Here’s What Happens When GM Recalls Your Car, Or: Our Long-Term Corvette Stingray Gets Fixed

General Motors’ barrage of recalls this year has covered almost every corner of its model lineup, leaving many drivers frustrated with having to visit their local dealer for repairs. Some of the required fixes are minor, such as the inspection of the shifter linkage that our long-term Cadillac CTS Vsport recently underwent as part of a June recall for various problems with 3.5 million cars. Others are more serious, including the controversial ignition switches that kicked off GM’s mess in the first place. Here, we detail our experience taking in a car for emergency triage at the dealership.​

Our long-term 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray also failed to avoid the General’s lawyers—2015 models have already been recalled for different problems, too—and we were notified that it was among a small number of new Stingrays (GM claims fewer than 750) that were recalled for faulty seat-mounted passenger-side airbag modules. That wasn’t great news to receive, but it was hardly surprising given the breadth of GM’s recalls, and it did provide an opportunity to observe what happens when your car needs a repair.

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New and recalled 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray side airbags side by side. See if you can spot the difference.​

The bad components didn’t affect the way the car drove or sound off any alerts, but since a trim piece could keep the bags from inflating properly, they needed to be fixed. Parts were ordered, and while we waited, the order from GM was not to allow small children to ride in the car. Once the parts arrived, we dropped off the car at Suburban Chevrolet in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

In this case, the recall-repair process was no more inconvenient than a scheduled service appointment, except this one was decidedly unscheduled. At least we didn’t have to pay anything. The fix was estimated to take about an hour, as it involved removing the plastic cover from the airbag module—it’s a sort of tumor on the outboard side of the seatback—and replacing the compact airbag/inflator module underneath. The dealer informed us that it would then return the faulty components to GM for inspection and analysis, after which they’d be discarded.

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2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray side-airbag module with plastic trim cover removed.​

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We’re glad this repair was simple—as opposed to, say, completely replacing the LT1 small-block V-8, which had to be done when ours failed at 6000 miles—and we’re okay with setting aside time to have critical safety components such as airbags and ignition systems brought up to snuff. Hopefully we’ll never need to find out if our Corvette’s new airbag modules work properly.

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2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray complete airbag module installed (left) and removed (right).
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