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STUDY: Ford owns brand loyalty in 2009; Scorned Saturn, Pontiac buyers will look outside of GM

Ford buyers appear to love their cars more than customers of any other automotive brand, returning back to the American automaker when it comes time to purchase their next vehicle. According to a study by Experian Automotive, six of the top 10 vehicles for customer brand loyalty wear badges from the Blue Oval. That includes the Ford Fusion (62.4 percent), Ford Edge (57.9 percent), Ford Five Hundred/Taurus (56 percent), Ford Freestyle (51.9 percent), Ford Escape (49.4 percent) and the Ford Focus (47.57 percent).
Other vehicles making up the top 10 include the Toyota Prius (52 percent), Chevy Impala (51.7 percent), Toyota Camry (47.8 percent) and Toyota Corolla (47.56 percent). This brings up an interesting question: With the closing of automotive brands like Saturn and Pontiac, where are those buyers to turn for their next automotive purchase?
Apparently, not back to General Motors. According to Experian, Pontiac owners are most likely to look to the Ford lineup for their next car or truck and Saturn shoppers will switch to Toyota or Honda - not particularly surprising given that Saturn was meant to compete with import brands. Experian predicts that GM's overall market share will fall from 20 percent to about 17.5 percent, with most of the slack being picked up by Ford, Honda and Toyota.

303 Deaths Tied To Airbag Non-Deployment In 2 General Motors' Cars

At least 303 motorists died in car accidents after their airbags didn't deploy in now-recalled General Motors vehicles, according to a study released late last night. The Center for Auto Safety, a non-profit automotive watchdog, reviewed data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System, and counted deaths involving the Chevrolet Cobalt and Saturn Ion, two vehicles at the heart of several ongoing investigations, to reach its conclusion. If the airbag non-deployments were the result of a faulty ignition switch that inadvertently turns them off, the death toll would be the largest in automotive history attributed to a single defect, surpassing the 250 deaths investigators linked to defective Firestone Tires more than a decade ago. The rising death toll would further amplify questions about why GM and federal safety regulators at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration didn't act sooner to correct the problem. Safety advocates have said both GM and NHTSA failed to act in a timely fashion to alert motorists of the dangers posed by the dangerous defect, of which documents GM had knowledge of as early as 2001 and NHTSA knew about in 2007. "The question today for NHTSA is how so many ... death reports without an airbag deployment and so many FARS deaths without an airbag deployment failed to trigger an investigation," wrote Clarence Ditlow, the executive director of the Center for Auto Safety. "... For the people who died or were seriously injured in crashes, the answer comes too late." GM has acknowledged 13 deaths related to the problem, and says the number cited by the Center for Auto Safety study is "speculation." The review of FARS data, conducted by Friedman Research at the request of the Center for Auto Safety, looked at fatal cases in which airbags did not deploy but did not analyze the causes of the crashes. FARS information is raw data submitted to a national database by state and local authorities when fatal accidents occur. Last month, GM recalled 1.37 million cars in the U.S. because a faulty ignition switch had been inadvertently moving from the "run" position to the "accessory" position, turning off engines and systems that provide power to airbags. "Shame is not a strong enough word," said Lou Lombardo, the founder of Care for Crash Victims, another safety-minded nonprofit that advocates for accident victims. The results of the CAS study were first reported by the New York Times.

Recalled Saturn Ion facing separate federal safety probe

General Motors may be staring down another recall campaign for one of its models already embroiled in its high-profile ignition recall. The 2003-2007 Saturn Ion is already among the 1.6-million vehicles being recalled for faulty ignition switches, and now new light is being shed on a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigation over 2004-2007 models centering on a loss of power steering.
The government safety regulator has received 846 complaints about the problem and claims that GM has had 3,489 reports of failure. Of those cases, there have been 16 accidents and 2 injuries reported, according to Automotive News. While NHTSA has been conducting an investigation since September 2011, no recall has been issued yet.
The inquiry's length was brought to light by an organization called the National Legal and Policy Center that alleges GM and NHTSA have known about the problem but are delaying a recall. It has sent a letter to CEO Mary Barra asking "to recall Saturn Ions for the model years 2004 through 2007 without further delay." The letter in question is available in full on the group's website.