General Motors Sued For Inflating Truck Tow Ratings

A California man sued General Motors this month for revising its tow ratings for his 2014 GMC Sierra 1500 5.3-liter V-8, which meant he couldn’t tow his toy-hauler and golf cart, according to court records.

The complaint, which was filed Dec. 11 in Central California’s district court, said General Motors intentionally misrepresented its claims for Richard Quintero’s truck, which he purchased in July 2013 for nearly $47,000.

According to Quintero’s attorneys, the man opted to buy the 2014 truck because its advertised tow rating of 8,800 pounds was significantly higher than the 2013 model’s 6,900 pounds. GM lowered the 2014 trucks’ ratings to 6,800 pounds in a letter to owners, which was less than Quintero’s 1,000-pound golf cart and 6,700-pound trailer.

In the lawsuit, Quintero’s attorneys say that internal testing done by General Motors when the truck was new revealed the lower tow rating, but that the automaker opted to publish its own internal figures instead of the actual figures to assert supremacy in the competitive truck market:

In other words, GM knew, or should have known, at the time it made the representations regarding the original Towing Capacity statistics that these statements were untrue or misleading.

In trucks equipped with its 5.3-liter V-8, GM lowered its max payload and tow ratings by 2,000 pounds. For 6.2-liter V-8 owners, those numbers were reduced by 200 pounds.

The lawsuit alleges that GM tested its trucks to the SAE J2807 standard, which was developed in 2008, but didn’t make public those figures in 2013.

Quintero’s lawsuit seeks to combine other GMC Sierra and Chevrolet Silverado owners’ claims into a single class-action lawsuit. The lawsuit is seeking more than $5 million from GM.

Lawyers for GM have not filed a response to the claim.

Source: GM Authority and LegalNewsLine.com