GM Defends Fuel Tanks of Its Pickups
The Center for Auto Safety alleges that General Motors has conducted a 20-year cover-up of a defect in its pickup truck fuel tanks that has caused 300 deaths in highway accidents. GM responds that the allegations are brought by private attorneys “trying to drum up business” and that its trucks’ overall safety record is as good as those of Ford or Chrysler trucks.
The controversy has raised troubling questions for the estimated 4.7 million owners of GM pickups produced between 1973 and 1987. These trucks have gas tanks mounted on each side of the pickup bed, making them vulnerable to fires in side-impact accidents, critics say. While GM officials deny the trucks are defective, they acknowledge that anxiety is high among customers.
Among those nervous owners is a Los Angeles plumber who wrote to me, asking whether he can improve the safety of his GM truck’s gas tank. Like many motorists with old trucks, he can’t afford a new one. I took this question to experts on both sides.
The Center for Auto Safety and Public Citizen, two advocacy groups, have petitioned the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to issue a mandatory recall of the GM trucks to replace the rigid steel tanks with flexible bladder-type tanks. Alternatively, the advocacy groups are asking that GM be ordered to install a liner inside the existing fuel tanks.
Such products are not available for GM trucks, even if a motorist wanted to install one. (The only car equipped with an internal tank liner is the Chevrolet Corvette.) The petition claims that former GM President James McDonald rejected putting such a liner--costing as little as $10 per vehicle--in the trucks in late 1978.
Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen, suggested that GM truck owners reduce the risk of a fire by removing or disconnecting the fuel tank on the driver side.
That would eliminate any fire hazard in most frontal collisions and broadside hits on the left, but would not fix the problem of broadside hits on the right, said Claybrook, a former chief of the HTSA.
But GM spokesman Ed Lechtzin advised against tampering with the fuel systems, particularly because some of them are now 20 years old. Also, two-thirds of the pickups have only the left side tank mounted, he said. Motorists should just stop worrying, because “there simply is no defect and there is nothing to modify,” he added.
Lechtzin acknowledged that the gas tanks are more prone to exploding in a side impact than other manufacturer’s trucks, but the overall fatality rates for GM pickups are no higher than those for Ford or Chrysler trucks.
A GM letter to its truck owners claims a typical short trip poses no more risk of death than riding a bicycle for two minutes. Claybrook dismisses such proclamations as irrelevant to the gas tank issue.
The allegations about GM’s trucks have similarities to those about the Ford Pinto, which caused an estimated 27 deaths by fire in the 1970s. Ford eventually recalled the Pinto and installed a shield to help prevent tank ruptures in rear-end collisions.
It’s unclear whether a shield could be devised to strengthen the GM tanks. Welding a reinforcement plate over the tank could increase the likelihood of a rupture during an accident, Lechtzin said.
Claybrook advises that owners keep the tanks less than half full. Lechtzin said the amount of fuel in the tank makes no difference.
