Introducing the All New Chevy Recall
The Chevy Cruze, a rather attractive looking compact car for the new gas saving age is “cruzing” in to its second recall in less than one month. This will be the first full year in the US for the Cruze and many critics are arguing that GM is back up to its old bad car making tricks. Others feel that the Cruze is still the strongest contender in its class and that this is just a mild setback. In either case, this is certainly not the good people of Chevrolet putting their best foot forward.
On April 8th, Chevy recalled 2,100 Cruze models for a problem with the steering wheel column. The recall was triggered as a result of one reported case where the steering wheel came completely off while being driven. It sounds like a trick Uncle Arthur would’ve played on Darren in “Bewitched.” Coincidentally, they all drove Chevys on that show.
The latest Chevy Cruze recall has inflated to over 154,000. Apparently, even though the automatic transmission may appear to be in park, it might actually not be. This can cause the car to rollaway because it is still in gear. It sounds like Chevy and Toyota might be able to be good friends. They could be called the runaway Toyota and the rollaway Chevy. Okay, so that was admittedly corny.
Fortunately, there have been no reported cases of Cruze models that have been affected by this recall. That’s actually a very good thing obviously for a number of reasons. There has been no damage, injuries, or accidents as a result. Even though this gets another bad hit for the brass at GM in an ever growing list of things that worsen a company’s reputation, they responded quickly and responsibly.
I’m sure I speak for everyone when I say that we can all remember a GM that would’ve tried to turn the other cheek. Toyota was very much afraid of failing its tremendous reputation. In fact it was so afraid that they ignored the problem hoping that it would go away. It is safe to say judging from this model of sweeping it under the rug for major car companies that they don’t know how to deal with bad PR for the first time. When it first started happening with GM, they tried to hide it. They were not used to dealing with people speaking gainfully against their cars. They were the leaders. When Toyota became the leaders, they were also not used to bad PR. Hopefully others in the car industry can learn from these famous mistakes.
Continued on the next page
Follow Technorati