Photo: GM; image edited by autoevolution
Earlier in June, Mary Barra vowed in front of House and Senate members that GM will get its act together, with the main focus of the moment being to fix the "deep underlying cultural problems" uncovered by investigators. However, an old e-mail from Doug Parks - then chief engineer of the Cobalt and current vice-president of General Motors, shows that higher-ups were aware of the deadly switches for a long time now.
You want to know the funny part of this plot twist? The e-mail's subject was "Inadvertent Ign turn-off," while the message written by Mr. Parks goes like "For service, can we come up with a 'plug' to go into the key that centers the ring through the middle of the key and not the edge/slot? This appears to me to be the only real, quick solution." Remember the 3.4 million vehicle recall we've reported about on the 17th of June?
Remember how General Motors announced that the fix involves adding a plastic insert to the ignition key and the drilling of a 4x6-mm hole through which the key ring to be attached? This latest bit of info confirms that the solution was there on the table since 2005, but nobody at General Motors was bothered to actually announce a recall campaign and nobody thought that the Chevy Cobalt's key is similar in design with other GM models.
Further more, General Motors' internal investigation summarized by Mary Barra at the U.S. Capitol Complex claimed that no bigwig from the company was aware of the defective ignition switch fiasco connected to the death of 13 people and the call back of millions of vehicles. Don't know about you, but taking into account that Mr. Parks is the current VP of General Motors, we're sure that the higher-ups knew about the problem but preferred to shush about it to save their own skin and millions of $$$ necessary to fix the affected cars.
The e-mail we've previously mentioned is just one of 80 new documents unearthed by federal investigators from the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommitte on Oversight and Investigations. But the thing that made us question GM's integrity most is that Mr. Doug Parks - the man that could've stopped the Chevrolet Cobalt and ignition switch disaster, is still a company top dog that collects a hideously large paycheck on a monthly basis. Looks like those 15 employees fired by General Motors were mere scapegoats after all.
Remember how General Motors announced that the fix involves adding a plastic insert to the ignition key and the drilling of a 4x6-mm hole through which the key ring to be attached? This latest bit of info confirms that the solution was there on the table since 2005, but nobody at General Motors was bothered to actually announce a recall campaign and nobody thought that the Chevy Cobalt's key is similar in design with other GM models.
Further more, General Motors' internal investigation summarized by Mary Barra at the U.S. Capitol Complex claimed that no bigwig from the company was aware of the defective ignition switch fiasco connected to the death of 13 people and the call back of millions of vehicles. Don't know about you, but taking into account that Mr. Parks is the current VP of General Motors, we're sure that the higher-ups knew about the problem but preferred to shush about it to save their own skin and millions of $$$ necessary to fix the affected cars.
The e-mail we've previously mentioned is just one of 80 new documents unearthed by federal investigators from the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommitte on Oversight and Investigations. But the thing that made us question GM's integrity most is that Mr. Doug Parks - the man that could've stopped the Chevrolet Cobalt and ignition switch disaster, is still a company top dog that collects a hideously large paycheck on a monthly basis. Looks like those 15 employees fired by General Motors were mere scapegoats after all.
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