General Motors has issued recalls for certain 2026 Chevy Silverado trucks and Cadillac Vistiq SUVs for one of the most innocent reasons: forgetting to include the owner’s manual. You’re probably not going to read it, but manufacturers are legally required to provide one, and two rather different oversights at the factories resulted in about 3,500 vehicles not getting them, according to Carscoops. This is clearly not a safety issue. The recalls are only to bring the affected vehicles into compliance with the law.
In Chevy’s case, 169 examples of the Silverado 1500, 3,211 of the 2500 HD, and 28 of the 3500 HD are missing their documentation, according to NHTSA. For whatever reason, the books just never found their way into the glove box at the factory, and the trucks were sold without them. The solution is simple: just go to your dealer and get them. While they normally cost $50, the dealer will give them to you for free, since they should have been included with the truck in the first place. Not that you’ll ever read them, except maybe to figure out where that blown fuse is one day. In the unlikely event that you do need to refer to the manual before you have a printed one, Chevy has them available online. You could even make your own manual by printing out the PDF file, but there’s no need since Chevy will give you a real one.
Online documentation
Speaking of online, that’s the only way you can get the manual for the Cadillac Vistiq, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Unfortunately, 94 of them did not get their manuals downloaded to them, according to NHTSA. The infotainment system was supposed to be set to a “transport mode” when they left the factory, prompting it to download the latest version of the online manual on the way to the dealer. This setting also prepares the vehicle for owners to log in to the myCadillac app upon delivery.
As with most software issues, the solution is to reboot the infotainment system, which prompts it to download the manual again. This can be done manually by pressing and holding the Call-End/Mute button for 15 seconds. The system also reboots automatically after 24 hours of accumulated driving time, so many Vistiqs are already fixed without the owner ever knowing there was a problem. However, GM decided to recall all potentially affected vehicles just to make sure they have their manuals installed.
While these manuals won’t teach you how to drive a manual transmission (even though some do), it’s good to have this information available. I’m not recommending reading them cover-to-cover unless you want to fall asleep, but they’re a great reference, and technical writers have put countless hours into making them complete, accurate, and concise (source: me, a former technical writer). They can also teach you about features you may not have been aware of. I didn’t even know about my Ford Transit camper van’s auto hold feature for the first year I owned it until I stumbled across it in the manual while looking for something else. Now I use it anytime I’m driving in traffic. So, follow the acronym RTFM, which means “Read the Friendly Manual,” because F couldn’t possibly stand for anything else.
