The writer, a Los Angeles freelancer and former Detroit News business reporter, writes a blog, Starkman Approved.
By Eric Starkman
If GM’s ad folks are looking for a representative slogan to capture GM’s cash cow trucks and SUVs under the leadership of CEO Mary Barra, here’s one: Transmissions R’nt Us.

Chevy Traverse
GM last week issued a “Customer Satisfaction Program” notice that some models of the 2024-2025 Chevy Traverse, 2024 GMC Acadia and 2025 Buick Enclave have transmissions that weren’t properly assembled and need to be replaced. The notice comes just weeks after GM issued a massive recall of 462,000 diesel models of its Chevy and GMC full-sized trucks and SUVs because of a faulty transmission valve that can cause rear wheels to lock up.
The diesel recall affects 2020–2022 models, including the Chevy Silverado, Tahoe, and Suburban; GMC Sierra and Yukon; and Cadillac Escalade. GM says the issue can be fixed by installing new software for the transmission control module, but online critics argue that’s a band-aid solution and the transmissions should be replaced.
William Sikora, host of a YouTube channel called The Riverstone Life who claims to be among the first to publicly sound the alarm about GM’s transmission valve issue, said he’s received “hundreds of hundreds” of messages from viewers saying they’ve experienced the same problem.
“General Motors screwed up and they know it,” Sikora said. “General Motors you need to fix this problem, you need to fix it now, and you need to fix it right.”

GM CEO Mary Barra (GM photo)
The unidentified host of a YouTube channel called The CarGuyOnline argues in a video that even more GM trucks and SUVs are likely involved based on documentation he’s examined.
The CarGuy’s video includes legions of comments from angry viewers who claim they’ve experienced serious transmission issues with their GM trucks and SUVs, with several of them saying their vehicles have remained at their dealers for months because parts aren’t readily available.
“GM has been knowingly selling vehicles with faulty transmissions for at least six years now. Upper management should be held criminally liable,” posted one viewer.
There is some damning legal evidence to back up the reader’s comment. GM is facing a massive class action lawsuit across 26 states that alleges the auto manufacturer violated state consumer protection statutes by knowingly putting vehicles with faulty transmissions on the road, endangering drivers, passengers, and pedestrians.
The certified class represents more than 800,000 owners of GM vehicles with one of two models of eight-speed automatic transmissions, the GM 8L90 or 8L45, which were manufactured between 2015 and March 1, 2019. Plaintiffs claim that the vehicles suffer from shuddering or shaking in higher gears and hesitation, lurching, or jerking in lower gears. Some drivers reported the gear shifting as so violent that it feels as if they were hit by another vehicle.

Internal company documents obtained in litigation show that even GM had determined the “startling effect” of the harsh shifts can create a safety issue, according to Cohen Milstein, a law firm representing the class action plaintiffs. Nevertheless, Cohen Milstein alleged GM instructed dealers to tell customers that harsh shifts were “normal” or “characteristic.”
CEO Barra assumed command of GM in 2014, vowing that she’d reform GM’s culture. Within weeks of Barra becoming CEO, it was revealed that GM had knowingly sold vehicles with faulty ignition switches, a defect linked to more than 100 deaths and hundreds of injuries. GM was charged with two felonies but escaped criminal prosecution, instead paying a $900 million fine and agreeing to three years of oversight by a federal monitor.
GM has been fighting tooth and nail for dismissal of the class action transmission lawsuits, which have been dragging on for years. In August, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed a class certification for the transmission lawsuit granted earlier in the year.
In its news release hailing the decision, Cohen Milstein said that the appeals court “concurred with the lower court’s determination that “[t]he predominant elements of claims for consumer fraud . . . are consistent across all jurisdictions,” namely “(1) proof of intentional concealment or deception by the defendant concerning its knowledge of the alleged defects, and (2) the significance of the information withheld to a reasonable consumer.”
GM dodged a legal bullet last week when the Sixth Circuit accepted GM’s petition and agreed to hold a so-called en banc rehearing before the entire Sixth Circuit Court to review automaker’s previous appeal, creating the potential for GM to prevail in its quest to derail efforts for transmission owners to sue as a class action. Few consumers have the financial wherewithal to individually sue GM, which reported more than $171.8 billion in 2023 revenues.

Judge Raymond M. Kethledge
I’m told en banc rehearings are extremely rare. The Sixth Circuit is viewed as conservative court, with a majority of the judges being appointed by Republicans, about six of them by Donald Trump. One of the judges, Raymond Kethledge, is a former Honigman partner who previously served as Ford’s in-house counsel.
Republicans, particularly Donald Trump, don’t like regulations and typically don’t take kindly to class action attorneys, who are major financial supporters of Democrats. Elon Musk recently called for the abolition of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which last week sued the operator of Zelle and three of the nation’s largest banks for failing to protect consumers from widespread fraud on America’s most widely available peer-to-peer payment network.
CFPB alleged Zelle was rushed to market lacking consumer safeguards that resulted in consumers losing more than $870 million because of the failure. I’ve previously speculated on my blog that Musk will move to dismantle or critically defund the National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration because of the agency’s regulatory actions against Tesla.
Overseeing GM’s litigation is a critical job, which explains why general counsel Craig Glidden for the first time in nine years ranked among GM’s five highest paid executives in 2023, pocketing $11.5 million, mostly in the form of $6.9 million in stock awards. Last month, Glidden sold 383,142 GM shares worth $21.7 million, including 331,561 shares acquired through the exercise of stock options.
In November 2023, GM named Glidden president and chief administrative officer of the company’s troubled driverless taxi business Cruise, in wake of the automaker’s firing of nine Cruise executives, including chief legal honcho Jeff Bleich.
GM recently announced it would close Cruise, so it’s not clear what role Glidden will play at the automaker. In June, GM said it was “excited to announce” it had hired Grant Dixton as executive vice president and chief legal and public policy officer, reporting directly to Barra, who is both GM’s chair and CEO. Dixton previously served as the chief legal officer of Activision Blizzard and earlier held several executive-level positions at Boeing, including general counsel and corporate secretary.
In addition to the transmission litigation, Dixton must also oversee GM’s response to Texas AG Ken Paxton’s damning lawsuit about the automaker’s alleged privacy violations, as well as at least a dozen class action lawsuits. In September, GM settled for $35 million a class action lawsuit alleging the company equipped GMC Sierra and Chevrolet Silverado trucks with defective engine parts. In July, GM reached a preliminary $50 million settlement agreement with drivers who accused it of selling vehicles with CP4 fuel pumps that were “ticking time bombs.”
In another blow to Barra’s efforts to rebrand GM as a technology company, the apps for all four of the core GM brands, including Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC, ranked at the bottom of the results for the J.D. Power 2024 U.S. OEM ICE App Report. GM’s apps ranked well in the survey a year ago.
The author is preparing additional articles about GM and welcomes hearing from employees, dealers, and suppliers at Eric@starkmanapproved.com. Anonymity is assured.