Chevrolet Malibu, model year 2016. Filed by General Motors LLC and reported to NHTSA on 5 May 2016. 66 vehicles potentially affected.
What the notice says General Motors LLC (GM) is recalling certain model year 2016 Chevrolet Malibu vehicles manufactured March 7, 2016, through March 12, 2016. The memory chip in the electronic brake control module (EBCM) may fail and cause the loss of electronically controlled brake systems including anti-lock brakes (ABS) and electronic …
Is your vehicle included? Check with your VIN at NHTSA, or ask a dealer. This page is an independent copy of the notice, kept so you can see what changed after it was published. It is not the authority, and the authority’s own text is the one to act on.
General Motors's own number for this recall: 39440. That is the number on the owner letter and on the dealer paperwork. 16V272 is the number NHTSA gave the same campaign, and the number this page is filed under. They are one recall, written two ways.
What owners ask about this recall
- Which vehicles does recall 16V272 cover?
- Chevrolet Malibu, model year 2016.
- What is wrong with them?
- General Motors LLC (GM) is recalling certain model year 2016 Chevrolet Malibu vehicles manufactured March 7, 2016, through March 12, 2016.
- What can happen if it is not put right?
- If the EBCM fails the primary braking system will still function, however, the loss of ABS and ESC increase the risk of a crash.
- Is there a fix yet?
- Yes, and it is free. GM will notify owners, and dealers will install a replacement EBCM, free of charge. The recall began on June 17, 2016. Owners may contact Chevrolet customer service at 1-800-222-1020). GM's number for this recall is 39440.
- What should I do now?
- Check your own vehicle by its VIN with NHTSA, which is the record to act on. General Motors calls this recall 39440, which is the number on the owner letter and the dealer paperwork.
Answered from the register this site holds. NHTSA is the record to act on.
What the authority says can happen if this is not fixed: “If the EBCM fails the primary braking system will still function, however, the loss of ABS and ESC increase the risk of a crash.”
affected
in the notice
caught
| Campaign | 16V272 |
|---|---|
| Filed by | General Motors LLC |
| System at fault | Electronic Stability Control (ESC) |
| Reported to NHTSA | 5 May 2016 |
| Model years | 2016-2016 |
| Vehicles named | CHEVROLET MALIBU |
What the notice says today
The consequence
If the EBCM fails the primary braking system will still function, however, the loss of ABS and ESC increase the risk of a crash.
The remedy
GM will notify owners, and dealers will install a replacement EBCM, free of charge. The recall began on June 17, 2016. Owners may contact Chevrolet customer service at 1-800-222-1020). GM's number for this recall is 39440.
What it said before
This campaign is in the register but not yet in the dated wording archive, so we cannot yet say whether its text has moved. It enters the archive on the next pass.
This is one of 84 notices in the record whose component field names electronic stability control (esc). Across that group the median wait before owners were written to was 46 days.
Last checked . No change has been recorded in the wording.
The same recall in other countries
This campaign carries a manufacturer code that also appears in another country’s register, which means the same defect was recalled there too.
- Canada: Transport Canada recall 2016199, recorded 5 May 2016 (within a week of the American filing)
Matched on 39440, the manufacturer’s own number for this campaign, which is the only field the registers share. Exact match, nothing paired on brand and date. The two dates are adjacent instruments rather than the same one, so a difference of a day or two means nothing.
How often the two countries file on the same day · The European alerts
The models named here, across their whole recall history
How to cite this record
Quoting the wording on this page means quoting a version, so the date belongs in the citation:
CarsMultiverse, recall 16V272, wording as read on 16 September 2026. https://carsmultiverse.com/recall/16v272/
The cross-border matches used on this site are deposited as a citable dataset: doi:10.5281/zenodo.22087136. The recall wording itself is published by the national authority named above and is theirs, not ours.
The recall record and its wording are published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and are US Government public domain. The dated archive, the comparison and any before-and-after above are CarsMultiverse. How fresh every engine behind this page is, is public on the status page. To check a specific vehicle, use NHTSA’s own VIN lookup.
Other General Motors notices we hold
- 26V530: 2024-2025 Chevrolet Silverado 2500 and GMC Sierra 2500
- 26V496: 2026 Chevrolet Silverado EV and GMC Sierra EV
- 26V494: 2026 Cadillac Escalade IQ, Escalade IQL, GMC Sierra EV, and Chevrolet Silverado EV
- 26V399: 2025-2026 Express, and 2025-2026 Savana
- 26V394: 2026-2027 Cadillac Vistiq
- 26V345: 2026 Chevrolet Express and GMC Savana
- 26V329: 2015 Cadillac Escalade, Escalade ESV, XTS, 2015-2016 Cadillac ATS, CTS, and SRX
- 26V325: 2018 Chevrolet Silverado 1500, GMC Sierra 1500, 2019 Chevrolet Silverado 2500, Silverado 3500, GMC Sierra 2500, and Sierra 3500
All 474 General Motors campaigns we hold · Every manufacturer in the record
The fingerprint of this notice
We take a SHA-256 of each of the three blocks of text the authority publishes and keep the first eight characters. As we last read campaign 16V272 on 23 August 2026, they were:
- Defect summary
802ba294 - Consequence
edfcf60a - Remedy
82d56beb
We first read this notice on 21 August 2026. It has not moved since. If it ever does, these characters will not match, and the change will be dated here.
The wording we hold for 16V272 · how the whole register is watched
This notice names one vehicle among several registers that have written about it. Every notice this site holds for the Chevrolet Malibu, in all seven, is kept on that vehicle's own page, with the newest in each.
Put this notice on your site
A small badge that links here and names the register's reference. It costs one line of HTML and needs no key.
The badge is free to use. It links to this page and nowhere else, and it never shows advertising.
Owners of these cars
No register publishes what happens after the letter. Owners do: tell us, in two taps.
Anonymous: no account, no cookie, nothing you type is stored beyond these choices. Figures appear once 3 owners have answered, and are published with the record under CC BY 4.0.