General Motors Corp. (GM) is recalling 79 model year 2009 Chevrolet Impala vehicles.  Internall at GM, these Chevrolet Impala cars are part of the W-car platform.  Some of these vehicles have a passenger-side front air bag inflator that could fracture at an inflator tube during a deployment.

This is because some inflators were improperly manufactured with two secondary inflator filter discs, rather than just the one that was specified.  Using two discs can cause the pressure to back up as a result of gas flow blockage.  During a passenger-side air bag deployment, pieces of the inflator tube could strike and injure vehicle occupants and the air bag cushion would not inflate fully, reducing the capability of the bag to protect the passenger. The recall is expected to begin during mid-October 2008. 08V-517.

This defect was discovered during quality control (lot acceptance) testing at the supplier’s plant.  This recall proves that GM’s and the supplier’s quality control procedures were not working properly.  The defective parts should never have been shipped from the supplier’s facility until after all the quality control tests had been passed.  Instead, it seems that the supplier decided to ship the parts to GM for installation on cars before it had confirmed the tests were passed.  This unnecessarily puts GM’s customers at risk for this safety defect.