After
resisting federal regulators for about three years, General Motors is
recalling about 56,000 Saturn Aura sedans from the 2007-8 model years
because a transmission shifter cable could break, which would keep the
driver from being able to shift the transmission into park.
The defect creates a rollaway hazard, according to a report
the automaker posted Tuesday on the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration website. The company said in a news release it was aware
of 28 crashes and four injuries related to the defect over the last
seven years.
The
action is the eighth example in about 16 months of General Motors’
recalling vehicles for which it had previously sent a bulletin to
dealers telling them how to fix a problem if the owner complained.
The
safety agency began investigating the problem in May 2011, after
receiving complaints from owners about “unintended movement” of their
cars. Later that year, regulators said they found “multiple failure
modes,” including cases in which the driver is unable to shift gears;
the driver thinks the vehicle is in park, only to have it roll away; and
the vehicle is in a different gear than the driver thinks it is in: For
example, the transmission is in reverse while the driver thinks it is
in drive.
Consequently, the agency upgraded the investigation to a more
serious engineering analysis.
Alan Adler, a spokesman for G.M., could not immediately say why the automaker decided to go ahead with a recall now.
One
question safety investigators have been pursuing is why General Motors
did not include all the 2007-8 Saturn models in a recall in 2012 that
included about 426,000 Chevrolet Malibu and Pontiac G6 sedans from the
2008-10 model years and a few 2007-10 Auras. That recall was issued
because of a similar problem.
General
Motors argued that the cause of the current cable failure was
different. In addition, the automaker said, the driver of a 2006-8 Aura
would notice if the shift lever was not working properly and would thus
be warned of an emerging problem. There would be no such warning on the
426,000 vehicles that were recalled in 2012, the automaker said.
Since the beginning of the year, General Motors has recalled
more than 4.8 million vehicles, including about 2.6 million for an
ignition-key defect that the automaker has linked to at least 13 deaths.
Source:
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