The recalls of at least 8.4 million more General Motors vehicles this week underscores a deepening safety crisis that could do irreparable harm to the company's image if it continues, experts said.
Steven Fink, president and CEO of Lexicon Communications Corp., a Los Angeles crisis-management firm, said GM has done an "abysmal" job of handling the scandal, which already has triggered a U.S. Justice Department probe into why the automaker waited a decade to recall vehicles that had a faulty ignition switch that has been linked to at least 13 deaths.
"The No. 1 problem they have right now is not ignition switches," Fink said. "It's the lack of confidence in the company that seems to be building."
That's primarily because GM's new CEO, Mary Barra, has failed to take responsibility for the crisis, he said.
"The fact is she has been an executive there in one capacity or another for years," he said. "She can't just bury her head in the sand and say she's never heard of these problems. That doesn't fly in corporate America anymore. It falls to her as CEO to fix the problems and rebuild consumer confidence in the company's ability to make safe cars."
Barra brought in Kenneth Feinberg, who handled the compensation of the Sept. 11 and Boston Marathon victims, to do the same for the GM victims because she thought it would be more "expedient" and garner less bad publicity than if she didn't, Fink said.
"The company knew it didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of surviving a trial, where you have expert witnesses and grieving family members testify," he said.
Since January, when Barra took over, GM has recalled a total of 28 million vehicles, mostly for faulty ignition switches that disabled the cars' power steering and brakes, as well as their air bags.
And yet sales of GM cars have climbed. Last month, GM's market share in the U.S. was 18.8 percent, up from 16.9 percent five months earlier, before the recalls began, according to Autodata Solutions, a consultant to the automotive industry.
Still, the fact that the number of GM recalls keeps growing leads one to wonder how much longer the company's luck will last, said S. Adam Brasel, a Boston College associate professor of marketing.
"On the one hand, we should be happy the company is being proactive," he said. "But at the same time, as the number continues to climb, you can't help but wonder how many more there will be."
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