2004 Saturn L-series 300 V6 Sedan 4d on 2040-cars

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GM investing $167m in Spring Hill for new midsize vehicles

General Motors has announced a large investment in its Spring Hill, Tennessee facility. The former home of Saturn production will be getting a $167 million addition to a previously announced $183 million, to cover a pair of new midsize vehicles. The investment is expected to create 1,800 jobs at the factory.
That $350 million is being divvied up for a pair of programs at Spring Hill. The first will take the bulk of the money ($223 million) and create 1,000 of the 1,800 jobs, while the other will take the remaining $127 million and generate the leftover 800 positions. But GM says the investment will cover "midsize vehicle programs." So what could they be?
The leading candidate in our minds is a new crossover for Buick, called the Anthem, that will slot between the Encore and Enclave, but will be slightly smaller than the Equinox and Terrain. As we've explained, the new model will likely be the first product to sport GM's new D2UX platform, which will eventually replace both the Delta and Theta platforms. Spring Hill is already building the Equinox, so there could be some credence to this theory.

NHTSA could add 1M cars to GM recall

The Detroit Free Press is reporting that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration may expand a recall campaign for faulty brake lamps. The agency is currently looking into complaints that certain 2004-2011 Chevrolet Malibu models as well as some 2007-2009 Saturn Aura sedans may have brake lights that do not illuminate when the driver presses the pedal. Alternatively, the lamps may also illuminate without input from the driver. General Motors recalled 8,000 Pontiac G6 models from the 2005 model year for the same problem, and NHTSA is currently investigating whether to add 550,000 more G6 models built between 2005 and 2009 to the list for the same issue.
In addition, investigators are currently examining 97 complaints from Malibu and Aura owners with the same trouble. If NHTSA adds those models to the recall campaign, more than one million units could be covered. GM, meanwhile, says there have been no accidents or injuries as a result of the problem.

Saturn Vue ignition issue was discussed three times before recall, new documents reveal

Despite the tens of millions of recalled vehicles this year, it's somewhat rare that we get a glimpse into what goes into deciding when to conduct one of these safety campaigns. New documents published by General Motors and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are giving us an interesting opportunity to see how the sausage is made and show the number of meetings it takes to declare a recall.
In early August, GM added about another 269,000 vehicles to its 2014 recall tally in the US when it announced a slew of new safety campaigns. Among them was a fix for the 2002-2004 Saturn Vue that covered 202,155 of them in the US. The problem was that the key could be removed from the ignition even when it wasn't in the "OFF" position, and that had caused two crashes and one injury, according to the automaker.
Where we start to see behind the veil is in the defect notice freshly released by NHTSA. It shows that GM began investigating more widely for ignition switches in April, shortly after the company expanded its ignition switch recall to a variety of Saturn products, among others, according to Automotive News. The automaker found 152 reports in the 2002-2004 Vue of vehicles rolling away or the key being removed out of a total population of 215,243 units worldwide.