General Motors enlisted the help of a team at NASA to conduct a review of the automaker’s ignition-switch testing, according to a source familiar with the recall investigation.

Typically, when an ignition control module of this type fails it would be one of the three drivers (transistors) within it that controls a specific ignition coil giving up.

General Motors got its first internal report on ignition-switch problems in small cars in 2001, while developing the Saturn Ion, the automaker said in a letter to U.S. regulators. GM thought it ...

The story began in 1997 when GM engineers designed what they called a discrete logic ignition switch (DLIS), which communicates switch position (such as crank, run, accessory, and off) to a body ...