General Motors Co. recalled 8.45 million more vehicles yesterday and surpassed the record for U.S. safety fixes by an automaker in a calendar year, as Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra steps up efforts to shed the automaker’s reputation for foot-dragging on defective parts, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The announcement yesterday came less than four hours after Kenneth Feinberg, the lawyer behind the 9/11 victim funds, finished announcing terms of a broad plan for GM to compensate victims of an earlier ignition recall of 2.59 million small cars. Those cars’ faults, linked to at least 13 deaths, ignited a crisis for the automaker that’s led to a reorganization of its engineering department, the ouster of 15 people, testy congressional hearings and a reexamination of past vehicles for safety problems. Most of yesterday’s vehicles, or 8.23 million, are older models being recalled for unintended ignition-key rotation, including Chevrolet Malibus from model years 1997 to 2005 and Cadillac CTS cars from model years 2003 to 2014. Consumers have so far continued buying GM cars and trucks with little regard for the recalls, and the company’s stock has remained buoyant on signs that sales are holding up in the crucial U.S. market.
