After a statement by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, GM has decided to recall some of its 2013 Cadillac SRX crossovers after it has been revealed that the vehicle may have a three-to-four second lag in acceleration. According to NHTSA, this fault has potential to cause an accident.
The issue is already being addressed. A quick reprogramming of the SRX’s transmission module will patch the faulty system. Dealerships should be able to handle these problems with ease, Cadillac predicts.
The fault is only present in the 3.6 liter V6 model of the 2013 SRX. These models were manufactured from May 2012 to June 2013. GM has still not released when it will notify customers that purchased these vehicles. The number of affected vehicles is just over 50,000 units.
This recall comes right at the heels of a major recall by GM regarding a massive ignition switch fault. Controversy has risen against GM due to their prior knowledge of the fault without addressing the problem. That recall is set to cost GM several millions of dollars and may even become the subject of class-action lawsuits against the manufacturer. Renowned auto bloggers Joe Kimbell and Alexander Dawejko tackled this issue in their recent articles.
http://econ244.academic.wlu.edu/2014/04/recalls-affect-gm-profits/
http://econ244.academic.wlu.edu/2014/04/driver-error-or-design-flaw/
The full extent of the damage that this new recall will cause is unknown, but it will most likely be a slight bump in the road. The more dangerous enemy will reveal itself in the future. GM has already earned itself a reputation as a sub-par car manufacturer, a reputation that every GM CEO has strove to erase. These series of recalls are sure to even further that reputation in the minds of Americans.
This recall sounds relatively innocuous – if it wasn’t a Cadillac drivers might not have noticed a small delay in acceleration, especially as there’s turbo lag [it takes a few moments to catch up to trouncing on the pedal]. Though even for an inexpensive car 4 seconds is definitely slow…however, while annoying, this is not a major safety issue. As per my comment on another safety-related post, isn’t this overkill [no, not a pun]? Won’t it cause people to ignore recall notices, to their detriment when it’s something rather more serious?
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I could see this delay as actually dangerous. If you didn’t realize that there was a lag time you might try to accelerate harder, then once the vehicle actually picked up speed the vehicle would go much faster then originally intended. Three to four seconds is a very long wait, one which a driver wouldn’t be expecting the first time they drove the vehicle. So I would no I don’t believe that this is a overkill, rather an unfortunate design flaw that should be fixed.
Remember that every new vehicle is likely to be recalled at least once for some sort of issue. My passe attitude towards slow acceleration is because I’ve driven many “underpowered” vehicles that have little acceleration under any circumstances, as well as vehicles with widely varying responses in the days of more primitive automatic transmissions (3-speeds) and cars with 4-speed manuals that left little umphh in many speed ranges.