madoka

I have a friend with a Z06 who told me about this problem a while ago. Apparently there is a bug in the electronics that causes the car to swerve to one side. Now they've finally decided to do a recall:

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHSTA) wrote that "repeated movement of the steering column may cause a signal interruption within the column. If this occurs, the message, ‘Service Active Handling System’ will appear in the Driver Information Center, and one or more of the brakes may apply, possibly causing the vehicle to pull to the right or left.” Because of this, GM made the decision to go through with the recall, and will be informing Corvette owners in the weeks to come. All GM dealerships have been informed of the situation and will repair the Corvettes being recalled free of charge. If your Corvette is one of the ones with the potential for issue, you should definitely get the recall work done A.S.A.P. as the problem, while not major, is definitely not good.

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For an example of what it looks like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnVNVoFO5Ok

spwolf

GM recalls never get anywhere close to attention of Toyota ones.. of course, GM fixed this in 2006, and decided to recall cars 3.5 years later.

Threxx

GM recalls used to get more attention than any other company out there. Now it's Toyota's turn to see what it's like to be in the spot light.

Were you crying for GM before like you are for Toyota now?

In reality there are recalls from ALL the major companies constantly... GM has just settled back there with the other companies. Honda, Ford, Nissan, BMW, etc... they're all watching Toyota take front stage, exactly where GM was up until the last year or so.

mmarshall

Ford recalls and problems, in the past have probably been larger, even more widespread, and with more publicity, than with GM. Even discounting the Pinto fuel-tank mount/location issue (I won't go back that far), there have been enormous Ford recalls, numbering into the tens of millions, for loose/inaccurate and slipping transmission gear-indicators jumping out of PARK, and who can forget the enormous publicity that the whole Explorer/Firestone Wilderness tire/roll-over issue brought about? Ford and Firestone, of course, shared in that one. Other notable issues, of course, were the Audi 5000 sudden-acceleration and GM pickup truck side-mount fuel-tanks. So Toyota is not unprecedented by any means..........except, perhaps, that unlike some of these other companies, Toyota was at the top of the quality/public-image list for many years beforehand.

Threxx

I don't disagree that many companies have spent some time in that undesirable spotlight.

The fact is that once you're there, even the smaller recalls get more attention than they normally would.

It's called confirmation bias. Basically once you've decided something has problems, you're more likely to notice those problems.

I suppose with Toyota it's extra interesting to most people since they've always had a questionably deserved reputation of perfection.

CallmeDoc

GM actually has customer care consultants hang out on the Vette forums and listen to owner complaints. This issue popped up with the Active Handling system going wacky in some 05/06 Vette's with braking being applied to one side of the vette out of nowhere (and consequently almost causing major disasters).

The recall was actually announced by the customer care people who snoop the vette forums before it was even publicly announced. That was pretty cool