|
 The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also said on
Tuesday that GM had missed an April 3 deadline to respond to the
agency's request for information about the recall. GM said it was
cooperating fully.
The automaker, which recalled 2.6 million vehicles including the
Chevrolet Cobalt, Saturn Ion and other models, said no parts to
dealerships had been shipped as of late Tuesday afternoon.
Chief Executive Mary Barra had said in an online video that GM aimed
to get the parts out by the beginning of this week.
"Our plan is to have parts at the dealers on April 7th," Barra said
in a video about the recall, which will last several months.
Spokesman Greg Martin said GM still expects to begin shipping parts
sometime this week but confirmed none had been shipped yet. "What
Mary should have said is the week of April 7th," Martin said. He did
not know the date of her video.
GM dealerships for weeks have been fielding calls from customers who
are anxious to get their vehicles fixed.
"(The phones) just keeps ringing," said Ed Brunton, service director
of Bryner Chevrolet in suburban Philadelphia. "We're staying pretty
busy with it."
GM recalled the vehicles because ignition switches can unexpectedly
turn off engines during operation and leave airbags, power steering
and power brakes inoperable. The company has linked 13 deaths to the
defect.
"We get about 100 inquires a day by phone" about the GM recall, said
Jim Sowers, owner of Jim Butler Chevrolet in suburban St. Louis.
"Nobody has contacted us screaming and yelling."
Sowers said his dealership has hired three new people to handle the
extra volume of calls about the faulty ignitions.
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Scott Fitzgerald, service director at MacMulkin Chevrolet in Nashua,
New Hampshire, said he was unsure how long it would take to fix the
vehicles of his customers.
"I can't answer that," Fitzgerald said. "There are a lot of
vehicles."
In a letter to GM on Tuesday, NHTSA said the company had not
answered more than a third of the 107 questions the agency asked as
part of its investigation into why the automaker waited until
February to order a recall, when it first learned of problems with
the ignition switch more than 10 years ago.
GM responded that it had "fully cooperated" with the agency,
delivering nearly 21,000 documents covering more than 271,000 pages
related to the safety recalls.
"We will continue to provide responses and facts as soon as they
become available and hope to go about this in a constructive
manner," GM said in a statement said. "We will do so with a goal of
being accurate as well as timely."
(Additional reporting by Bernie Woodall and Dave Warner; editing by
Peter Henderson)
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