GM engineer hit roadblocks in ignition switch probe

[unhappycamper]

http://www.pressherald.com/news/GM_engineer_hit_roadblocks_in_ignition_switch_probe_.html

Uncooperative colleagues, inaccurate data and a rotating cast of managers stymied his investigation.

GM engineer hit roadblocks in ignition switch probe
By Tim Higgins
Bloomberg News
And Jeff Green

DETROIT — For about two years, General Motors engineer Brian Stouffer tried to figure out why faulty ignition switches now linked to at least 13 deaths were causing cars to stall. His quest was thwarted by uncooperative colleagues, inaccurate data and a rotating cast of managers.

Newly released company records depict a low-level engineer struggling to find answers at an automaker in the throes of rebuilding after a 2009 bankruptcy. His bosses on the assignment changed three times in about a year, and he found himself stymied because another engineer had ordered a fix years earlier without the usual paperwork – helping explain why GM took more than a decade to come clean about the defect and recall 2.59 million vehicles, including the Chevrolet Cobalt.

Even as Stouffer chased leads, managers who still play key roles at GM were receiving blunt warnings from safety regulators that they were mishandling recall investigations. One official’s email in 2013 blasting GM for being “too slow to communicate” and “too slow to act” was quickly circulated to product executives and top deputies of Mary Barra, who at the time was GM’s chief product officer and now runs the largest U.S. automaker.

“Typical General Motors,” Maryann Keller, a veteran auto analyst who has written two books on GM, said Sunday. “Where one hand doesn’t know what the other hand is doing, where matters of importance that may cost the company money are sidetracked or dismissed or buried inside the company and people who are supposed to be doing this aren’t given the resources.”

[GeorgeGist]

1. Sounds like Republican government.