GM announced Friday afternoon it would recall every Chevrolet Cobalt, Chevy HHR, Pontiac G5, Pontiac Solstice, Saturn Ion and Saturn Sky as it deepens its investigation into the defective ignition switches in older versions of those cars.


Previously, the recall was restricted to no later than model year 2007 of those cars. In the case of the HHR, cars as recent as the 2011 model year are now being recalled. In the U.S. alone, 824,000 vehicles are involved in this latest round (a total of 971,000 globally) on top of the 1.4 million made between 2003 and 2007.


CEO Mary Barra said in the statement today that this most recent step is being done because it's too difficult to track exactly which cars have a defective switch that was installed as a replacement part (the part numbers weren't changed):

We are taking no chances with safety. Trying to locate several thousand switches in a population of 2.2 million vehicles and distributed to thousands of retailers isn't practical. Out of an abundance of caution, we are recalling the rest of the model years.

GM will start notifying owners the week April 21 if they have a part believed to be faulty.

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