Auto Recall: When The Wheels Come Off Government Motors… Literally

by: warner todd huston | published: 04 15, 2011

GM, Obama's favorite federally owned car company, was thrilled to report in March that sales figures for the Chevy Cruze helped put the company on the fast track to success but it wasn't the best news when the wheels began to literally fall off the Cruze causing a recall of GM's "success" story.

As we will remember, last November Obama proclaimed GM a great success story, one that justified his raging fever for bailouts. This March GM buttressed Obama's glowing account by reporting rosy sales figures in which the Chevy Cruze made a big appearance. Then GM reported that the Cruze and the Malibu accounted for "98,950 sales – roughly one of every four Chevrolets sold in the first quarter."

But let's not break out the champagne too soon because only weeks after GM celebrated sales of the Cruze, at least one steering wheel popped off in transit. It's a literal case of the wheels coming off GMs success story.

In one case, a Chevy Cruze owner was driving 65 MPH on a highway when her steering wheel broke right off. With her in the car were her young son and her own elderly mother. None were hurt fortunately.

Now GM is recalling 2,100 cars in hopes of preventing another such unfortunate accident.

GM reported that it had traced the defect to a relatively small number of cars that had initially had the wrong steering wheel installed. When the error was discovered, at least in the case of the one car noted above, the replacement wheel was not installed properly. Regardless a recall was initiated.

None of this is good news for GM as the company's market share has been experiencing a steady decline over the last few years.

It all seems to amount to being a bad deal for the American taxpayers who, through the Department of the Treasury, still own 26% of GM. Right after the recall announcement, GM's stock is down another 1.3%.

With "success stories" like this, Obama doesn't need failures.

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