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Chevy SS and Caprice PPV RWD Sedans Recalled Over Loss of Power Steering (Again)

Remember the days when GM made rear-wheel-drive sedans with sporting credentials? To make matters worse for the American company, the final examples of the breed were made more than 9,437 miles (15,187 kilometers) away at the Holden plant in Elizabeth, South Australia.
Chevrolet SS 14 photos
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The factory came to a grinding halt in October 2017 no fewer than 69 years after the first Australian model – the 48-215 – was produced in Port Melbourne in 1948. With this development, General Motors put an end to the Zeta rear-wheel-drive platform of both the Chevy SS and Caprice PPV.

Even though we remember those two with proverbial teary eyes, the SS and PPV have been summoned for repairs again for a similar problem to that of a recall campaign from November 2017. As per the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, both are titled “loss of electric power steering assist.”

Campaign number 20V254000 covers certain 2015 and 2016 models shipped and sold in the United States, up to 1,826 of them. The number shouldn’t come as a surprise given the woeful demand for RWD sedans in this day and age, overshadowed by crossovers and proper SUVs.

The vehicles in question were built before gold-plated terminals were added in production to the electric power steering system, featuring tin terminals and dielectric grease on the torque sensor harness. Fretting corrosion on the connector between the module and torque sensor translates to loss of electric power steering, and nobody wants that to happen at high speed.

Even parking is a hassle without assistance but an EPS malfunction while tracking the car or carving a corner on a canyon road could prove fatal to the driver and passengers in the event of a crash. In case power steering assist is lost, a malfunction indicator lights up in the instrument panel and a chime sounds to inform the driver of the error described above.

Care to guess how GM came to recall these babies? Well, “an initial review of field data completed on March 20, 2020 showed that the rates of loss-of-EPS-assist claims had increased since the data was reviewed previously.”

As for the fix, dealers will replace the steering gear assembly with the more resistant gold-plated terminals introduced for the 2017 model year.
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About the author: Mircea Panait
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After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well.
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