GM’s Recall Woes Worsen With 172K Chevrolet Cruzes Suspected Of Faulty Front Axle

General Motors, or GM, is certainly not in a good mood with another massive recall in the pipeline.

GM is recalling about 172,000 Chevrolet Cruze cars, reported CNN. According to an official confirmation from the company, the Cruzes are suspected to have a faulty right front axle. Hence the cars are being recalled “to replace a right front axle half shaft that can fracture and separate without warning during normal driving” stated GM.

The recall might be a surprise to the potential or existing buyers, but dealers of the company’s cars were intimated several hours earlier to stop selling the Cruzes, but weren’t offered any reasons. Presently, GM has confirmed recall of the 2013 and 2014 models with the 1.4-liter turbo engine. Owners can check status of their cars on the Company’s webpage.

The Chevrolet Cruze is reportedly the most popular variant of the compact car made & is largely intended for city driving. It is not only sold in large number in the United States, but GM sells multiple iterations with varying options to buyers all across the globe. Fortunately for the company, the recall has been initiated only for the variant sold in the US.

Unfortunately for the company though, its recall woes have only increased. Late last week GM added another 824,000 cars to the recall list citing suspicion of a faulty ignition switch. The company investigated and found the faulty ignition switch would fail while the car was running and cause the failure of power steering and air bags. Needless to say, this was quite dangerous as it threatened the very safety of the occupants.

In fact, the company added one more person to the tally of 13 people who may have died due to the faulty ignition switch. As of this moment, GM is facing a recall of more than 2.59 Million of its cars under various reasons. This number may not be as high as that of Ford (14 Million in 2009), but is certainly large by today’s standards. GM has been repeatedly featured in the top 10 recalls according to Auto–Blog of MSN.

Recalls have always been a very real threat to the vehicles, but GM apparently chose to significantly delay the recall resulting from faulty ignition. GM Chief Executive Mary Barra, justified the delay saying, “Trying to locate several thousand switches in a population of 2.2 million vehicles and distributed to thousands of retailers isn’t practical. [But] Out of an abundance of caution, we are recalling the rest of the model years.”

While the ignition switch does have a quick–fix solution of lightening the weight around the key, the faulty axle is way more serious. Recalling such a high number is just the first step among many others that GM will have to take in order to safeguard its image as reliable passenger vehicle maker.

[Image Credit | Brunch News]