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Many Auto Show Visitors Unfazed by G.M. Recalls

Posted by Unknown on Sunday, April 20, 2014

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Business Day |Many Auto Show Visitors Unfazed by G.M. Recalls



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Louis Monetti of Brooklyn checking a Cruze’s suspension at the auto show. Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times









Louis Monetti pulled a tape measure from his back pocket and stretched it across the Chevrolet Cruze’s trunk to make sure his bicycle would fit. Then he crouched for a good look at the car’s rear suspension. It all seemed fine, he said on Saturday at the New York International Auto Show, adding that he probably would buy the Cruze over the Ford Fusion.


Mr. Monetti was one of many at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan whose confidence in General Motors cars had not been shaken by the company’s long-delayed recall of millions of small cars for an ignition switch defect that G.M. has linked to 13 deaths and 31 accidents. Despite federal investigations, contentious hearings in Congress and mounting criticism from lawmakers and consumer advocates, potential buyers at G.M. exhibits, and at those of other automakers, expressed little concern.



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“The cars here are different than the ones that were recalled; the ignition switch is an old issue,” said Mr. Monetti of Brooklyn. “Sure, the whole situation blemishes G.M., but every car company has issues. How many have covered something up?”




Andrea and Dennis Stover of Vestal, N.Y. “I’m not looking at G.M. products very favorably,” she said. Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

The Cruze succeeded the Cobalt, the compact Chevrolet car at the heart of G.M.’s ignition switch crisis and one no longer in production. The Cruze, too, has been included in this year’s wave of recalls — but not for an ignition issue. The Cruze has a right-front axle shaft that can fracture and separate without warning.


Most of the other models that G.M. showed off at the auto show — the new Chevrolet Trax, a small sport utility vehicle, and the Corvette Z06 convertible — bore little similarity to the compact, economy-class cars that have been the focus of the continuing defect investigations.


Product specialists at the show said that in the two days it had been open to the public, questions about the recall were rare.


One reason for the lack of concern, analysts said, is that all of the 2.6 million cars recalled because of the ignition switch are out of production.


“It’s really lucky for G.M. that the vehicles affected by the recall are out of today’s shoppers’ minds,” said Jeremy Acevedo, an analyst for Edmunds.com, referring to the ignition switch recall.


“The Cobalt, Ion, HHR, you’re not seeing those at the auto show. All the vehicles that have been recalled are part of a defunct brand,” he said, referring to Saturn and Pontiac. “Or they’re vehicles G.M. is no longer producing.” G.M.’s sales did not suffer in March, the first full month since the recall. The company posted a 4 percent increase in sales over the previous March, with Chevrolet models making up 70 percent of all vehicles sold.


General consumer interest in G.M. cars has not waned, according to Edmunds.com. Since January, web browsing of Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Chrysler and GMC models on the site has held steady or increased.


Sentiment on social media has been fairly unchanged, too. On Twitter, more than a quarter of the messages mentioning General Motors have been positive, according to Crimson Hexagon, an analytics firm, with 71 percent of them neutral and 3 percent negative.


Jesse Toprak, chief analyst for Cars.com, suggested that the market might need more time to process news of the defects and G.M.’s admitted mishandling of them. “Chances are there will be more of a negative impact on G.M.’s sales in April,” Mr. Toprak said, “when consumers will have more awareness of the expanded recalls.”



The spotlight on G.M. has certainly not dimmed. This month, Mary T. Barra, the company’s chief executive, testified before Congress about its delay of years in acting on knowledge of the ignition flaw. G.M. has lent 30,000 vehicles to owners of recalled cars who requested them while they awaited replacement parts, which have been rationed to dealers. Some dealers in the Midwest have received one to five replacement switches in spite of waiting lists approaching 100 people.


But some who attended the auto show, which runs through April 27, said they had seen the congressional hearings and thought nothing of them.


“I saw some clips of the C.E.O. being really vague and saying she didn’t really know anything,” said Natalie Saldana, who was examining the Cruze with her family. “But I feel like that’s kind of irrelevant to my search.”


Edwin Saldana, Ms. Saldana’s brother, said they planned to research safety specifications before his sister made her purchase. “We haven’t reviewed the air bag safety of the car yet, but we want to,” he said as his young nephew sat in the driver’s seat and played with the steering wheel.


“Financially, it’s a really good deal,” Ms. Saldana said of the Cruze, which starts at $18,345. Nearby, huddled over the Chevrolet Impala, Jan Miller and Lynn Chippeaux of New Jersey did not pay attention to the federal investigation and recall, either.


“Thirteen people died over how many years?” Ms. Miller asked. “I feel really bad for the families, but how many millions of cars was that out of? It’s like the odds of being hit by lightning. Stuff happens.”


Still, not all consumers at the auto show shrugged off news of the defects.


“I’m not looking at G.M. products very favorably,” said Andrea Stover of Vestal, N.Y., as she examined the Cruze’s exposed turbodiesel engine, on display on the show floor. “It took so long for this to come out. What else are they hiding?”


Ms. Stover said she and her husband were looking at the General Motors showcase only because a convention center entrance had deposited them in it. “We want to see the Hyundais and Nissans,” Ms. Stover’s husband, Dennis, said.


Other consumers were ambivalent, neither alienated nor unaffected by the recalls.


Paul MacCormac came from Canada to look at Fords. He had driven Chevys all his life, he said. “G.M. handled this situation poorly, and people died,” he said. “I don’t know what I’ll drive next — could be a Chevy, could not be. Now it’s wide open.”



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