Documents show GM slow to respond to safety complaints

Internal General Motors Co. documents released on Thursday by Congress show that company executives, including Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra, were slow to respond to complaints about vehicle safety that built up for more than a decade.

In an email sent in 2011, Barra was told regulators were investigating steering problems with the Saturn Ion. While the flaw was not connected to the ignition-switch defect linked to the deaths of 13 people in Chevrolet Cobalts and other small cars, GM executives did not recall the Ions until March 31, the day before the CEO testified before a House panel.

The documents also paint a picture of a company in denial and engaged in subterfuge over vehicle safety and less cooperative with government regulators than other carmakers. Though GM had two opportunities to fix the deadly ignition switch, it declined to do so because it would take too long and was too expensive. Then an engineer quietly authorized a fix to the switch and later under oath denied making it.

“The general perception is that GM is slow to communicate, slow to act,” Frank Borris, head of the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Office of Defect Investigation wrote in a note to GM’s director of product investigations in July 2013, complaining of the automaker’s inconsistency and lack of coordination on several unrelated recall investigations.

The message was forwarded to senior GM executives, including John Calabrese, vice president of global vehicle engineering; Alicia Boler-Davis, senior vice president of global quality and customer experience; and Jim Federico, who at the time was an executive chief engineer directing mini-car development. All are key executives working in the “new GM” that Barra touted in congressional hearings last week.

The trove of documents, released yesterday by the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee, provide fresh details on how GM delayed and deceived during more than a decade of problems with the ignition switch.

“The question is: Why didn’t they act?” said Maryann Keller, a veteran auto analyst who has written two books on GM. “Was it in their best interest not to do it? Were their careers going to be sidetracked if they did? Was their boss’ career going to be sidetracked?”

The 2011 email to Barra about Saturn Ions referred to a 2010 recall of Chevy Cobalts and Pontiac G5 small cars that could lose power steering while driving.

GM replaced a defective module in those cars yet did not replace the faulty ignition switch, which company engineers knew by then could also deactivate the power steering. GM did not recall the mechanically similar Ions at the time, citing insufficient data.

In 2005, GM shrugged off complaints about the ignition switch, saying the loss of power steering was not a genuine safety risk. In 2010, it was recalling thousands of cars to address just that symptom.

Separately, GM found no pattern of problems with air bags failing to deploy in Chevrolet Cobalt models now being recalled to replace the switch linked to 13 deaths, U.S. safety regulators said in a 2007 document.

Ray DeGiorgio, an engineer GM put on paid leave this week, approved a redesign in 2006 to the faulty ignition switch in the Cobalt, Ion and other small cars. He “agreed to implement change without changing GM” part number, according to a May 27, 2006, correspondence from supplier Delphi Automotive Plc released by House investigators.

Congress, federal regulators and the U.S. Justice Department are all investigating why it took GM more than a decade to recall cars with faulty ignition switches that allowed the key to fall out of the “on” position, shutting off the engine and disabling air bags. Barra, who has said GM failed to act quickly enough, suspended DeGiorgio and Gary Altman, chief engineer of the Cobalt.

“Documents show individuals at GM allowed vehicles with safety concerns to remain on the road for almost a decade, resulting in at least 13 fatalities,” Tim Murphy, a Pennsylvania Republican on the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, said in a statement. “We will continue our investigation into what went wrong because it’s the only way public trust can be restored for both GM and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.” (Bloomberg)