300

Make
Chrysler
Segment
Sedan

Just when General Motors believed it could put that whole ignition switch debacle behind it, the issue returns. According to a series of emails sent to The Wall Street Journal by Texas personal injury attorney Robert Hilliard, who's handling several of the lawsuits filed against the automaker since last February's recall announcement, GM placed an email order for 500,000 (the first service notice was for 800,000 vehicles) replacement ignition switches to supplier Delphi Corp. the December prior.

WSJ claims the email, dated December 18, 2013, was sent as "urgent" just one day after GM execs held a situation meeting to discuss the Chevrolet Cobalt. It wasn't until February when GM notified the NHTSA of the recall. It gets worse once you breakdown the timeline of events as it wasn't until January 31, 2014 when GM claims to have made the actual recall decision. So why place such a large and "urgent" order nearly a month and a half before notifying the NHTSA? That's the multimillion dollar question. "This pulls the curtain back completely and proves GM has not been forthright," Hilliard stated in reference to what he discovered.

He also brought up the fact that current GM CEO, Mary Barra, who assumed the job on January 15, previously worked as head of global product development operations. How could it be that she wasn't aware of such a big purchase like this? Barra testified before Congress last summer that she wasn't made aware of the ignition switch flaw until the automaker was about to issue the safety recall in January. We'll see in the coming days how GM will respond to this latest revelation.