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Well, it looks like New GM is not much different than Old GM when it comes to addressing serious safety issues on its vehicles. The Associated Press reports that General Motors CEO, Mary Barra, claims that GM has not turned up any other major safety issues. I guess Ms. Barra feels that two tons of steel traveling at high speeds with brake lines that can burst at any moment is nothing to be concerned about. The continued denial by GM that there is no safety issue with their trucks that are prone to brake line corrosion proves that the...

DETROIT — To the legal department at General Motors, secrecy ruled. Employees were discouraged from taking notes in meetings. Workers’ emails were examined once a year for sensitive information that might be used against the company. G.M. lawyers even kept their knowledge of fatal accidents related to a defective ignition switch from their own boss, the company’s general counsel, Michael P. Millikin. An internal investigation released on Thursday into the company’s failure to recall millions of defective small cars found no evidence of a cover-up. But interviews with victims, their lawyers and current and former G.M. employees, as well as...

Video of press conference at source. General Motors has dismissed 15 employees and disciplined five others in the wake of an internal investigation into the company's handling of defective ignition switches, which lead to at least 13 fatalities. GM CEO Mary Barra says the personnel worked in several areas including engineering, legal and public policy, and that a disproportionate number of them were senior executives or higher. Barra described the conclusions of the investigation as “extremely thorough, brutally tough, and deeply troubling.” Barra says that the report found no conspiracy to cover up facts or trade-off between safety and cost,...

(Reuters) - General Motors on Tuesday apologized to families of accident victims who have been notified to bring in cars for replacement of defective ignition switches. "We are deeply sorry to those families who received a recall notice," said GM spokesman Greg Martin in response to questions from Reuters. GM has recalled 2.6 million of its most popular models to replace a defective switch that it has linked to 13 fatalities. Some families who lost loved ones in fatal crashes have complained that GM should not have sent them notices to bring in cars for repairs. Terri DiBattista, who lost...

(Reuters) - At least 74 people have died in General Motors cars in accidents with some key similarities to those that GM has linked to 13 deaths involving defective ignition switches, a Reuters analysis of government fatal-crash data has determined. Such accidents also occurred at a higher rate in the GM cars than in top competitors’ models, the analysis showed. Reuters searched the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), a national database of crash information submitted by local law-enforcement agencies, for single-car frontal collisions where no front air bags deployed and the driver or front-seat passenger was killed. The news agency...

According to recent reports, GM just recalled another 2.4 million vehicles this week, bringing the total number of recalled GM vehicles this year to a record 13.6 million. USA Today got right to the point when it asked, “Are there any GM cars that haven’t been recalled?” ... GM knew about serious problems with the ignition switch for years, going back to at least 2007. At that time, GM had hard data from multiple crashes showing that some of its ignition switches had failed to function properly. The U.S. government officially bailed out the automaker in December of 2008. Throughout...

GM (GM, Fortune 500) has raised the number of frontal-impact crashes linked to the problem ignitions to 47 from 32, according to company spokesman Greg Martin. Because of the flawed ignition, key rings holding more than one key could cause the ignition to suddenly switch to the off position. That can lead to a loss of power -- locking the steering wheel and interrupting airbags from deploying in an accident. GM says the number of deaths tied to front impact crashes stemming from this defect remains at 13. On Friday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reportedly said the number...

DETROIT — As General Motors faces a number of continuing investigations into its handling of a vehicle safety defect linked to 13 deaths, its legal department has become a focus of a broad internal inquiry into how the company handled the issue, according to two people with knowledge of the investigation. Even as G.M. acknowledged that it knew about the defect for more than a decade, it has insisted that work on the ignition problem was limited to a handful of midlevel employees. But a review of internal documents, emails and interviews paint a different picture, showing that high-ranking officials,...

For the first time, General Motors Co. could have an official of the United Auto Workers union on its board of directors. UAW Vice President Joe Ashton was nominated to a board seat controlled by a UAW trust fund that pays retiree health care bills. He plans to retire from his union post in June. The move, which would be considered common in Europe, is a first for General Motors, and a sign of how the relationship between the company and the union has changed in the past decade. Before that, the UAW battled with the company over wages, benefits...

… Toyota Motor Corp. said Wednesday that it sold 2.583 million vehicles in the January-March period, ahead of Detroit-based GM at 2.42 million and Volkswagen of Germany at 2.4 million. The Japanese automaker’s first quarter sales rose by more than 6 percent from the same period the previous year. GM’s sales grew 2 percent, while Volkswagen’s added nearly 6 percent. …

The president of General Motors said Sunday that the company and local partners are boosting production capacity for GM-brand vehicles in China to 5 million. Speaking at the Beijing auto show, Dan Ammann said the company also expects sales of its Cadillac luxury cars to double to 100,000 next year. General Motors Co. and its Chinese partners are in the midst of what the company has said is a $12 billion investment program through 2017. …

General Motors revealed in court filings late Tuesday that it will soon ask a federal bankruptcy judge to shield the company from legal claims for conduct that occurred before its 2009 bankruptcy. The automaker’s strategy is in a motion filed in a Corpus Christi, Texas, federal court case, and in other cases across the nation that involve the defective ignition switches that have led GM to recall 2.6 million small cars. The motion asks U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos to delay action on the lawsuit until the bankruptcy court rules and other federal courts decide if the case should...

Here's another reason government should never own a business. In February 2010, the Obama administration's transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, told America, without a shred of evidence, that Toyota automobiles were dangerous to drive. LaHood offered the remarks in front of the House subcommittee that was investigating reports of unintended-acceleration crashes. "My advice is, if anybody owns one of these vehicles, stop driving it," he said, sending the company's stock into a nose dive. Even at the time, LaHood's comments were reckless at best. Assailing the competition reeks of political opportunism and cronyism. It also illustrates one of the unavoidable predicaments...

There is a truism in Washington that was confirmed last week in Congress: Even less popular than government regulation is a regulator suspected of not doing its job. Not for the first time, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration — or N.H.T.S.A. (pronounced NITZ-ah) — was forced to answer for failing to protect consumers. In this case, the failure involved a defective General Motors ignition switch implicated in 13 deaths. While G.M.’s new chief executive, Mary T. Barra, took most of the heat in two days of House and Senate hearings last week, she shared the grill with the safety...

General Motors' CEO, Mary Barra, testified this week at government hearings on the deadly recall delay that contributed to at least 13 deaths of motorists driving GM vehicles with defective ignition switches. During that testimony Ms. Barra discussed one of GM's ridiculous early "solutions" for problems with ignitions turning to the off position as vehicles were being driven. GM engineers designed an insert to be placed in the keys' holes in an attempt to limit how much key chains dangled. This "fix" saved the company a few dollars in labor costs that would have been charged if they recalled...

Government Motors. Remember that one? That's a huge, overlooked detail in this whole GM recall crisis - the federal government's oversight of a company they bought out of bankruptcy four years ago and, under their nose, that same company is hiding its deadly, dirty laundry. Charlie LeDuff caught up with California Democrat Henry Waxman, who was head of the United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform at the time of that purchase.

After announcing a short delay “due to a computer systems issue that impacted dealer sales reporting”, General Motors announced that they sold 1,478 Chevy Volts in March – which is exactly the same number of cars they sold a year ago this month. Not the result we were hoping for, as the wind-down of California’s “green sticker” program this week spurred on sales of competitors (like the Toyota Prius – up 92%) to new highs for the year. This month also ‘kind-of ‘ stops a trend of 3 consecutive months (and 5 of 6 overall) of declining sales for the...

Long before the Chevrolet Cobalt became known for having a deadly ignition defect, it was already seen as a lemon. Owners complained about power steering failures, locks inexplicably opening and closing, doors jamming shut in the rain — even windows falling out. Long before the Chevrolet Cobalt became known for having a deadly ignition defect, it was already seen as a lemon. Owners complained about power steering failures, locks inexplicably opening and closing, doors jamming shut in the rain — even windows falling out.

Almost two weeks after NLPC first requested that General Motors recall vehicles with defective power steering components , the company has agreed to the recall and finally remove the dangerous vehicles from the roads. Over 1.3 million Saturn Ions and related vehicles are included in the recall, bringing the total amount of GM vehicles recalled over the past month or so to over 6 million. The total cost to GM for the recalls will be in the billions of dollars with the latest recall probably accounting for over $1.5 billion on its own. The costs to GM's reputation are...

Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore believes that whoever was responsible at General Motors for failing to recall a faulty ignition switch deserves death. "I am opposed to the death penalty, but to every rule there is usually an exception, and in this case I hope the criminals at General Motors will be arrested and made to pay for their pre-meditated decision to take human lives for a lousy ten bucks," he wrote. Moore blamed former President George W. Bush's transportation Department for ignoring the problem in 2007 and praised new GM CEO Mary Barra for telling the truth about the problem.