General Motors Corp. announced today they would be recalling all production models of their popular Mars Rover sport-utility vehicle, due to unspecified problems with the vehicle’s onboard computer system. According to Robert Jungels, a spokesperson for the world’s #1 automaker, “God help the poor son of a bitch who’s counting on one of those things on a cold winter’s day.”

In an unrelated story, NASA technicians continue to twiddle knobs and fart around in an effort to repair their ailing Mars Rover, stranded on the barren Martian surface nearly 100 million miles from Earth. As of Friday, technicians were receiving only random blips of static and the sickening sound of grinding metal from the Rover’s powerful radio antenna.

“It’s just like my Lumina,” mused mission controller Mark Banks. “Looks like beautiful. Drives like shit.”

“As the owner’s manual states clearly in twelve point Helvetica, it is not recommended that the Rover be driven outside of the country,” explained GM’s Jungels when told about NASA’s car trouble. “Foreign gasoline is rarely up to US standards, and you never know what kind of weird-assed Chink nail you’re going to kick up from the road.”

Asked whether the red planet would fall under his classification of “outside of the country,” Jungels was emphatic. “Shit yeah.”

The scene at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena, CA was a desperate one over the weekend, with a crowd of engineers hunched over the Rover’s remote display terminal, offering a cacophony of suggestions. “Turn it over… no, jiggle the… you’re flooding it!”

According to NASA officials, the Rover failed soon after rolling of its landing platform on the Martian surface, and the “check engine” light has been on since last Tuesday.

“My dad was right, we never should have bought American,” lamented NASA engineer Richard Bennett, echoing a popular sentiment at mission control. Due to budgetary cutbacks, NASA’s original plan for a high tech NASA-only Rover designed by Honda and Toshiba had to be scaled back in favor of a more modest proposal before launch. The Detroit automaker’s low APR financing was said to be a major deciding factor for cash-strapped NASA.

“The funny thing is, the radio still works fine,” chuckled a bemused Bennett. “Clear as a bell. We’ve been listening to K-BIG all weekend, their whole doo-wop countdown. Except when Mickels is in charge, he likes to channel surf and we usually get stuck listening to some bullshit AC-DC song. If there is any intelligent life on Mars, they’re going to think we’ve got really shitty taste in music.”

Though it may be of cold comfort given the mission’s $850 million price tag, GM customer service representatives have assured NASA that the offending control module will be replaced free of charge, as soon as NASA can bring the Rover in to any of the over 7,500 authorized GM dealers in the United States and Canada.