John Fitzpatrick discusses the output shaft 'issue'

In an open letter from GM Marketing Manager, John Fitzpatrick, he addresses concerns online about the 2010 Camaro output shaft 'failures'. It is interesting that while automotive enthusiasts who frequent brand/model specific web sites/forums makeup the minority of car owners, they can have such a large impact due to the exposure received online.

Here is the letter from John Fitzpatrick posted to Camaro forums across the country;

I understand over the recent Thanksgiving holiday, the Camaro output shaft topic heated up. We understand the members' passion and concern for this issue as it involves a major powertrain component. Rest assured, everyone on the Camaro team takes these issues very seriously, but there is some confusion regarding this matter that we would like to try to clear up.

As many of the members know, we started to receive warranty claim reports in June of this year regarding output shaft failures on Camaro SS models with manual transmissions. When we noticed a spike in claims, a review was initiated to determine the root cause for the failure. This review is common practice for us, and usually takes a number weeks to complete. Since we did not immediately know the root cause, we did slow the shipments of Camaro SS models from Oshawa for a couple of weeks until the review was completed.

At the end of the review, we concluded the probability of a customer experiencing an output shaft failure under normal driving conditions are very low (or - if you are into engineer speak, "below tolerance"). In fact, even in the most extreme driving condition, the probability of failure does not significantly change.

Ideally, we would like to say that there is no chance a failure under any driving condition will occur. We know this is not possible since every car - regardless of manufacturer - has some probability of a part failing. In the case of Camaro, we believe the probability is very low. We have such confidence in the low probability that we back it up by providing the industry best's powertrain warranty - 100,000 miles or 5 years, which includes roadside assistance and courtesy transportation. If the powertrain part fails due to a defect in our workmanship or material, we'll correct the issue regardless of the number of owners a particular Camaro may have during that period.

Hopefully this will provide a little more insight from our perspective on this topic.
Sincerely,

John Fitzpatrick
Marketing Manager - Chevy Performance Cars