General Motors Halts Sales of Some Cadillac CTS Sedans

Bloomberg News

has told its dealers to halt the sale of some Cadillac models because the company doesn't yet have a fix in place for a defective ignition switch.

The Detroit-based automaker issued an urgent order dated July 8 to its dealers to stop delivery of 2014 Cadillac CTS sedans that use a standard key ignition. The order didn't apply to the newest models with a push-button start.

The notice became public after the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration posted the document today as part of its continuing investigation of GM vehicle recalls. GM, in the notice, also told dealers not to sell 2003-2013 models of the CTS and 2004-2006 models of the Cadillac SRX from their used-car inventories.

The stop-delivery order follows the troubled automaker's recall of 8.45 million vehicles at the end of June. GM's U.S. recall tally now comes to 25.7 million, eclipsing Ford Motor Co.'s single-year record of 23.3 million in 2001. With 64.6 million cars and trucks on U.S. roads, according to Experian, GM is calling back the equivalent of 40 percent of its vehicles. In North America, it's now recalled almost 29 million vehicles. Reuters reported the Cadillac order earlier today.

GM said in a July 16 letter to NHTSA that dealers will supply two replacement key rings to affected cars, and those with slotted keys will also receive key inserts. The letter said only 258 Cadillacs from the 2014 model year are affected by the stop-delivery order, compared with 18,604 in the previous model year and 68,326 in 2003 models.

To contact the reporters on this story: Edmund Lee in New York at elee310@bloomberg.net; Jeff Plungis in Washington at jplungis@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Bernard Kohn at bkohn2@bloomberg.net Stephen West

A 2014 Cadillac CTS Vsport. Photographer: Richard Prince/Cadillac via Bloomberg