By Sneha Shankar - General Motors (NYSE:GM) on Monday issued three new recalls involving 1.5 million vehicles, prompted by an internal safety review, which was initiated following a federal government inquiry into the company's handling of safety issues with its automobiles that had resulted in the recall of 1.6 million vehicles in February.
The Detroit-based company's latest recall includes luxury sports-utility vehicles in production and those already on the roads suspected of being equipped with faulty ignition switches and airbags. The recall in February, also a result of faulty ignitions, could be linked to hundreds of deaths according to reports, and GM is facing multiple civil and criminal investigations into how it handled the recalls including the first internal investigations beginning in 2004.
“I asked our team to redouble our efforts on our pending product reviews, bring them forward and resolve them quickly,” Mary Barra, GM's CEO, said in a statement. “That is what today’s GM is all about.”
The latest recall, announced Monday, includes 303,000 Chevrolet Express and GMC Savana models produced between 2009 and 2014, and 63,900 Cadillac XTS 2013 and 2014 models. The company also recalled 1.18 million Buick Enclave and GMC Acadia cars made between 2010 and 2013, along with models of Chevrolet Traverse built between 2009 and 2013. It also recalled the Saturn Outlook off the roads.
The recall of the faulty ignition switches led to federal prosecutors investigating the automaker on how it dealt with the issues and why the company did not react sooner to reports of problems such as the abrupt shutting down of a vehicle's engine and the failure of airbags to deploy in the event of a crash.
"We are conducting an intense review of our internal processes and will have more developments to announce as we move forward," Barra said in the statement.
GM plans to take a charge of about $300 million in the first quarter of 2014 as cost for repairs following the recalls announced so far. The company also announced that unsold vehicles have been stopped from being delivered until fresh parts are available to replace faulty ones.