http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-09...out-recall.html

Hilarious. A dumb, lazy UAW worker is stymied at how defective cars are being built at his plant, the same Lordstown facility that blessed us with the Vega. BTW, there may have been faults engineered into these cars, but the fastest way to determine if a 70's era GM car is unrestored is if all the body panels do not gap right. These idiots were slapping these cars together as carelessly as any POS that rolled off British Leylands Communist assembly lines....


"Excuse Me Ma'am....Can You Give Me A Push?"

Zitat

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When Glenn Johnson got an early heads-up from management that General Motors Co. (GM) was recalling its Chevrolet Cobalt for an ignition-switch defect, his first reaction was unprintable.

Like many of his colleagues at the Lordstown Assembly Plant in Ohio, where the Cobalt was made, Johnson, 56, wondered how a flaw in a part had slipped through the cracks and led to the deaths of at least 13 people.

“How does this happen?” said Johnson, president of United Auto Workers Local 1112. “We ask the same questions and we’re put off like everyone else.”

The recall is a rare piece of bad news for a plant that in many ways has mirrored the revival of Detroit-based GM. Over the past four decades workers at the Lordstown factory have experienced layoffs, worries the factory would close and then renewal when they began building the Chevrolet Cruze, a hit replacement for the Cobalt. Now the recall of 2.59 million Cobalts and other small cars for the faulty ignition switch -- and revelations that GM took more than a decade to tell the world about it -- threatens to damage the Chevrolet brand and send drivers into the arms of rivals.

Lordstown workers are focusing on making the Cruze as best they can and trying to remain optimistic.

“We’re just hoping and praying it works out,” Elizabeth Fallat, 50, a 22-year plant worker from North Jackson, said in an interview.
‘No Inkling’

U.S. senators last week accused the carmaker of “criminal deception” and a “culture of coverup” because for years it passed on proposed fixes from its engineers because, according to one memo, it could have cost an extra 57 cents per car. GM is being fined $7,000 a day for not responding to more than one third of requests from the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration about its handling of the flawed ignition switch. U.S. lawmakers said they’ll schedule more hearings and expect more disclosure from GM.

Back when the Cobalt was being assembled in Lordstown, there was “no inkling” of a problem with the ignition switch, Johnson said in an interview at his office, which features framed photos of the 2005 Cobalt coupe and sedan. He said he’s not privy to what happened. Workers on the assembly line are given parts to install, and they thought they were building a quality car that they still stand behind, he said.

“We don’t know how to speculate who-knew-what-when or if there should have been any changes made during that period of time,” Johnson said. “We had a supplier issue, and it got through the cracks.”
Defective Cars

The first car to roll off the line in Lordstown was a white Chevrolet Impala in April 1966. Over the years, the complex has produced more than 15 million vehicles including the Firebird, Chevrolet and GMC vans, the Monza and the Skyhawk. At its peak, as many as 12,000 people worked there.

After the plant began assembling the Chevy Vega in 1970, it garnered a reputation as a source of defective cars. Strikes followed in 1972 and 1974.

Workers have long thought they were unfairly blamed, said John Russo, a visiting research fellow at the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and the former director of the Center for Working-Class Studies at Youngstown State University.

While there were production problems at the complex, the Vega’s quality suffered from GM’s efforts to make the subcompact car lighter, Russo said.

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Quote: algernonpj wrote in post #2

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What could go wrong ?

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In the 70s I bought a Chevy p/u truck. Had nothing but problems with that piece of junk. At about 40k miles the radiator gave out. I was told by someone who supposedly knew that GM radiators of that period were being built in Mexico and often debris and other substances were not properly removed from the radiators before being installed on the vehicles. Thus they tended to corrode early and fail.

I do not know if that is true but I do know my p/u constantly had problems, constantly needed repairs, and the radiator did go south. This was very disappointing for me as the very first car I ever owned was a Chevy and later in life I had driven another one as a company car. Both were gems which gave me few problems.

Ask me now, however, if I have owned ANY GM vehicle since that experience with the truck.

When fixing my cars I routinely have to replace new rebuilt parts 2 or 3 times in a day until it works on some of my driver vehicles. Place where the parts are poorly rebuilt? Mexico. I actually have better luck with Chink shit.