What We Don't Know About GM May Be Deeper Than Anyone Could Imagine

This website has not shied away from the challenge of documenting everything related to General Motors' recall woes. Well, at this juncture, characterizing the deaths, scores of injuries, and untold number of lives broken due to GM’s inexplicable penny-pinching as mere “woes” would be unacceptably disrespectful to the deceased and their families. And I say it’s a “challenge” to keep up with the daily revelations regarding GM’s failures because every day the news-consuming public gains new insight into things the company’s powers-that-be would most certainly have liked to keep in the board room and out of the headlines.

The engineers say they 'ordered a similar fix to a similar problem in smaller, cheaper cars linked to 13 deaths.'

Whenever a consumer products writer is at a loss of ideas, it’s as if a simple Google search for “GM recall” can miraculously cure even the most stubborn writer’s block. For those who enjoy seeing massive corporations brought to their knees from shortcomings traced back to the people “in charge,” the GM recall spigot is flowing strong and will remain open until someone, anyone, at the company can figure out how to cap it.

Or until someone’s knee bumps into it and shuts it off by mistake.

This week, it was brought to light that—surprise—GM engineers experienced ignition switch problems in 2006 while testing the company’s Cadillac SRX model, reporting that they were able to accidentally switch the vehicle off with their knees. According to Reuters, the engineers say they “ordered a similar fix to a similar problem in smaller, cheaper cars linked to 13 deaths.” You see where this is going, no?

Documents obtained by U.S. safety regulators revealed GM used the same part from its Cadillac Catera sedan to make the now-infamous ignition switches installed in the 2007 Cadillac SRX Crossover and 2007 Saturn Ion and Chevy Cobalt sedans. As far as anyone knows, this is the first instance of additional vehicles being associated with the recall blamed for 13 deaths (so far) aside from those already listed. Although GM sold far fewer Cadillacs than Cobalts and Ions, the customer complaints of sudden engine stalls existed. And nothing was done about it.

Facing a potential tsunami of litigation, GM earlier this week said it will ask a U.S. court to forbid lawsuits from being filed that are related to anything that took place before the company went bankrupt in 2009. At the time the company went bankrupt, according to CNN Money, GM faced roughly 2,500 lawsuits filed over various allegations. The issue at hand is whether the federal protections gained by GM in 2009 after declaring bankruptcy—that essentially let the company be born again as a new corporation unchained to any lawsuits filed against it in its previous form—will help the company fight off any suits related to its ignition switch defect.

The two stories detailed above were filed and published only hours apart by major media outlets and should serve as more red flags for consumers regarding the culture of secrecy GM is trying to maintain under the Congressional microscope. Even earlier in the week, two high-ranking executives were dismissed from GM by new CEO Mary Barra. Before that? Reports of GM’s bottom line remaining unaffected by the deadly recall fiasco. How can that be? According to one report, it might have something to do with the number of consumers who simply ignore recall notices alerting them to serious, potentially deadly issues with their vehicles. All of these things are of concern to consumers and should be looked at as signs that there are things going on behind the scenes at GM that have spilled out of the tidy little box public relations industry people refer to as “damage control.”

It is imperative that the informed consumer vet each piece of news they read about GM. More importantly, it’s crucial that we always keep in mind that what we don’t know about the company’s ignition switch fiasco will almost certainly go far deeper than what we’ll ever come to find out.