As much fun as it is to participate in the "flavor of the month" brand bashing, all I see in this recall/buyback is the NHTSA taking longer to catch up with FCA than it did with Toyota, GM, Honda, and probably others (does the Hyundai/Kia $100 million false fuel economy fine count?).
The NHTSA has been criticized for its handling of the earlier recall crises and its apparent they are trying to live up to their promises to get tougher.
One commonality of these massive recalls is that it seems to not affect sales. Go figure. If one wants to claim owner loyalty based on manufacturer integrity, the list is very short. In all of these massive recalls with fines, one of the real issues has been the lack of integrity by ALL of the manufacturers to handle the problems:
Toyota - "The agencies accused Toyota of burying knowledge of safety defects. As part of a deferred prosecution settlement with the Justice Department, Toyota admitted "that it misled U.S. consumers by concealing and making deceptive statements about two safety issues affecting its vehicles, each of which caused a type of unintended acceleration."
GM - "The fault had been known to GM for at least a decade prior to the recall being declared. Some have suggested that the company actually approved the switches in 2002 even though they knew they might not meet safety standards. The company is facing multiple investigations into why it did not attempt to fix these faulty ignitions sooner, including a federal criminal probe..."
Honda- "The $70m fine imposed on Honda was related to two serious infractions the company acknowledged in November amid the airbag furor. One was for failing to report 1,729 claims over the past 11 years that alleged deaths and injuries occurred in accidents involving its vehicles. The second was the result of Honda under-reporting the number of warranty claims during the same period."
There's several parts of the FCA recall/buyback that don't add up. FCA states that 60% of the trucks have already been repaired and that owners can choose repair over buyback. It states some of the problems cannot be repaired. It also states that FCA can repair and resale the vehicles it buys back.
Toyota was fined $50 million for all of their mess. GM was only fined $35 million (ignition debacle) vs. Honda and FCA's $70 and $100 million.
Who will be next??
Maybe itguy08's beloved
Ford?? I see that just 2 years ago Ford was fined $17 million for its mishandling of circa 2002+ Ford Escape's death inducing throttles that may not have been repaired correctly....better check that out:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/russell-mokhiber/ford-fined-1735-million-n_b_3732186.html