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Comment by hnburnsy | Hacker News Reader

GM issues 2012 Chevy Sonic recall for missing brake pads

The new brake pad recall for the 2012 Chevrolet Sonic affects 4,296 vehicles sold in the United States while another 577 were sold in Canada, with all of the vehicles included in this recall built between June 2nd, 2011 and November 21st, 2011 at GM’s Orion Township Assembly Plant just north of Detroit. On these recalled 2012 Sonic hatchbacks and sedans, General Motors believes that the vehicle could be missing either an inner or outer brake pad on the front end.

Https://www.torquenews.com/106/gm-issues-2012-chevy-sonic-recall-missing-brake-pads

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Nothing in the article indicates that GM told the customer this was normal or OK and that they didn’t need to worry about it.

That’s the most egregious thing to me.

Also:

> ...but luckily, GM has caught the problem and is recalling them right away…thus removing the safety risk and the cost of repairing the problem from the owners.

Quite different from the way Tesla is handling this.

The Sonic is also the car that had defective ignition switches that led to numerous deaths because the engine would suddenly shut off while driving, disabling the electric power steering...and even worse, the airbag system would get disabled and not work in an ensuing crash.

In a civil suit a family's attorney found GM's supplier dramatically changed the ignition switch, and GM claimed that they had no idea why or that it even happened (which is ludicrous to anyone even proximate to the auto industry. Any time a part is revised, even slightly, it tends to get a part number suffix.)

Sonic's product manager claimed he had no knowledge of ignition switch changes. "I put my own son in a Sonic" etc etc.

Eventually the whole mess blew up to the point that Congress got involved, subpoaenaed a battleship's worth of documents from GM and...lo and behold, what comes out? Lots of emails from the same Sonic product manager about the ignition switch.

There was an NPR/APM/etc show episode about it...wish I could remember which one.

I guess it's good to know that Tesla isn't the only manufacturer to mess this up, but as a 2022 Tesla owner I really don't want my car to be associated with GM fuckups a decade ago!

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