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2009 CHEVROLET MALIBU — Complaint #1702404

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NHTSA Complaint about ELECTRONIC STABILITY CONTROL (ESC) filed October 26, 2020

NHTSA complaint #1702404 (ODI reference 11366516) concerns a 2009 CHEVROLET MALIBU and was filed on October 26, 2020. The owner reports the failure occurred on October 20, 2020. The vehicle had 80,000 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. The report was geocoded to Kentucky based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as electronic stability control (esc), one of NHTSA's standardized taxonomy codes used to group defect patterns across make, model, and year.

The filer flagged the following severity indicators: crash: no, fire: no, injuries: 0, fatalities: 0. No crash, fire, or fatality was associated with this report, which places it in the early-warning stream rather than the priority-review stream. Because a VIN was supplied, this complaint is tied to a specific vehicle and not just a model-year cohort.

Individual complaints are consumer-submitted and unverified by NHTSA engineers — the agency's role at this stage is to collect, index, and make them searchable. What matters for federal action is the pattern: when many owners of the same CHEVROLET MALIBU cohort independently describe similar electronic stability control (esc) failures, defect investigators have grounds to open a PE and request manufacturer data. Related filings for the same vehicle and component appear below, and the detail page for the full 2009 CHEVROLET MALIBU shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.

Vehicle
2009 CHEVROLET MALIBU
Component
ELECTRONIC STABILITY CONTROL (ESC)
State
Kentucky
Mileage
80,000 mi

Complaint Description

POWER STEERING FAILS WHILE DRIVING. DASHBOARD WILL SAY "TRACTION OFF, ESC OFF" AND I WON'T BE ABLE TO MOVE STEERING WHEEL. THIS HAS HAPPENED IN BUSY INTERSECTIONS. I HAVE TO STOP THE VEHICLE AND RESTART IN ORDER TO GAIN POWER STEERING AGAIN. MECHANIC HAS DIAGNOSED IT AS TORQUE SENSOR/STEERING COLUMN. THIS WAS RECALLED ON MANY OTHER MALIBUS, BUT NOT MINE. A LOT OF PEOPLE ARE HAVING THIS SAME PROBLEM BUT WEREN'T INCLUDED IN THE RECALL. THIS HAS BEEN HAPPENING SINCE I PURCHASED VEHICLE SEVEN YEARS AGO AT 80,000 MILES (ABOUT ONCE PER YEAR) AND HAS GOTTEN WORSE RECENTLY AT 170,000 MILES (MULTIPLE TIMES PER MONTH). THIS IS DANGEROUS AND VERY EXPENSIVE.*DT *TR

Complaint Details

NHTSA Complaint ID 1702404
ODI Number 11366516
Date Filed October 26, 2020
Failure Date October 20, 2020
VIN 1G1ZJ57B99F

Similar ELECTRONIC STABILITY CONTROL (ESC) Complaints for 2009 CHEVROLET MALIBU

Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.