GM recalls a further 8.45m cars

General Motors recalled another 8.45 million more vehicles yesterday — surpassing the record for US safety fixes by an carmaker in a calendar year, as chief executive Mary Barra steps up efforts to shed GM’s reputation for foot-dragging on defective parts.

The announcement came less than four hours after Kenneth Feinberg, the lawyer behind the 9/11 victim funds, finished announcing terms of a broad plan for GM to compensate victims of an earlier ignition recall of 2.59m small cars.

Those cars’ faults, linked to at least 13 deaths, ignited a crisis for the carmaker that’s led to a reorganisation of its engineering department, the departure of 15 people, testy US congressional hearings and a reexamination of past vehicles.