Are Airbag Recalls Overblown

So today we have an article out of Car and Driver, and this may shock all of you that have been in the business for a long time, but the NHTSA is proposing that there is a recall of 52 million vehicles due to. If you had to think of the biggest recalls over the last 20 years, Chris, what is it related to?

Let me think. What does every car and truck have? Tires. But they're not all the same tires.

It's gonna be. I'm gonna guess it's airbags.

He would be correct. So 52 million airbags are potentially defective. So the big number to attach to this 52 million is that 20 million of them are GM products. So just under half.

Aye. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So in since 2015, the NHTSA has found nine ruptures and two deaths, which basically means the things exploded on their own and shot metal shards in places they shouldn't go. So here's the thing that. No, here's the thing that surprises me about this, though. And I don't know if I'm insensitive, but you're.

Before you finish this, I'm going to tell you you're insensitive.

Okay, great.

This the only person raised in the Midwest that's insensitive.

How does that work?

I don't know.

It doesn't make any sense at all.

Someday we'll get to the bottom of it.

But the failure rate of the airbags that they want to recall is 1 in 370,000.

And so your thought is that that's not that bad unless you're the one.

369,000.

You think it's terrible. Just.

Just let's say that we're going to Vegas, you and I, for the weekend. And there was something that had. The odds of being successful were 369,999 out of 370,000. We're not picking the. We're not picking the dark horse.

All the one needs is a good lawyer. That's all.

Fair, I understand. I'm just saying that, like, we're saying that these airbags are terrible, but, like, one out of 370,000, you're like, I'd take those odds. Yeah. There's so many more components on cars that fail at a much higher rate than that. So I think that that's interesting how they're kind of tuned into.

You know, the airbag thing. However, I think about, like, you know, let's say a manufacturer, Korean manufacturers, having problems with, like, oil consumption in their engines, and they. They have tons and tons a Korean manufacturer.

Could you be more specific?

But to me, like those things, like they consume oil and then the.

Which of the two Korean manufacturers that are actually the same.

And you can't answer this question wrong, by the way, so they're both correct. Okay.

But let's say hypothetically, the two Korean auto manufacturers that are the same, they're really the same, have an oil consumption problem. Just.

Just saying. Okay, I put that.

I follow you. Yeah.

I think that's 10 times more dangerous than a 1 in 370,000 chance of an airbag failure.

I think nobody's dying from oil consumption.

No, but I do think that what happens if they. If the car gets low enough on oil, I would assume that it probably could stall out. And if it stall out on the freeway, maybe we just haven't attributed it to the engine yet.

Maybe not. But the airbag thing is a. Is not a.

All right, I'm just saying I would play the odds.

It's a surprise when those things go off. It's like a.

It's a shotgun blast. What's the.

What's the biggest firecracker we could buy? When we were kids, I lived in Mexico. No, we could buy M1000s. They were like. They were a quarter stick of dynamite.

I thought that was M80s, maybe M1000.

Maybe the pool stick for Mexico. I don't know.

You know, people are listening to this and I'm like, what did they drink before they started filming?

Nothing.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's what it's like when an airbag goes on.

Yeah. I've hit a couple airbags. They're not very fun. You've hit them, isn't. They've hit my face.

Yeah. Surprise. With your driving.

You know how many airbags I've had to go off?

No.

Zero.

Not one. A couple, he says, which means 12 dozen. You've had a dozen airbags go off?

I'm still here. That's all I've got to say. So I was part of that 369,999. So kind of related to that, on the heels of the airbag thing and then the UAW strike and all the other fun things that are happening. GM stock the other day hit a three year all time low.

Is it time to buy GM stock?

No, no, no. I don't like.

You think it's going lower?

I don't like the trajectory where that thing's headed, but. Really? Yeah. So what does this mean for service departments, though?

Oh, the recalls. It means that most of the service departments out there will see it as an inconvenience, and they won't be ready for it. And the customers will have a terrible time because customers will, in their head, think they're one of the 360. They'll want to get in. They will be booked out. They won't be able to get them in. And then the customers will feel worse about GM than they did before. And there'll be a handful of service departments that gear up for it, inspect every car that comes in that they haven't been seeing, and use it as a chance to gain some retention and to, you know, to sell more work. But that will be so far, and few between most of them will just.

Amplify the negative perception the customers have already.

Yes, ironically, the odds of the GM store being ready for this event is 1 in 3, 1 in 370,000. But I do think that it's a really great opportunity. So if you're a GM store, start prepping now for the fun that's coming down the road.

That's inspect every car and figure out, like, why aren't they coming in? Why are they going somewhere else? Right.

Yeah. I love Takata time.

I mean, there's two things that give dealers huge advantage. When you just talk about direct to the service department like that. They have a lot of advantages, but there's two big ones. One is warranty. Customers got to come back.

And two is recalls.

Huge opportunity. You said it before. And that's probably the thing that the average store looks at recalls as an inconvenience. And there's some really great stores out there that look at those as huge opportunities.

There's no way you're buying GM stock.

No.

Thanks so much for watching this episode.

Of Service Job Revolution.

We're uploading new stuff every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the bell icon so you don't miss out. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show, call 8333 Ask SDR and we'll answer your question on the show. That's 8333 Ask SDR. For special deals on our books and training, head over to offers.chriscollinsinc.com now that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video.