Is GM's Recall Mania More Corporate Blundering or a Strategic Move?
Megan McArdle, over at Bloomberg View, wonders out loud if the flood of recalls issued by General Motors, covering every car they’ve sold for the past three years and a wide swatch of the vehicles the company has made and sold over the past decade and a half is a deliberate strategy on the part of the company to protect its image with consumers from further harm. The strategy may be working. The sales reports for June show that the current sales of new GM vehicles seems to be unaffected by all of the publicity and controversy surrounding defective ignition switches that can shut off the car, rendering the airbag systems inoperable in case of a subsequent collision.
Some may see, in the recalls, just more of the same poor quality that many consumers associate, correctly or otherwise, with the domestic automakers, particularly GM. McArdle is not so sure that is how the massive recalls will ultimately play with the broad market:
I wonder if something else isn’t going on, something smarter. I wonder if GM hasn’t decided to go hog wild on the recalls because at this point they have nothing to lose.
There’s a point in a bad scandal where things have gotten about as bad as they could possibly get. New revelations don’t make things worse, because they hardly could be any worse. Instead, they get lost in the deafening noise of prior bad news.
At that point, it’s a good idea to announce anything that you’ve been worrying about might one day come out. People won’t really notice now, and by the time they’ve recovered sufficiently to take an interest, your worrisome story is old news.
What sayest the Best & Brightest on the matter? Blunder or brilliant?
Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, a realistic perspective on cars & car culture and the original 3D car site. If you found this post worthwhile, you can get a parallax view at Cars In Depth. If the 3D thing freaks you out, don’t worry, all the photo and video players in use at the site have mono options. Thanks for reading – RJS
Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, the original 3D car site.
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Ya know, all this GM talk, but I would be willing to bet that Honda has recalled as much of a percentage of their fleet over the last 10 years as GM. For our 2003 CR-V, it had I think it was four recalls and two extensions of warranty, not to mention numerous service bulletins specifically related to cheap parts. Wobbly seat anyone? To this day the lapse in parts quality by Honda and never seems to get mentioned, but I saw it and drove it from new in 2003. It's one of the reasons that we own Mazda now. GM is, as it was years ago, an easy target, but they are not alone in the cheapening up of parts and such, and the failures that go along with it.
I'm glad to see _someone_ learned from Nixon and Watergate...