Of course I don’t know and it’s possible no one will ever know for sure but I suspect that about the time this thing started (2002-2003) is when GM knew they were in real financial trouble. Though it will be denied they were very worried about the bottom line and chose to ignore some problems they may not have ignored previously.
It looks to me like they gambled this wouldn’t turn out to be the mess it evolved into and now it has. There’s evidence of a potential problem they knew about and also evidence of them trying to sweep it under the rug.
Now the NHTSA is saying GM didn’t tell them about all this but of course there’s no way GM would if the above scenario is basically what happened and the NHTSA knew there were deaths. Looks like a lot of buck is being passed.
NTSB was under the Obama admin at the critical points in question. Note that they were beating the hell out of Toyota during this time. I would bet money that the WH was leaning on the NTSB to leave GM alone. They had to protect their investment.
They can add it to their Top Ten “Lessons Learned” and if the families who lost loved ones don’t receive “justice” and feel that life is unfair to them then there may be another kind of lesson learned. It’s unfortunate but the world doesn’t stop turning and the lesson is not always as well-learned as it could’ve been.