Rich On Money

GM – The King of Recalls

Don’t these guys ever get it. GM files for bankruptcy, blows up several car divisions that should have been blown up years ago. They pay their employees cash and benefits not too far below their historic high of $81 per hour while Honda is paying 80 cents per hour in China, and now this. By this we mean a giant 1.5 million car recall. 

There’s a glitch in the windshield wiper system which could lead to the ignition of a fire. The real thrill of the whole thing is that the folks that made the system for GM are out of business, so what is GM going to do. Why they are going to give each of the folks who bought such a car a hundred dollars apiece. 

In the same breath, GM is asking the German government which doesn’t give spit away, to give GM more than one billion dollars in state aid to help keep the Adam Opel GmbH unit alive. We think the Germans tell GM that the answer is no, and hide behind GM’s turnaround out of bankruptcy as an excuse that GM is okay now, so they really don’t need government aide. 

The truth of the matter is that GM has needed government aide for the last 20 plus years, so why should it stop now? With the announcement of the 1.5 million car recall, GM has now recalled more than 3 million vehicles this year, a new personal best for GM. This is up from the previous record of 2.2 million cars recalled last year 2009. 

But wait there’s more. Chrysler had to recall this year more than 680,000 vehicles of their own. There’s also the Ford Motor Company, Ford which stands for “fixed or repaired daily”. Ford has recalled 4.5 million cars this year. The big problem is a fire hazard from a so called faulty switch. 

Even Japanese giant Honda is affected, having sent out letters to 480,000 vehicle owners mentioning that maybe the brake pedals in your Honda can go soft, sort of like the brains in the Honda engineers who designed the pads. Hey, I own Acuras, and Honda makes Acuras, better call in the morning and see if I am on the recall list.

Richard Stoyeck