While the 'public' release of info is certainly appreciated what I saw was a pretty standard industry reply to a potential warranty problem that seems to have limited safety implications. He admitted they saw a spike in reported failures, they looked into it and basically figured out, in my opinion, that it would cost them more money to issue a recall and FOR SURE have to spend a pile of cash fixing cars that may or may not ever actually break than the much smaller amount of money it MIGHT cost them to just sit on their hands and wait to fix the ones that actually do break. Standard cost/benefit risk analysis.
From reading the other threads it seems like a subcontractor had a parts run (or several in a given period of time) that resulted in shafts that fail at a higher rate than expected. GM most likely identified the affected VIN range and has gotten the manufacturing issue corrected with the subcontractor, but has also decided that its not cost effective to issue a recall and instead is willing to roll the dice and deal with them if they do fail on a case by case basis. Not bashing anyone here! Its pretty standard practice in almost ALL industries to do this kind of cost/benefit risk analysis.
Would it be nice to know if your car falls in the affected VIN range, SURE. But releasing that info would fan the fires probably causing the affected owners to demand a pre-emptive part replacement thereby costing GM more money (a defacto recall) than waiting for what would surely be a much smaller number of actual failures.
To me it simply means that IF my car experiences a shaft failure I have a pretty strong case to convince GM to fix it regardless of how the car was being driven. Its a 'Muscle Car'', drive it to enjoy it and as long as you do so with the respect due any piece of machinery you want to continue operating properly for its expected lifetime then you likely won't have any problems. If you DO have a problem, then take it to the dealership and get it fixed. If its a warranty issue then its on them, if NOT then its on you.
Do I LIKE the answer they gave... Not really. Do I UNDERSTAND it...I like to think so. Heh!
