General Motors
is recalling about 196,000 Hummer sport utility vehicles because of an
electrical problem that resulted in at least two vehicles being
destroyed in fires, the automaker said on Wednesday.
An
electrical part of the heating and cooling system could overheat and
cause a fire inside the dashboard, the automaker said. Three people
suffered minor burns.
“There
was a funny smell. I immediately stopped and told my passenger to get
out and noticed a fire under the passenger glove box,” one Hummer owner
wrote the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
in June 2014. “I tried pouring milk and juice on the fire to put it out
under the dash but it didn’t put the fire completely out. The vehicle
quickly went up in flames.”
Hummer
owners filed at least 20 complaints with the safety agency about fires
inside the dashboard, and two said the vehicles were destroyed. The
safety agency began receiving complaints about the problem in 2008. Over
all, G.M. said that there were 42 reported fires.
The
recall includes 165,000 vehicles in the United States and includes the
Hummer H3 from the 2006-10 model years and the H3T from 2009-10.
“The
N.H.T.S.A. needs to investigate this or are you waiting for an actual
fire to cause G.M. to fix this issue,” one owner wrote the agency in
June 2013. There was no indication on the safety agency’s website that
regulators had opened an investigation.
An internal audit by the Transportation Department last month said that the safety agency had moved too slowly on many investigations.
Mark R. Rosekind, the agency’s administrator, told a congressional subcommittee last month that the agency lacked the resources it needed.
That statement contrasts with ones from his predecessors, including
David L.
Strickland, that the agency was adequately funded and doing a
good job.
Also
on Wednesday, G.M. said it would recall about 51,000 Chevrolet cars,
including almost 46,000 in the United States, because of a radio
software problem that could disable some audible warning functions
including seatbelts not being fastened or the door being opened with the
key still in the ignition.
That recall includes the 2014-15 Chevrolet
Spark and the 2015 Sonic.