with thousands of parts. Why is it such a surprise when something goes wrong. With all the crap on today's cars I'm amazed that we don't have more recalls than we do.

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Joe_thousandaire on Mar 02, 2010

Its been in the media quite a bit today. One of the first stories I saw when I flipped on the laptop today. Obviously this recall won't get all the attention Toyota's UA problems have because 1: There haven't been any fatalities and 2: GM (especially the effected models) doesn't have the expectation of quality to begin with. It will be interesting to see if GM catches any heat for the timing of this recall, because much the same as Toyota's acceleration problems, the steering on these models has been suffering with complaints for quite some time prior to this announcement.

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