Half Of Recalled GM Cars Still Unrepaired, Raising Safety Concerns

Nearly nine months after General Motors began recalling millions of its cars for a dangerously defective ignition switch, almost half of the vehicles still have not been fixed.

A spokesman for the automaker said it was increasing its outreach to owners through social media and a new call center staffed with 72 employees dedicated to contacting those who have not scheduled repairs.

But even owners who requested repairs months ago have been waiting, with dealers managing waiting lists and dozens of drivers writing to federal regulators in recent weeks asking why it was taking so long. Some of them are also raising safety concerns about the drawn-out timetable.

GM faces multiple investigations, including a federal criminal inquiry, over its decade-long delay in ordering a recall of the cars with the defective switch, which has been linked to thirty deaths. But less attention has been paid to the company’s oversight of the recall itself and the critical task of fixing the 2.36 million cars — of the 2.6 million originally recalled — that it estimates are still in use.

While GM says it has all the parts to fix every car — produced ahead of schedule by its supplier Delphi Automotive — just 1.26 million, or 53 percent, of those cars had been repaired as of late-October. The average completion rate of repairs on recalled cars in the United States is 75 percent over an average of eighteen months, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The recall repair rates on older vehicles tend to be lower.

GM partly attributes the large number of unrepaired cars to inaction by owners. "People are very busy, and it can be a challenge to find the time to take their vehicle in to be repaired," said a spokesman, James Cain.

However, some dealers have had a hard time keeping up with demand. Freehold Buick in Freehold, NJ, was so deluged with ignition switch repair requests that it dedicated a full day exclusively to making the repair, cutting the waiting list of about one hundred people in half, according to the dealership’s service manager.

A few vehicle owners who had a replacement switch installed reported that they were still having stalling or other ignition problems, such as keys that could not be removed.

Back to NAFA Connection