GM Rejects Agency Request for Recall of Pickup Trucks : Safety: U.S. highway administration urges voluntary action on millions of vehicles with side-mounted fuel tanks. But the company stands firm.

Federal auto safety regulators asked General Motors Corp. on Friday to voluntarily recall 4.7 million pickup trucks with side-mounted fuel tanks because the trucks may pose a deadly fire hazard. But the auto maker, which has stood by its trucks, balked at a recall.

In a letter to GM, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said its analysis of crash test data indicated that the “trucks have a risk of fire occurrence in fatal side-impact crashes that is 2.4 times greater than that of full-size Ford pickup trucks.”

“General Motors should therefore initiate a recall,” said William A. Boehly, the agency’s top enforcement official.

GM, which has defended the trucks against lawsuits and critical news reports, stood firm again.

“These GM trucks met all applicable safety standards and General Motors does not agree with any suggestion they should be recalled because of their side-mounted tanks,” spokesman William O’Neill said.

GM contended that the safety agency was relying on limited data in its findings.

“General Motors does not believe that there is a sound statistical basis for suggesting that its design is likely to lead to additional fatalities in severe, but otherwise survivable crashes,” the company said in a statement.

GM has until April 30 to formally respond to the agency. The government could order a recall.

The auto maker said it would give the agency additional information that will illustrate why a recall is unnecessary.

Boehly said the requested recall does not reflect a formal conclusion by the agency, merely the recommendation of its Office of Defects Investigation. In its statement, GM noted that “the agency acknowledges that it has reached no final conclusion or determination and that its own investigation is continuing.”

GM has said consistently that the fuel tank placement met government safety guidelines.

The tanks were the focus of a lawsuit GM lost in Atlanta in February, when a jury awarded $105.2 million to the parents of a teen-ager killed in the fiery crash of his GM pickup truck. The auto maker on Friday asked a state judge to overturn that finding and award.

The fuel tanks were also the subject of a “Dateline NBC” program last November that cited internal GM reports suggesting that the auto maker might have been aware of a problem with them. NBC later admitted that it had used incendiary devices during demonstrations of fuel tank fires in the report.

The devices increased the chance of fire during a crash.

The fuel tanks are mounted outside the trucks’ frame rails, allegedly making them more vulnerable to puncture in a side-impact crash. Newer models have the tanks placed inside the rails.

The trucks were manufactured from 1973 to 1987. Consumer groups, which have campaigned for a recall, claim that 300 people have died as a result of fires caused by crashes involving the trucks.

GM moved the fuel tanks back within the frame rails beginning in 1988.

The traffic safety agency’s Office of Defects Investigation compared GM’s full-size pickups with side-saddle tanks to Chrysler Corp. and Ford Motor Co. pickups.

The agency found that the GM trucks with side-mounted tanks were more likely to leak fuel in a crash, which could result in a fatal fire.

The Center for Auto Safety, a consumer group, criticized GM’s stand Friday.

“If General Motors stonewalls the government’s recall request, it will send a signal to all Americans that GM doesn’t care enough about its customers’ lives to spend $100 a truck to fix a defect that has killed 10 times as many people as the Ford Pinto,” said Clarence Ditlow, the center’s executive director.

But an auto industry analyst said GM could be taking the right step in arguing against a recall.

“There may be an obvious answer (but) I think GM has a relatively good statistical body of evidence that shows their products are no different from other similar products,” said Doug Laughlin of Bear Stearns & Co.

“To voluntarily recall the product for this explicit purpose would undermine their own position.”

Meanwhile, GM attorneys told a Fulton County, Ga., judge Friday that new eyewitness accounts of the 1989 crash that killed 17-year-old Shannon Moseley prove the jury was wrong in finding the auto maker negligent.

The lawyers asked Judge Albert L. Thompson to order a new trial in the suit brought by Moseley’s parents, who claim that the design of the fuel tanks in their son’s 1985 GMC pickup caused them to explode when the vehicle was hit by a drunk driver.

GM argued during the trial that Moseley died from the impact of the crash--not from the fire.