Search for the Defectives

The biggest man hunt of 1968 is now under way. It is aimed at auto owners who have not yet responded to General Motors' early-September recall of 310,290 six-cylinder Chevrolets, Buicks, Pontiacs and Oldsmobiles.

The search began after two Chevrolets were sent to Consumers Union (of which Safety Crusader Ralph Nader is a director) for road testing. In both cars, the accelerator tended to stick, and this fact was duly reported to G.M. A similar complaint came from an ordinary Chevy owner.

On that basis, G.M. initiated an investigation. The trouble in all three cars was traced to defective steel clips, penny-sized and costing less than 10 apiece to produce, that were part of the carburetor assemblies. Because that same sort of clip had been used in almost all of G.M.'s six-cylinder cars, the huge recall notice went out.

Of the thousands of cars so far turned in, G.M. says that only ten have had defective clips. All were Chevrolets; no defective clips have appeared in a Buick, Pontiac or Oldsmobile.

All But Three. Still, many owners have not yet answered the recall notice. And for them the intensive search continues. This is by no means unusual. By current Detroit custom, every time a recall campaign is launched, certified letters go out to all owners of suspect cars. A few weeks later, a second batch of certified letters is sent to all those who have not responded. After that, the quest is turned over to Detroit's R. L. Polk & Co., which keeps track of car registrations across the country. Polk thereupon sets out to trace nonanswering owners through serial numbers and licensing bureaus. It goes this far: last year G.M. and Polk, toward the end of an Oldsmobile cam paign, narrowed the field of unaccounted-for cars to three, and the searchers have not yet given up on them.

Inevitably, many owners decline to turn in their cars for inspection and free repair even after they have been located. Many simply do not think that the suspected defect is worth the trouble. Regional conditions can make a difference: in 1966, G.M. sent out recall notices on 1,800,000 Chevelles and Chevrolets in order to install a splash shield designed to keep snow and slush from getting into the transmission housing; multitudes of Southerners, who do not worry about snow and slush, ignored the campaign. Similarly, unless the defect seems really serious, taxis and police cars are rarely turned in--if only because it is extremely inconvenient to have them out of service.

Public Reports. Detroit has quietly recalled cars for many years. But, as a result of a Senate investigation sparked by Ralph Nader's lonely safety campaign, such recalls have been mandatory since Sept. 9, 1966, and nearly all of them have made headlines. Between that day and Sept. 23, 1968, U.S. automakers conducted 288 recalls involving 5,914,592 cars.

Not included in this figure is the batch of 41,850 Econoline vans called back by Ford last week. A worker at the company's Lorain, Ohio, plant hit upon a production shortcut by shoving brake hoses through a spring coil. It saved time and money while it lasted, but the resulting malfunction of the Econoline's front brake may now cost Ford $100,000 to repair.

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