Plenty of huge recalls are in the news right now. And a recall is generally seen as pretty bad news. People talk about how it harms the brand's reputation.

But I question how much recalls actually affect people's buying decisions. If you have a car that gets recalled, you already bought it, and if you are thinking about buying a car it likely won't be recalled if it is still on the dealer lot.

So how damaging really are recalls to a company? Do recalls affect your buying decisions?

I consider them

I think its good to know the number and type of recalls on a car before you decide to buy it.

I think its a given that you want to avoid cars that have recalls on them, but I'm not sure how much it affects the company outside of the specific car that is being recalled. Will GM lose lots of business because of this recall? I don't think so. There is no reason to think that this issue has continued on to the present day.

Did Toyota sales falter when they had that record recall a while ago?

if the recall is an actual fix - like after the recall the problem is gone - i dont worry too much

its the recalls where even after the recall the car is still broken. those ones are frustrating.

Isn't the whole point o f the recall to fix the car though? Are you saying that whatever fix the company tries on the car doesn't actually fix the vehicle? That would be super annoying. I think that that was happening with the Nissan Pathfinder.

I think that checking to see which brands have the least number of recalls or problems per vehicle is a good way to judge auto makers on the quality of their vehicles.

certain recalls dont end up fixing the problem

the problem comes back.. its annoying

Doesn't the lemon law apply to this at some point after many tries of fixing a problem?

Well I just read that GM saw a 35% increase in sales in March, so I guess that answers the question to a certain degree. People are outrages, but it doesn't seem to make them stop buying GM cars. Its a strange bit of psychology really.

35% increase followed by an almost billion dollar recall? they are struggling

One thing I know keeping the masses buying GM is that it's an american brand and a lot of americans believe in buying as much as they can that they believe is made in america.