Lack of Consumer Reports recommendations for GM products is "very disappointing."

Fewer than 200 of 222,000 customers have returned vehicles to take advantage of GM’s 60-day Money Back Guarantee on new vehicle purchases, according to Vice President of Global Product Engineering Mark Reuss.

Those who did return a Chevy, Buick, Cadillac or GMC vehicle they purchased will be asked for an interview with GM engineering, Reuss noted during a roundtable with Detroit media.

Reuss, 45, gave the “customer outreach” example in answer to a question about how the new Board of Directors is influencing Product Development. He said the idea came during a dinner he recently attended with GM Chairman Ed Whitaker.

“People are not satisfied and we’re going to find out why,” Reuss said, who recently and prematurely returned from an executive rotation at Holden, GM’s Australian subsidiary.

You can view this as an admission that GM is changing or at least trying to, or as another example pointing out just how far out of touch GM is with customers.

Reuss’ father, Lloyd, was a senior executive for many years at GM before being fired as president along with CEO Bob Stempel in April of 1992 during a previous GM financial crisis. Current CEO Fritz Henderson’s father was also a GM  executive. The company has been repeatedly criticized for its insular culture, of course.

“This is about the best unfiltered consumer feedback we’ve had, and it was suggested by Mr. Whitaker. We’ve got all the (customer) data. We’ve gone to see some of them and we’re calling some of them at night as well.”

By the numbers, 653 customers to date have taken the 60-day return guarantee in lieu of a $500 discount on a new vehicle purchase. Fifty-three vehicles have been returned and about 140 others are in the process. That’s less than one percent.

Reuss said that in some cases where a buyback was averted, the money back guarantee itself persuaded a skeptical customer to complete a purchase. He told of a Cadillac SRX buyer who traded up to a more expensive model SRX.

In another case, a customer unhappy with the paint quality and interior roominess of a Chevy Silverado pickup, is on Reuss’ list of customer contacts.

“We are only as good as our worst vehicle,” Reuss said during a wide ranging discussion.

Taken as a whole, Reuss’ remarks reveal an engineering culture in shambles that has repeatedly been reorganized and downsized for decades as the company lost customers to competitors. He acknowledge the human costs and reactions and vowed to change the culture.

Reuss said the company has all the procedures in place to improve GM’s reliability, but the culture needs to change so engineers are not afraid to identify and then actually solve problems. He says he has to stabilize engineering and product development.

Reuss said the Achilles heel of GM  is reliability and that has been a problem during his entire career there.