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GM Apologizes as Ignition Recall Widened to 1.6 Million Cars – 2/25/14
The Center for Auto Safety is the nation’s premier independent, member driven, non-profit consumer advocacy organization dedicated to improving vehicle safety, quality, and fuel economy on behalf of all drivers, passengers, and pedestrians.
General Motors Co. (GM:US), saying it was “deeply sorry,” more than doubled the scope of a vehicle recall to fix defective ignition switches now linked to 13 deaths from airbags failing to deploy.
The recalls, limited initially to 778,562 Chevrolet Cobalt and Pontiac G5 cars, were widened to include 2003-2007 Saturn Ions, 2006-2007 Chevrolet HHRs, 2006-2007 Pontiac Solstice and the 2006-2007 Saturn Sky, the Detroit-based company said in a statement today. About 1.62 million cars are now included.
U.S. auto-safety regulators were told in 2007 of a possible link between defective ignition switches and airbags not deploying, Bloomberg News reported last week. GM described the issue in a technical service bulletin the previous year.
“The chronology shows that the process employed to examine this phenomenon was not as robust as it should have been,” GM’s North America president, Alan Batey, said in a statement. “Today’s GM is committed to doing business differently and better. We will take an unflinching look at what happened and apply lessons learned here to improve going forward.”