GM Recall Report Details Chronic Engineering Failures

Problems with the faulty ignition switch recalled in February by General Motors Co. were known by GM engineers from the earliest stages of production, according to an internal investigation released on Thursday.

The extraordinarily detailed 324-page report can be downloaded HERE as a 60-MB PDF file. It bluntly describes an 11-year "history of failures" that includes deliberate deception to obscure the switch's shortcoming it could be easily jolted out of the "run" position, thus killing power to the airbags and a chronic lack of urgency by often uninformed others to fix it.

The report blames a corporate culture marked by a "proliferation of committees and a lack of accountability."

At the root of the problem, the report says, was a stunning failure by GM to make the connection between the switch and the airbag system. It says engineers "did not know how their own vehicle had been designed" and had little interest in finding out.

The report, compiled by a team led by former U.S. Dept. of Justice investigator Anton Valukas, chronicles GM's failure to respond even after the connection was separately reported to the company by an accident investigator with Wisconsin state police, researchers at Indiana University and plaintiffs' attorneys.

Engineers were "neither diligent nor incisive," the report concludes, noting that they repeatedly failed to check critical documents within GM's own files.

The report says GM's lack of urgency about the switch continued until days before the company finally issued a recall and expanded it days later because of a "failure of GM personnel to obtain and present all relevant information" to those responsible for ordering the recall.