General Motor's (GM) will recall close to 1.5 million vehicles in its China market due to potential safety issues, according to a Reuters report.
GM's move, by far, is considered to be the biggest recalls in the automotive industry, the report said.
The decision involved recalling about 1.46 million Buick and Chevrolet models that were locally produced by Shanghai General Motors Co. Ltd., GM's venture with SAIC Motor Corp. The recall was due to fuel pump bracket issues, according to China's quality watchdog Friday, December 27.
GM's Chevy Sail, a vehicle that it has exported to emerging markets, is one of the model vehicles that will be recalled, according to a Shanghai-based GM official.
"GM has warned that the affected component might crack after long use and lead to fuel leakage, but in real life it doesn't appear to have happened," Yale Zhang, head of Automotive Foresight, a Shanghai-based consulting firm, told Reuters. "There're so many recalls these days, and some automakers call back products proactively more as a precaution. In this case, the recall shouldn't affect GM's reputation in China that much."
Zhang said that the GM recall affected the numbers of Buick Excelle and the Chevy Sail models in great number because these are the sought-after models produced in high volumes for mainstream use. However, Zhang also said that the recall is not too serious, the report said.
U.S. automakers have generally outperformed other car manufacturers in the overall Chinese market. The U.S. car growth is attributed to the popularity of American cars in China and partly because U.S. Japanese rivals have been hit by a series of anti-Japan protests. There is an ongoing territorial dispute taking place between Beijing and Tokyo.
From January to November this year, GM sold 2.89 million vehicles in China and is up by 11.4 percent last year. It's competitor Ford sold a total of 840,975 vehicles and is up by 51 percent.
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