GM Recall, Stop driving it

Cutting corners is my guess...bottom line management types...

Take the steering wheel air bag issue with Takata...they went from the
engineering chosen explosive, tetrazole, to amn unbelievably cheaper
explosive, ammonium nitrate...which is unstable over time (temp &
humidity) degrades to both be too fast a burn and easily set off

As Don said, high volume welded stuff is no longer done by humans, but
robots. Another example is the POS GM receiver of the GMT800/900 era

Can guess so many contributing things...like the supplier of the raw
steel/cast/etc, the machining, the tempering, alloy, etc all has to be
within a spec range. Then the storage and handling up to the welding.

Then the welding itself, which also has it's spec range (temp of the
parts, ambient temp, humidity, etc, etc) All spelled out in the QA spec

Again, Don is spot on...where was QC ? They are involved in some
fashion, as it was found...reported and a decision to 'stop ship' and
recall

The world is a global economy and current cheapest manufacturing is
no longer China nor India...but Africa. Stuff is going to go downhill
as Africa comes on line with ever bigger/complex/etc parts shipped to
the world OEMs

Searched...and no real data as to what exactly is wrong, yet...