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(Reuters) - Federal prosecutors are developing a criminal fraud case hinged on whether General Motors made misleading statements about a deadly ignition switch flaw, and are examining activity dating back a decade, before GM's 2009 bankruptcy, according to multiple sources familiar with the investigation. At the same time, at least a dozen states are investigating the automaker. Two state officials said that effort is likely to focus on whether GM broke consumer protection laws. Both federal and state investigations into the switch, which is linked to at least 13 deaths and 54 crashes, are at early stages, and it is...

What the hell is going on over at General Motors? First the manufacturer announced on February 7th that a defect relating to 619,122 cars was identified, but that figure hiked to 25.7 million vehicles to date. As if that wasn't enough of a handful, the carmaker gets utterly ridiculous because of 542 redesigned ignition switches recalled in view of a faulty tab. According to an official statement, those 542 badly designed replacement ignition switch kits will be brought back to the Delphi Automotive plant in Mexico, disposed of and replaced with better built ones. Furthermore, this botchy mess "convinced" Delphi...

Subaru last week announced a second recall for vehicles which are prone to brake line corrosion in "salt belt" states. This latest recall follows a 2013 recall for the same issue, which can cause brake failure from burst brake lines due to rust. As Subaru does the right thing by consumers and motorists regarding the safety concern, General Motors continues to claim that brake line rust is a normal maintenance issue and refuses to recall its vehicles with the same problem. The Subaru recall weakens GM's defense that rusting brake lines do not need to be addressed by manufacturers...

Manchester United, along with several English Premier League teams, unveiled its uniform for the 2014-15 season. It's your typical Man U look, with a Nike swoosh and crest on the front. There is something slightly different. Ah yes, a bit of white in the collar. That's it. Oh and a giant Chevrolet logo. That's also new.

General Motors continues to deny that there is a problem with rusting brake lines on its vehicles, as noted here yesterday. GM's new Vice President of Global Safety, Jeffrey Boyer, claims that brake line rust "is a maintenance issue that affects the entire automotive industry." However, a search of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) website shows that GM vehicles have about ten times the complaints for brake lines than Ford, Toyota and Honda combined! NHTSA has a tool to allow searches for complaints by keyword. While there is an ongoing NHTSA investigation on model year 1999 to 2003...

 *Actual Results May VaryEven as bumper sticker slogans go, it was a bit dubious from the start. Now it looks like it was actually the other way around.The claim seemed bogus from the moment the angry mob in Cairo chanted “Obama! Obama! There are still a billion Osamas!” right up through this month’s resurgence of al Qaeda in Iraq.And as far as GM goes, it appears that rumors of its survival may have been exaggerated as well. Despite life support efforts that included the removal of crushing debt from its books and infusions of billions in special future tax breaks,...

One could say things about what is now without doubt the biggest company joke in the history of the US - maybe global - automotive sector, putting even East Germany's infamous Trabant to shame. Things like following the just announced latest recall of another 7.6 million cars across models from 1997 to 2014, and another 800K+ cars thrown in just because, GM has recalled more cars in the first 6 months of 2014 than it has sold in all of 2011, 2012 and 2013. Which incidentally would be true as the chart below shows.

...The decision on how much to pay claimants is being made by compensation expert Kenneth Feinberg. GM says the faulty switches are responsible for at least 54 crashes and more than 13 deaths.....

Detroit: General Motors Co., which has recalled about 20 million cars and trucks in North America this year, added 428,111 more US vehicles to that tally, including its redesigned full-sized pickups and large sport-utility vehicles. GM said it needs to recalibrate software that controls the gears to fix the four-wheel drive on 392,459 pickups and SUVs, including the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups from 2014 and 2015 model years and the 2015 Chevy Tahoe and Suburban. The effected models can switch into neutral on their own, the automaker said on Friday in an e-mailed statement. If this occurs while...

There are plenty of smartphone apps that make it easier to flirt and set up dates with strangers, but GM has an ace up its sleeve that may trump all of them. No, the car manufacturer isn’t muscling its way into the dating game – at least not directly. But its China R&D team has developed an Android app that lets a driver scan a license plate in order to start texting the owner of that car. The romantic implications of DiDi Plate, a prototype app debuted earlier this month at the Telematics Detroit 2014 conference, are obvious enough, even...

The unsparing and harshly critical report from attorney Anton Valukas' investigation into General Motors, which held its annual shareholders meeting Tuesday morning, finds an array of culprits behind the company's ignition switch crisis. It cites a lack of urgency in the culture and, as GM CEO Mary Barra described it, "a pattern of incompetence." It blames an unwillingness of those in the know to reconsider their conclusions, and a dizzying number of committees with little clear accountability. The report also makes several references to the role corporate speak played in the wrongdoing. Typically, we think of corporate speak as trivialities...

(Reuters) - A new lawsuit says General Motors Co should compensate millions of car and truck owners for lost resale value, potentially exceeding $10 billion, because a slew of recalls and a deadly delay in recalling cars with defective ignition switches has damaged its brand. According to a complaint filed on Wednesday with the federal court in Riverside, California, GM hurt customers by concealing known defects and valuing cost-cutting over safety, leading to roughly 40 recalls covering more than 20 million vehicles this year alone. It said this has caused a variety of late-model vehicles to lose roughly $500 to...

House lawmakers told General Motors CEO Mary Barra on Wednesday that they were not satisfied with her company’s own probe into the slow recall of defective, deadly vehicles. "I want to be clear today that our investigation does continue,” Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), said. Barra was returning to Capitol Hill for the first time since releasing an internal review that found GM had a pattern of " incompetence and neglect " that led to its failure to recall more than two million defective cars made from the mid-2000’s until earlier this year. GM fired 15 people...

A Texas woman who became a convicted felon for causing a 2004 car crash that killed her fiancé has learned that General Motors (GM) counts the accident as one of 13 deaths it blames on its defective ignition switches. Candice Anderson was driving her 2004 Saturn Ion in Canton, Texas, with her fiancé Mikale Erickson in November 2004 when she lost control of the vehicle and crashed. Mr. Erickson, the father of two small children, was killed. Ms. Anderson was thrown through the windshield and barely survived the crash herself. The vehicle’s airbags never deployed. Police could find no causes...

U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette wants General Motors to explain how it plans to fix what’s been described as a lax corporate culture and how the company plans to compensate victims of crashes tied to faulty ignition switches. The Colorado Democrat on Monday outlined questions she’ll pose to new GM CEO Mary Barra during a congressional hearing Wednesday. DeGette, the ranking member of the House committee investigating GM’s recall of 2.6 million small cars, noted a company-commissioned report released this month that showed “the GM corporate culture was so siloed that they were unable to catch some of the safety problems...

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...