No General Motors conspiracy to hide cars' deadly defect, says CEO

A pattern of "incompetence and neglect" led to the failure to recall millions of General Motors small cars over a deadly ignition switch defect, but there was no conspiracy to hide the problem, the company's chief executive said yesterday.

Outlining the results of an internal probe, GM chief executive Mary Barra said 15 employees deemed responsible for not vigorously tackling the problem have been forced out of the company, and five others have been disciplined.

Barra called the report "brutally tough and deeply troubling." But the investigation by Anton Valukas, a former U.S. attorney, did not tie the problems to top GM executives.

Rather than finding a cover-up, the investigation revealed an ingrained corporate culture in which employees failed to take responsibility for the ignition-switch problem or treat it with urgency. Information remained trapped in GM's bureaucratic silos even as accidents and fatalities mounted.

That culture contributed to GM's waiting more than a decade to recall 2.6 million Chevrolet Cobalts and other small cars equipped with the defective switch, which has been linked to at least 13 deaths and 54 accidents, the report said.

Barra, a GM lifer who took over as chief executive in January, has vowed to break that pattern, which contributed to the company's decline and eventual 2009 bankruptcy and federal bailout.

Despite the debacle, GM sales have been strong in recent months. But for the company to continue that momentum, analysts said, Barra and other leaders are going to have to persuade consumers that GM has shed its old ways.

"It is a real trick to say we had a decade of a pattern of incompetence and I wasn't a part of it," said Daniel Hill, president of Ervin Hill Strategy, a crisis management firm.

The report said that GM had problems with the ignition switch from the beginning. The part never met GM specifications, but an engineer approved it for use anyway.

At first, the part's electrical system was so balky that it had to be redesigned. Then the switch was found to not have enough torque, allowing it to be accidentally switched off, sometimes when a driver's knee hit the steering column or a key ring was heavily weighted down.

Complaints flowed almost from the start. The lead engineer for the part, Ray DeGiorgio, was primarily concerned about electrical problems that caused the switch to have trouble starting cars in cold weather. He repeatedly pushed against efforts to address the torque problem, which he did not know posed a danger to drivers, the report said. In 2006, DeGiorgio -- one of the employees dismissed by GM -- approved a new design for the part without documenting the change or alerting higher-ups who could have ordered a recall, the report found.