GM to Recall Light Trucks to Modify Brakes

In the largest automotive recall in recent years, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced Wednesday an agreement by General Motors Corp. to modify the braking systems on 3.5 million of its vans, pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles.

The recall, involving potentially hundreds of thousands of GM vehicles in California alone, followed reports of more than 2,000 crashes and nearly 300 injuries resulting from malfunctioning anti-lock brakes.

The move will resolve a five-year NHTSA investigation of complaints by consumers of brakes failing to respond or locking up, causing them to roll through intersections or rear-end other vehicles.

The probe, which involved extensive testing, was described by the NHTSA as one of the longest and most demanding in its history because of the complexity of the brakes on the GM vehicles.

Robert Lange, GM’s engineering director for product safety, called the inquiry “the most challenging defect investigation we’ve been involved with from a technical standpoint.” The reason, he said, is that the braking problems were intermittent and “there was no evidence of a broken part or piece to . . . leave a record or a trail of evidence.”

But Ralph Hoar, an Arlington, Va., safety consultant involved in litigation against auto makers, said the delay stemmed in part from resistance by GM to what will be a costly recall campaign.

According to Hoar, “The investigation was interminable . . . and involved an unusually large number of accidents and reported [brake] failures.” This demonstrates that “it’s much easier to get a manufacturer to recall a few vehicles to fix a small problem” than to acknowledge “a safety problem with a lot of vehicles that will take a lot of money to fix.”

“It’s that kind of delay in dealing with the problem that causes injuries and causes people to get upset enough to return $4.9-billion verdicts,” said Hoar, referring to the record judgment against GM earlier this month in a Los Angeles case involving a gas tank explosion on one of its vehicles.

The recall will involve a variety of 1991-96 model vehicles, including about 1.1 million four-wheel-drive Chevrolet S-10 and GMC Sonoma pickup trucks. GM acknowledged that drivers of those trucks could experience longer-than-expected stopping distances because of a defect involving the signal that tells the anti-lock brake system whether the vehicle is operating in the two-wheel or four-wheel-drive mode.

GM said owners will be notified to take their vehicles to a dealer to have a switch replaced at no cost.

GM executives insisted that the other 2.4 million vehicles will be modified under a “special policy” rather than a formal recall notice--because there have been fewer reports of braking problems and the company has not acknowledged that a safety defect exists. Even so, GM agreed to modify those vehicles free of charge, so from the owners’ point of view there is no distinction.

Those vehicles include 1993-96 Chevrolet Blazer and GMC Jimmy sport-utilities, 1994-96 Chevrolet S-10 and GMC Sonoma pickups, 1992-95 Chevrolet Astro and GMC Safari vans, and full-size 1993-96 GMC and Chevrolet G-vans equipped with what are called three-sensor EBC4 ABS systems. The remedy will involve replacing software in the computer system that operates the brakes.

“There don’t seem to be any hardware costs [for GM] involved” in the service repairs, said David Garrity, an analyst with Dresdner Kleinwort Benson. “They’re just updating the software. This shouldn’t be a devastating cost.”

“In this day and age, the only thing that consumers want is not having any added stress in their lives,” remarked Wesley Brown, a consultant with Nextrend, a consumer research firm in Thousand Oaks. GM’s strategy, he said, should be to “make this as pleasant as [it] can, so ultimately they walk out feeling better about [the] company. It does offer GM an opportunity at a time when their image isn’t as strong as it has been.”

It is not known how many of the recalled vehicles are on the road in California. However, of the 9.9 million new pickups, vans and sport-utility vehicles GM sold in the U.S. from 1991 to 1996, about 7%--or 724,000--were purchased in California, according to Pete Marlow of J.D. Power & Associates.

The recall will not affect a separate probe of reported brake system problems in hundreds of thousands of 1992-95 Chevrolet and GMC Suburbans. That investigation began in 1995, and GM and NHTSA officials said Wednesday they did not know when it will be resolved. The NHTSA said the auto maker has not yet “identified any specific action that it intends to take.”

“We didn’t bring that to closure yet, and we are going to continue to work on that,” said GM spokesman Terry Rhadigan.

The NHTSA said it received 10,861 reports of brake problems with the models being recalled, with 2,111 crashes and 293 injuries cited. The agency said it has received 2,400 reports of brake problems with the Suburbans that remain under investigation and that those reports cite 782 crashes and 68 injuries.

The accident and injury reports are largely unconfirmed. NHTSA and GM officials said they have received no reports of deaths in crashes involving faulty brakes.

At 3.5 million vehicles, the recall is the largest in more than three years, but not as large as several others in previous years.

The biggest recall in history, announced in 1996, involved Ford recalling 7.9 million cars, trucks and vans to replace ignition switches.

Times staff writer Jeff Leeds contributed and Times wire services were used in compiling this report.