GM really wants this recall business to go away, and fast. They want it gone so quickly that they are adding incentives to dealerships to complete the recalls sooner rather than later. With as many as 25% of recalled vehicles not getting fixed, GM wants to make sure they’ve done everything possible to get these cars repaired before anyone else gets hurt.
If a dealership completes 90% or more of their allotted recalls by July 7th, the parts or service manager will receive a $250 gift card to an unspecified place. In addition, General Motors will award 50 dealerships with a $4,000 prize for completing the recalls in the set amount of time. Finally, they’ll even reward one dealership with $10,000. That sounds like a pretty sweet deal to us.
Big recalls are already boons to dealership service departments. The cost of the repair falls on General Motors to pay, and they are often charged the full hourly labor rate that a dealership charges. With over 20 million vehicles needing fixed (which is more than they’ve sold domestically in the past seven years), dealerships can make a lot of money off of General Motors’ mistake.
The real trouble both dealerships and the company have are locating owners of recalled vehicles and getting them in for a repair. People have already received notifications by mail, but the database may not be accurate. GM will be emailing out notifications in a few weeks in an attempt to reach more owners.
We encourage you all to be proactive. If you visit Safercar.gov you can see if your car or truck has been recalled for any reason, and the recall information you need to provide the dealer service department to get fixed. Also, check in with friends and family members that might have affected cars. As car enthusiasts, we keep up on this stuff more than others and while we think everyone knows about the recall, they probably haven’t heard about it or don’t know the details.
One of the recalled vehicles, sadly, is the Chevrolet Camaro. Check out the car when we had it at the track below.
Chad Kirchner is a freelance automotive journalist with a sincere passion for the industry and helping people. He’s a member of the Midwest Automotive Media Association and the Texas Auto Writers Association. When not writing about the latest automotive news or vehicles, you can catch him at car shows around the country. Be sure to check him out on social media, including Google+ and Twitter.
