GM recalls 2.7 million cars for tail light, brake problems

General Motors Co. said Thursday it has issued five more recalls covering almost 3 million vehicles around the world. The U.S. automaker is still dealing with fallout from a recall issued earlier this year over defective ignition switches linked to at least 13 deaths.

The largest of the latest recalls covers more than 2.7 million cars – including the Chevrolet Malibu, Pontiac G6 and Saturn Aura – for tail lamp malfunctions.

The other four recalls cover Malibu, Chevy Corvette sports cars, Cadillac CTS sedans and full-size trucks and SUVs. Most of the vehicles were sold in the United States. The Malibu recall is related to issues with the braking mechanism.

In the tail lamp recall, GM said it was aware of several hundred complaints, 13 crashes and two injuries. It had issued a dealer service bulletin for the problem in 2008 and recalled a smaller number of vehicles in January 2009. GM said it was not aware of any fatalities related to Thursday's recalls.

In the Malibu recall, GM caught a potential faulty brake issue on April 24 during development of an upcoming model and after further testing ordered a recall on May 7, according to documents filed with the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

GM said the new actions were a result of the sharper focus the company has put on safety issues following the recall earlier this year of 2.6 million vehicles for faulty ignition switches. So far this year, GM has recalled almost 12.8 million vehicles globally, easily topping the 9 million recalled in the previous five years combined.

"We have redoubled our efforts to expedite and resolve current reviews in process and also have identified and analyzed recent vehicle issues which require action," GM's global vehicle safety chief, Jeff Boyer, said in a news release.

Boyer said in an interview that the company's focus has been on the frequency and severity of any potential problems. He said GM continues to study how it handles recalls for further improvement in the process.

GM is under investigation by U.S. safety regulators, Congress, the Department of Justice, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and several states for its handling of the defective ignition switch, which engineers first discovered in 2001. GM has been criticized for failing to detect the faulty part and for not recalling the vehicles earlier.

GM expects to complete an internal probe of its handling of the issue within the next two weeks.

The Detroit company said it expects to take a charge of up to about $200 million in the second quarter for the latest recalls, mostly for the cost of repairs. In the first quarter, GM took a charge of $1.3 billion mostly related to the ignition switch recall.

Of the 2,991,140 vehicles recalled on Thursday, more than 2.7 million were sold in the U.S., more than 201,000 in Canada, more than 1,200 in Mexico and more than 76,000 were exported outside North America.

Reuters