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Two More Recalls Push GM Total To 4.8 Million In A Month

General Motors announced two more recalls late Friday, bringing to 4.8 million the number of cars, trucks and SUVs the automaker has called back for repairs in the past month. The string of recalls, topped by an ignition switch problem in compact cars now linked to 13 crash deaths, has embarrassed the company and sidetracked its new CEO, who started work just over two months ago. GM has admitted knowing about the switch problem a decade ago, yet it didn't recall any cars until February. The recall delay has brought two congressional investigations and probes by the Justice Department and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Late Friday night, GM announced it would recall 490,000 late-model pickup trucks and SUVs because transmission oil cooling lines weren't secured properly in their fittings. Transmission oil can leak from a fitting and hit hot surfaces, causing fires, the company said in a statement. GM said it knows of three fires and no injuries. The recall affects Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra 1500 pickup trucks from the 2014 model year, as well as 2015 Chevrolet Suburban and Tahoe SUVs and the GMC Yukon and Yukon XL SUVs. All have six-speed automatic transmissions. The Silverado is GM's top-selling vehicle and an important profit center for the company. The GMC Sierra also is among GM's top sellers. Dealers will inspect the transmission oil cooling line fittings and make sure they're securely seated, at no cost to owners. Also Friday night, GM announced the recall of 172,000 Chevrolet Cruze compact cars because the right front axle shaft can fracture and separate while being driven. The recall affects cars from the 2013 and 2014 model years equipped with 1.4-liter turbocharged four-cylinder gasoline engines. If a shaft fractures, the wheels would lose power without warning and the cars would coast to a stop. GM says it has warranty reports of several dozen shaft fractures. It is not aware of any crashes or injuries. Dealers will replace the shafts free of charge. The recall allows dealers to resume selling affected Cruzes. GM issued a stop sale order on the cars Thursday night. The recall also covers about 2,500 replacement shafts used to fix manual transmission Cruzes that were recalled last September. In all, GM has recalled 4.8 million vehicles since last month, two million more than the company sold last year in the U.S.

2022 Hummer EV Edition 1 pickups ready to go to customers

It's official: Two years after GM announced the electric GMC Hummer pickup, the first couple dozen units have left the line at the GM Factory Zero Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Center, according to GM president Mark Reuss. In an interview with CNBC to celebrate the milestone, Reuss said 17 Hummer EVs are ready for delivery to customers. This makes the Hummer the first of GM's new Ultium-based EVs to leave the factory, and the second electric pickup on the market after the Rivian R1T. The first 1,200 Hummer EVs made will be Edition 1 models, all of which are Interstellar White outside with Lunar Horizon interiors and bronze badging. Each of the $112,595 pickups is powered by three Ultium motors producing a GM-estimated 1,000 horsepower and 11,500 pound-feet of torque, loaded with features like height-adjusting adaptive suspension, skid rails and rock sliders, 35-inch tires, the diagonal-driving CrabWalk, the launch control system Watts to Freedom that unlocks a three-second sprint to 60 miles per hour, and Super Cruise. Range is a GM-estimated 329 miles when the 200-kWh battery is fully charged. As these filter out to eager owners, GM is prepping the next four phases of the Hummer rollout. About a year from now, in autumn of 2022, Factory Zero will begin production of the first widely available Hummer, the EV3X pickup that starts at $99,995 before destination. Three Ultium motors will provide an estimated 800 horsepower and 9,500 pound-feet of torque to a range estimated beyond 300 miles. Spring of 2023 is expected to deliver the Hummer EV2X pickup at an MSRP of $89,995, utilizing two motors producing a total 625 hp and 7,400 lb-ft over a range also estimated to go beyond 300 miles. Around the same time, the first units of the $105,595 Hummer SUV Edition 1 are planned to head down lines at Factory Zero. Finally, in the spring of 2024, the entry-level $79,995 Hummer EV2 pickup and its two-motor powertrain should arrive, making the same output as the EV2X, but only good for a range of around 250 miles. That won't be all we see from Factory Zero, either. GM invested $2.2 billion in the Detroit-Hamtramck plant that once built bread-and-butter GM fare like the Chevrolet Impala, Buick LaCrosse, and Oldsmobile Toronado in order to turn the facility into its first EV base of manufacturing operations for Ultium products. The battery-electric Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups will be built there, as will the Cruise Origin robotaxi.

GMC Syclone spools up a storm on Jay Leno's Garage

A storm was brewing on American roads in the early 1990s. That's when Detroit's automakers were producing some of the hottest performance trucks ever devised – models like the Ford Lightning, GMC Typhoon, and its flyweight pickup sibling, the GMC Syclone. Jay Leno just happens to have one of the latter in his garage, and took it out to showcase in this latest video segment. The Syclone was an exercise in absurdity, and could not only trounce any other pickup on the road, it could outrun anything else GM made and just about anything else on the road – beating Ferraris and Porsches off the line. In a pickup, for crying out loud. The kicker is that its engine wasn't such a monster, either: under the hood sat a 4.3-liter turbocharged V6 pumping out what would seem by today's standards to be an adequate 280 horsepower and 350 pound-feet of torque. Even the smaller of the EcoBoost V6s available in today's Ford F-150 produces more than that. But in a lightweight, compact pickup, those figures were enough to propel the Syclone to 60 in 4.3 seconds and run the quarter-mile in 13.6 seconds. Long before the dune-jumping Ford F-150 SVT Raptor or even the Viper-powered Dodge Ram SRT-10, GM made fewer than 3,000 Syclones based on the compact Sonoma (sister to the Chevy S-10) and another 4,700 of the Typhoon, which was mechanically similar but more practical (albeit heavier) wagon bodywork from the Jimmy. But as Jay aptly points out, the Syclone was the one you wanted. Scope it out in the ten-minute video clip above.