Legal Question in Product Liability in Illinois

While you may have legal recourse, and most likely in the interim a possible tax loss, it literally would be "fighting General Motors". So whether this is a "waste" of your time is purely a subjective call. First you need to see if the recall program was mandatory or voluntary. Voluntary programs are responses to situations where auto manufacturers discover LATENT defects in their products and offer to repair them free of charge beyond warranty to avoid class action lawsuits. This sounds like it was mandatory, and was probably put into place PRIOR to your fire -- notifying everyone affected does take time. Sometimes they are in settlement of class actions. You may want to do a bit of research on this particular item to see if any such litigation was filed because if you were the original owner of the car you should have been given notice of the lawsuit and even as a second owner due diligence of car registry records is required to locate owners like you - to see how much time elapsed from when GM first started the program and when you were notified. Once you have more information (if any) you may want to have at least one (FREE?) consult with a class action lawsuit attorney -- there are several in the Chicago area (your zip indicates you're in Arlington Heights). You could try filing a small claims matter yourself and notifying the newspaper and making a ruckus too; there's always the Illinois Attorney General Consumer Fraud & Protection people, the Better Business Bureau, etc. Depends on how you want to INVEST in this. In the end the best you may have is a tax loss.... or pitch them on one heckova discount on a new one -- before you decide to go to another car company. Anyhow, believe me, I know the feeling after having a '92 Bonneville have EVERYTHING that could possibly go wrong with a car mechanically, go wrong, sometimes multiple times.....

Steve gives a good overview. However, a class action takes a long time and usually does not result in full value. Do your research in terms of the type of recall and then contact an attorney to send a letter for you. A letter is relatively inexpensive and may result in a much quicker response and resolution.