I know the GM Deadly Sins aren’t everyone’s cup of Kool-Aid. Please keep in mind that DS status isn’t the actual cars’ fault; they deserve our love, appreciation and care just as any old car does. And we really do love them, warts and all. They’re like our adopted children; blame their genetic parents for any shortcomings. And so we do….
I mistakenly called the Fiero DS #17. It’s actually #19, which means that there will be a #20 and so forth. I have a rough short list in my head (not limited to those pictured). But if any of you would like to chime in with some (polite) suggestions ), I’m certainly willing to consider them.
And if you haven’t checked out the others, here they are all for your reading pleasure (or nausea).
On The Purpose And Nature Of GM’s Deadly Sins
#7 1976 Chevrolet Malibu Classic
#8 1984 Pontiac Bonneville Brougham
#11 1975-1979 Cadillac Seville
#12 1990 Pontiac LeMans (Daewoo)
#17 1980-1985 Cadillac Seville
Looks like you are set through DS 25!
GM Cadillac brand management – specifically the V8 engine debacle. 4100 V8 released before it was ready followed by getting it right with the 4.5 V8 – 4.9 V8, effin’ up the Northstar by releasing it before it was ready, getting it right (supposedly) and then deciding that Cadillac didn’t deserve unique engines any more.
Or simply focus on how Cadillac went from the “Standard of the World” and a byword for the pinnacle of excellence “The Cadillac of ________” to sadly chasing BMW by building BMW knockoffs in the way that Hyundai builds Lexus Knockoffs with the Genisis.
That reminds me, when we were negotiating to buy our house, we asked that they throw in the new-ish washer-dryer set. When our agent relayed this to the seller, she apparently said ” I hate to lose my washer. It’s the PORSCHE of washing machines.” Porsche?! To add insult to injury, she worked at the Ford plant, so presumably not clueless about automobiles, and she used an analogy to Porsche!
Just another example of how far Cadillac has fallen from being the “standard of the world” in people’s minds. I’ll get off my soap box now.
“The Porsche of washing machines…”
Gives new meaning to the spin cycle.
“To begin the spin cycle, just hit the brakes midway through the first turn.”
And by the time the spin cycle is over, your clothes will be out of fashion… 😀
Another one could be the Shamu Caprice of 1991.
Vehemently disagree.
I owned a ’91 Wagon and almost bought a ’94 Impala SS. My wagon got 22-23 MPG at 75-80MPH, rode and handled well and didn’t break. Maintenance was cheap. Replacement parts were inexpensive.
Sure the fit and finish left something to be desired and the interior appointments were typical GM. But DS? No way…
To quote Paul’s article on the purpose of the DS series “what exactly qualifies a car to be a GM DS? Any car that didn’t specifically counter GM’s downward spiral. Here’s the key issue: having a car be called a DS does not mean that it was necessarily a truly bad car! It’s not reflection on any given car to be wholly lacking in qualities that were attractive to some or many.”
On that ground the last B-Body counts, building an old style car that was out of touch with the market. It doesn’t matter that they are not bad cars.
Well, no, because there still was a market for that car. GM offered a B-body, but that was far far far from ONLY car that GM offered, is it a deadly sin for Toyota to offer the old school white walled Century in Japan because there still is a market for that car?
The B-body wasn’t “out of touch” with IT’S market.
I agree that was a cool car. My dad worked at a Chevy dealer for a brief period in 1990/1991. He once brought home a police version of a Caprice. That was fun.
All of those whale cars were disappointing because of their ugliness. Back then, it was hard to make economy cars beautiful, but handsome barges was a GM specialty. Even today it’s hard to get over the awkward proportions of the Imp, Roadmaster and Fleet. Frankly, their enormous drop in sales proved it.
Dashboards sucked in these too. The speedos look like a piece of laminated cardboard, hardly an upscale touch.
Otherwise, ride and drive of these cars was just fine. But their styling was a huge D……S……….
I agree the interiors were a step down. I drove an early 90’s Roadmaster and the woodgrain on the dash and increased use of plastics was a definite step down from my ’87 Caprice, and this was a Buick yet! The chunky chrome plastic window switches and the way it looked on the dash was just really disappointing. Maybe that’s par for the course for a then-modern GM car and what I liked was just the 70’s-era design remnants in my ’87.
I vehemently disagree. ALL of GM is a deadly sin. Then and now. I want a 1965 Grand Prix. At least it’s not from Korea. (I have no problem with Korean anything. I do have a problem with GM masquerading a Daewoo as a ‘Murricun car. And everything else they do.)
Wasn’t nearly every non-Brougham Cadillac from 1981 well into the 1990s a DS? Catera, the V864, the HT4100, the Northstar, the 1985 downsized line, where to stop? Oddly, despite all of those shots into their own boots, Cadillac seems to have come back to at least some kind of presence lately.
Cadillac Catera. That Caddy that zigged was also the Caddy that sucked. First GM did not learn the lesson of badging lesser cars as Cadillacs from the 1980s and that J Body Caddy.
Secondly to make such an ugly car a Caddy
Notice that after the Catera marketing used the ducks in the Cadillac crest that the ducks became so linked to the Catera that from then on the ducks were dropped off the crest for good?
+1 on making the Catera a DS. An absolutely “lame duck” attempt to attract import buyers.
Yep. That’s definitely it.
That campaign showed that Cadillac had absolutely no idea why people bought BMWs, Mercedes or Audis (as if we needed any more proof). The ad campaign alone should count as a DS.
I didn’t think it was that ugly, but the small car niche and Caddy never quite worked. I never noticed that about the ducks either, interesting.
Love the GMDS series, especially when I disagree with a choice. Always very thought provoking.
Let me fix that for you:
Love
the GMDS seriesCURBSIDE CLASSIC, especially when I disagree with it. Always very thought provoking.Chevette.
The absolutely worst, tractor-like GM car I have ever driven was a Chevette rented from Avis at the Little Rock airport in about 1982/3.
Car and Driver’s launch article for the Chevette in ’75/6 featured prescient words from a GM exec (Ed Cole? Was he still around?) calling it GM’s “turboprop” small car, the “true jets” (FWD models) would come later but that he was worried the Chevette would be too successful and end up overstaying its’ welcome.
Eleven years later…
Jets? Was he serious?
Saturn L-Series. Wait nine years to give Saturn dealers a second car to sell. Do a half-baked freshening of a 5-year-old Opel design. Assemble indifferently in Wilmington, Del., plant that GM would prefer to shutter if it could (and eventually would). Then once the brand is irreparably damaged, introduce the Aura as a replacement, a perfectly-decent midsized sedan that lands in the market with a thud, because no customers are looking for midsized sedans at Saturn dealers.
c5kari, you’ve written it. What more needs to be said?
Well done. The Saturn L-Series: Possibly the most anonymous, forgettable car of all time?
I ordered an L300 fresh from the factory in 2001. I have had it for 12 years so far and it had zero faults from the factory. It had one recall and that was for the taillights. I did have my mechanic change the timing belt and suspect tensioner at about 60,000km as I could not determine if my engine was an early or late build. Other than that all that I can say about it is that it is much faster than it looks and that has always worked to my advantage. Just today I returned to Toronto from western New York and it again performed flawlessly. 120 to 135 in the fast lane of the QEW. On my way back and forth to Nova Scotia every year I regularly exceed the posted limits and have never been pulled over. Boring is unsuspecting and it seems to work if you want to make good time on a road trip. Nonetheless, I would have to agree, the L series Saturns are a GM deadly sin. GM teased us for years with spy shots of the “larger Saturn” appearing in various car mags tagged as the Saturn “Inovate”. When it finally arrived It was competent but in no way groundbreaking and then GM committed suicide on the car by the most obtuse and confusing nomenclature for the various models AND changing them on an almost yearly basis. The way that the car was marketed is a whole other confused ball of wax itself. Deadly sin? Definitely. But, Happily, I am one of the people that GM, at a certain time, happened to build a car that fit him to a “T”. I cannot wait until 2019 when I plan a trip to Ypsilani for the Orphan car show(Saturns will be eligible that year).
My vote for DS 20 is Roger Smith. This guy was Kryptonite defined.
+1
Carmine, I could not agree with anyone more. I, to this day, take a second look whenever I see one on the street. Up close, the detailing on the body of these cars approaches the sublime. the razor edge that runs to the rear of the car is remarkable. The front, debatable, from the rear three quarter view, Wow, I want to someday own one. In fact, in 2001, when I was new car shopping, I seriously considered searching for a nice example.
1997 – 2005 Chevy Malibu then Classic, and the 1997-1999 Oldsmobile Cutlass (all 3 basically the same car). The final insult to the once great Cutlass name.
Dishonorable mention: 2004 – 2007 Malibu Maxx. Chevy’s tribute to the Renault R16 forty years late.
Nope, the Maxx was an americanized Opel Signum. No tribute or original through, just an attempt to test hatchbacks on Americans.
My comment on the Maxx was an obviously failed attempt at sarcasm. 😉 You are right it was not a Chevy original. And did not have enough positive or negative effect in the U.S.to be at all significant as a deadly sin.
But I’ll stand my ground on my nomination of the 1997 fifth generation Malibu and Cutlass as a DS. They sold a boat load of the Malibu (Malibus?) mostly rental and fleet sales and these really pulled down the Malibu and Cutlass names even more than they already had been sullied. I wonder how many dwindling GM loyalists they caused to be lost?
Incidentally I bought a fifth generation Malibu used. It was dull in every respect, blandmobile styling, terrible seats, ate brake pads and rotors, quick to break electric switches and a wonky anti-theft system which mostly kept owners from using their cars. And appropriately mine was beige metallic with dirt brown interior color.
I have a 1999 Cutlass. Besides the manifold gasket problem, it has been a reliable car. It’s comfortable and quiet.
The A/C went out this year. That has sucked.
OK, I’ll play. What’s wrong with a 90s Eldo? Just the Northstar?
Its a GM car….duh!
It should have been the 1986 Eldorado. Or better yet, the 1982 Eldorado. As usual, Cadillac was playing perpetual catch-up. By the mid nineties, the Eldorado was the classic white-shoe, white-belt Paulie-mobile, while everyone else had moved on to more contemporary toys.
Really, the 1992-2002 Eldorado isn’t contemporary? Because from what I recall it outlasted and outsold practically every other luxury coupe from that era. The entire genre was dying at the time, even the “touched by the very hand of the Lord Almighty” Lexus SC coupe faltered after a few years.
Yeah, it was bought by a lot of older people, they are usually the ones that can afford $50,000 cars.
did you seriously expect something different from him?
Paul’s reaching there to say the least. I also recall these Cadillacs to be quite successful, well respected, and modern in their day.
By that standard somewhere around 90% of all cars could be considered Deadly Sins. I arrived at this number based on detailed analysis of my personal assumptions.
Now, if he had included it because of the Northstar engine, that’s another thing entirely. But that doesn’t appear to be his reasoning. Yet.
I thought they were nice cars, I don’t know that the segment was that big in the 90’s but as a car themselves I don’t think they were too bad. I think they’re too successful and insignificant overall to GM to really be a deadly sin. I don’t know that I’d buy one new if I had the money but they’re nice cars, just maybe not the “going thing” in their time.
Yeh, not really seein’ it Paulie – ahem, Paul. 🙂
As Carmine said, everybody’s personal luxury coupes were on the way out by then. It was a transitional era. Plenty of “Sopranos” now drive Benzes and Bimmers. Progress? Are the cars at fault?
At least an Eldo/Seville of that period could be easily distinguished from a Chevy. Escalade vs. Tahoe…not so much.
I’m not talking about the market, but the design. It looked old fashioned the day it arrived, thus destined to be an old man’s car. If it had come along five or seven years earlier, it wouldn’t have looked quite so out of date.
The ’86 E-Body cars were a disaster, design wise. Cadillac/GM had lost any last vestige of design leadership by then. The ’92 is a desperate attempt to catch up a bit, but it didn’t cut it. The ’92 Seville is sooo obviously influenced by the W124, which of course had come out seven years earlier. Late though it was to the party, the Seville was at least a reasonably ok-looking car. Not the Eldorado.
But looks is a largely a subjective issue, so take it for what it’s worth. Let’s just say that on the very rare occasion one saw one in CA back then, they really stuck out.
I know the W124 gets you all hot and bothered, but the only aspect of the Seville’s styling that could really be compared to it is the c-pillar delail. Other than that it isn’t as stodgy and stuck up european as the old Merc looked.
The only people who dislike the Eldorado would be those who are quite obviously only attracted to european designed cars no matter the badge attached.
I agree it should have been the ’86. Cadillac’s ’80s attempts to replace their popular late ’70s cars just did not appeal to a market that was beginning to go to German luxury cars in a big way.
How about the small block V8?
ALL Corvettes?
The GTO?
Everything???????
Well, there was the 262 CID SBC, the 1974 GTO, and I already did a Corvette DS. 🙂
We do have a GM’s Greatest Hits Series too; I’m sure you haven’t forgotten.
Yes, I see it in the corner there covered in thick dust with the cobwebs and skeletons around it….
Paul, I liked the 262 in my ’75 Monza.
And the ’74 Nova-based GTO at least kept Kix Brooks & Ronnie Dunn from being 100% wrong about the existence of a “shackled-up GTO”, even though the car in the video was a ’66-’67.
Carmine…I’ll say it again.
GM uniquely deserves this series because out of all the domestic car companies, THEY KNEW BETTER! And they let the bean counters run the company anyway while believing their poop didn’t stink!
This from the company that once refused to take a back seat to ANYONE! That’s how they got a 50% market share. And every car on the road today has benefitted from those early GM innovations.
Then they turned into the automotive equivalent of Bart Simpson. How else can you explain the Uplander? Or the Cimarron? Why wasn’t Pontiac given the $$$ to develop a proper Fiero?
I’m as big a GM fan as you and have worn that affection on my sleeve here on CC. I couldn’t be more pleased at the rave reviews I’m seeing from ATS to Corvette to Impala.
But I won’t rewrite history…what I think we’re seeing today is GM getting back to being the GM that earned the right to call their logo “Mark Of Excellence”.
I have to agree with you, chas108. This was the company that built the 55 Chevy, the 62 Coupe DeVille, the 63 Corvette, the 65 Bonneville and the 1964-67 A body. GM built some of the most widely appealing cars in the world, and usually executed on them better over a longer time than anyone else.
For those of us (like me) who were not fans, it was because they were like the evil empire – invincible and with almost unlimited resources. We watched the smaller companies try to fight them, but usually coming up short.
We had no way of knowing that the great company was slowly ossifying and cracking up from the inside. They went from being market leaders to almost market non-factors in a generation. Before 1970, they built very, very few truly bad cars. After 1970, they built lots of them. They were not alone, of course, and we have had some harsh words for Pintos, Granadas, and almost everything built by Chrysler in the 1970s.
Maybe the GM partisans just don’t read them, but if you really want to see PN go into full flame mode, just turn him loose on a Ford from the 1970s.
For a long time it was not ” The Mark of Excellence “, it was “The Mark of Meh ”
Dont forget to shrug as you say it!
actually for a long time the GM Mark of Excellence was a term used to describe the cracks in the dash on any GM product(especially the ones above the glove box. 😉
Don’t forget that pre 1960 GM also gave us ElectroMotive diesel locomotives that replaced the steam engine; Detroit Diesel engines that made diesel affordable, reliable, and efficient; the modern rear engine bus; Terex construction machinery; and many other non automotive innovations. From 1930 to 1960 GM was truely amazing.
That makes their deadly sins even harder to forgive.
Saturn Ion and Hummer H2 for sure.
To the former, the original 2003 (Saturn Ion) through 2011 (HHR) Delta platform is certainly deserving of DS status. The cars weren’t terrible, just underwhelming and thoroughly mediocre in practically every regard: the epitome of “good enough” bean counter design. Plus, its arrival heralded GM’s final, bitter downfall.
Sadly, all the cars in the montage above qualify.
Could the Chevy Uplander possibly have been more cynical? Every time I look at one – or any of its GM siblings, I think…Rosemary’s Baby. I mean, take a 5-year-old GM minivan, slap a Fisher-Price looking nose and call it good?
Thankfully everyone I know with the crossovers that replaced this generation – the Lambdas – seem to love them.
The J cars…I think the term “penalty box on wheels” was invented for them. Last Cadaver, er, Cavalier I drove…a then-new 2004 model…was like being punished with every road imperfection.
Cadillacs…shame the Northstar V8 was so poorly executed. The engine made driving a Cadillac, dare I say it…fun, after having driven both a DTS and STS4 down Interstate 79 in WV at speeds between 90-125 MPH. The STS was a hoot.
I know people who loved their Chevettes…the platform was proven from its time as a Vauxhall, how was it GM botched this one bringing it over to the States…
Oldsmobile Diesel…another half-baked loaf of bread.
The Chevrolet F%€£ed-Up-Lander must be the next DS. In fact, I would like to write that one for you, having been shuttled around two for six years. Paul, I just need the picture and some tips (cynicism, to match the car).
-Mr. Edward Mann
I got that pic from the web; I’ve never been inspired to actually shoot one. Tips on cynicism….from me? 😉
If you want to do it, give it a shot, and I’ll give you a hand for sure.
Ugh, the Uplander. We have two in our fleet at work, a 2005 LT and a 2007 LS. And since I’m the fleet maintenance coordinator, I’m well aware of their deadly sinfulness. As soon as one comes out of the shop, the other goes back in. We’ve completely replaced the brakes, all the wheel bearings, shocks, struts, tie rods, etc. before 100,000 miles. The power sliding door on the ’05 LT has a mind of its own, and sometimes refuses to close at all. Interior trim pieces and door handles keep falling off, so now I just keep them in a bucket because I’ve grown tired of re-attaching them.
I assume you like your fish tightly packed in that barrel when you start shooting.
I’ll make my suggestion real quick and easy: Any GM built brougham.
About seventy percent of GM’s deadly sins boiled down to the company’s recurring habit of using its paying customers as beta testers.
Disagree on the Chevette. For what it was supposed to be (a cheap, bottom-of-the-line car) it did very well. Had good road manners (it was a Opel fer Chrissakes), decent gas mileage, and was more reliable that its domestic competition.
A Chevette only looks bad when you compare it against what the small car business turne into 10 years later. Back in the ’70’s, anything cheap was a penalty box.
You are so right Sykes on the Chevette.
Yes, it was not the best thing on wheels in terms of ride, but it did seem to handle decently, get great gas mileage, and had decent enough scoot, for the day anyway.
And it proved to be very long lived if taken care of – and it proved itself adequately when used for the front suspension of the Fiero (with the X body front motor and transaxle being used for the rear suspension and motor).
If anything, GM left it on the vine too long without really updating it, or taking it into the FWD realm, but they had the J body Cavalier to thank for that, and I don’t think it was all that well regarded, especially in its early years, though I found the Cavalier OK (though I never drove one).
Where I work a woman drove a faded red but, rust free, 85 Cevette until about a year and a half ago. I complimented her on more than one occasion on her well preserved car. She is now driving a black, four door Cobalt. If both of us live long enough and remain employed by the same employer long enough, I may witness the creation of a Curbside Classic.
Oh, the Cimarron is on a list of worst cars! Because that’s not at all predictable or cliche.
Also, why the 1991 Saturn? Because it wasn’t profitable? I think they built some fine cars in the 90s. Our 1997 SL1 was noisy, uncomfortable, and leaked oil like a sieve, but got great mileage and was very reliable. Finally got rid of it at 183k miles, but it had been abused by my brother-in-law for the first 83k. I think it could have gone a lot farther had it been taken care of properly.
Ok; we’ll take it off…..not being predictable or cliched is more important than the truth.
If you took the time to read the Saturn CC, you’d know that it was an obituary on the great Saturn misadventure; a boondogle of epic proportions that cost GM untold billions.
You’re still not understanding the Deadly Sins: some/many of the actual cars were quite serviceable. The story is about the decisions that GM made which led to their demise. Starting Saturn was one of them (a huge one), regardless of how many noisy, oil leaking and uncomfortable miles miles the actual cars ran.
OK, but was it starting Saturn or running Saturn that was the sin? It seems to me they needed to do something around that time to compete with the more reliable Honda/Toyota compacts that had begun to outsell American cars.
“It seems to me they needed to do something around that time to compete with the more reliable Honda/Toyota compacts that had begun to outsell American cars.’ Ding ding ding ding – we have a winnah!
Now you have hit upon the essence of the DS series. Why wasn’t the largest industrial corporation in the world, the biggest maker of cars in the world, the leading seller of some of the very best cars in America making the kinds of more reliable and appealing cars that people wanted to buy?
Based on the original DS criteria, maybe the Cavalier & Cobalt need some acknowledgement. Not because they were necessarily such terrible cars but because, 35 years after the arrival of serious Japanese competition, GM still couldn’t (be bothered to?) do any better. They were another major lost opportunity, and one more precisely-placed nail in the coffin GM was building for itself.
Good call, robadr. The ’95 model might be the right one to capture the General’s complete unwillingness to invest in a modern small car. After a dozen years, GM did a full redesign of the J-body, but it lost few of the vices of its predecessor. This was the one they cynically offered to Toyota to sell in Japan with a Toyota badge on it (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHa2xWO_z98&noredirect=1), knowing full well that was too flabby, outdated and unreliable to sell in that market. This is the one in which they actually invested in a Pontiac version with unique sheetmetal that, in some people’s eyes, looked fresh and sporty. But under that swooping bodywork was the same cheap, cheap, cheap that had defined the J-body cars since their launch.
I had high hopes for Saturn, I fell into the hype and rah-rah feel good Hal & Riney Partners advertising and marketing, but in the end, Saturn was a very GM way of trying to solve a problem. They spent a couple of billion launching Saturn in 1984, because they were losing small car customers to foreign automakers.
Presumably because they didn’t want to buy J-cars, OR the captive import small cars GM was selling, or the near decade old Chevette, so instead of spending half the billion on creating a kick ass J-car replacement, they launch an ENTIRE other company just to sell small cars, meanwhile still letting the J-car continue to wither on the vine.
So you already had a company that was juggling 6 domestic divisions with ever blurring identity and now you were going to add a 7th one, oh, and one that wasn’t going share hardly anything with any other GM cars, oh, and build a whole new plant AND a whole new dealer network for it too.
Meanwhile, your bread and butter money making division, Chevrolet, is still soldiering along with the 1982 vintage Cavalier, which still is outselling Saturn, in spite of all the good press. In the end, Saturn as whole, and as an experiment, just barely managed to outlive the J-car platform.
We agree! 🙂
If you read that post, I think I answer your question quite well. In a nutshell: spending billions to start a new stand-alone division (Saturn) because the GM mothership was rotten to the core just wasn’t the right solution. It’s like building a second house in the backyard because you have termites in your house.
“What’s wrong with that?” – Roger B. Smith, 1983
Hehehehehe
1. Northstar
2. Chevy SSR
3. Cadillac Catera
4. Saturn Ion
5. Saturn Sky (maybe the Kappa platform in general)
And exonerate DS #11.
#3 and #4 I agree with on some level
What is wrong with 1, 2, and 5?
Northstar- Early reliability and when it breaks it’s broke. Took 8 years to “fix”. Defenders point to needing to use a nonspecific secret internet maintenance schedule like it’s a VW product.
SSR- Was a toy for Wagoneer and Lutz. Sold way under expectations. First version wasn’t fast. F-body was killed just months prior with GM claiming that the market for performance cars was drying up: F-body still soundly outsold the SSR.
Sky- The car itself was fine. Giving Saturn a sports car was questionable. Made it so Pontiac (which finally had a sports car) needed to compete with a sister division. Kappa platform was very expensive, and hasn’t been used on anything since. Both divisions that had a version are gone now.
I’m with you on the SSR. Wasn’t a good truck nor a good car and the slightest inkling that scorn F-body owners would give the slightest acceptance to this “thing”, let alone consider it as a replacement, was ludicrous. I don’t know what it cost to develop the SSR but I’d wager a guess that had they dumped the same amount into an F-body update on the existing chassis, that lasted to the current 5th gen, they’d have still sold more cars by the tens of thousands than the SSR and GTO did.
How about something more contemporary, like the current Buick Regal? The Insignia is a car that has debuted to almost universal acclaim throughout the globe, has some of the best handling in the segment, along with one of the most beautiful and sublime exteriors that GM has penned in decades. Originally sent our way from Russelheim as an import, GMNA retooled Ottawa with the intention of selling 60,000 per annum. Yet the Regal, despite being one of the strongest cars in the General’s arsenal, languishes on dealer’s lots, a victim of piss poor marketing, pricing, and product placement. More than a travesty, it’s a deadly sin in my book.
How do you turn the tastes of the American public into a deadly sin? It is constantly interesting that the people who love these deadly sin articles use production figures both ways to support their argument…
1. the American public is stupid because it bought so many of these…they just bought them because GM made them
2. Look! They couldn’t give these away so they must have been crap!!
you guys need to get together and figure out which side you’re going to take
There’s a current Buick Regal?
The sad thing is, I have no idea what Buick sells now. And I’m starting to be the age of a Buick buyer! (no, not a century 🙂 )
Killing Pontiac was a bit stunned. The Pontiac G6 sold more than all the Buicks put together …
But for a nominee: The Hummer H2. Sold well, sure, but really out of touch and a dead end.
Buick is popular in China (as I keep being told) which apparently means that their opinion matters much much more. I certainly remember Pontiac being more popular and “cool” more recently than Buick.
So it’s Insignia vs Insignia (as the Regal is known as when its an Opel, unless I have that backwards)
I nominate the 1995-1999 Buick Riviera as a deadly sin for being the ugliest car of all time. Just a hideous design straight out of my least favourite period of car design.
Really? I totally disagree, but to each their own. I happen to love the looks of the 1995-1999 Riviera.
Is that the one with the catfish mouth? I do find it to be a little offputting but then if you are driving you don’t have to look at the front. There is one in my neighborhood that has a “Volvo” plate on the front; I’ve always wanted to ask about it but never have.
I agree. I don’t much like the interior, but the exterior would have made a pretty decent modern Jaguar.
Your personal taste does not make for a Deadly Sin. Unless your name is Paul.
The Riviera may not have appealed to everyone, however it was generally well liked.
My only gripe with that Riv is that it’s a transverse FWD layout(which turns me off of anything outside of the Compact segments), otherwise I find it pretty attractive.
I feel the beginning of the end of GM was the 1982 J-body cars. GM introduced 5 cars by 5 divisions and the only difference was the price structure–Chev, Pontiac, Olds, Buick and Cadillac. None of the cars had anything unique to make you want to buy it–At least the X cars had different body styles and dashboards and interiors. Why GM thought every division should have every car was short sighted–There was no need for a J-car Olds, Buick or Cadillac. Maybe living in Canada we have a different point of view because GM dealers here were Chev-Olds Cadillac and Pontiac-Buick GMC Trucks–we seen the same car being sold by Chev and Olds.
Well, yes and no. Again everyone looks like a genius when they can Monday morning quarterback from 30 years into the future.
The Oldsmobile and Buick versions didn’t share the dash with Chevrolet, Pontiac and Cadillac J-cars. Initially the Oldsmobile and Buick versions were going just going to be sporty small hatchback replacements for the H-body Starfire and Skyhawk, while the Cavalier and J-2000 were going to have a full model line up. With 25MPG CAFE coming up for 1985, GM hedged it’s bet and spread more J-car variants across their divisions.
Cadillac got involved at the 11th hour under pressure from dealers that were freaking out about dire predictions of $3 a gallon gas and younger luxury car buyers going to the BMW 320 and et al. There were many people within Cadillac that didn’t want the Cimarron to go through, at least not without more time and money to make appropriate changes to the car.
Cadillac at least was able to add more features to the Cimarron that weren’t available on the other J-cars, like Twilight Sentinel and leather seats, but there were not able to hide the Cimarron’s plebian Cavalier roots well enough for it not be embarrassing to Cadillac.
Cadillac would get more of a pass on this had they not watched the very similarly conceived and executed Lincoln Versailles crash and burn 5 years earlier. Lincoln tried to gussy up a Granada on the cheap (and actually put a lot of work and unique pieces into it) but it still looked like a Granada with better wheels. Cadillac should have known better.
is the Cimarron the only Cadillac with a 4-cyl?
It must be because it came out when I was a kid, and obsessed with Cadillacs, and I liked the name, but I have a soft spot for the Cimarron that most don’t. I also liked the second-generation Seville.
Well, the very first Cadillacs were one-cylinder…. 😉
Originally Cadillacs had 1 cylinder in 1902, though the Cimarron was the first 4 cylinder Cadillac since 1914 and the first Cadillac with a manual transmission since 1952.
The current Cadillac ATS has a 2.5 litre 4 cylinder standard and a 2.0 litre turbocharged 4 cylinder optional.
… and what a difference between those two small 4cylinder Cadillacs. Amazing what happens when a car company thinks something through and doesn’t insult their customer by handing them BS on a silver platter and smiling as they do it
Oops, spoke too soon. Cadillac wants $76,000 for the re-badged Chevy Volt… There’s your next deadly sin
Excuses, excuses…
Maybe a Corsica/Beretta. Either one could have been good affordable transportation for its time. Don’t get me wrong- I liked their no frills simplicity. The 2.2 and 3 spd auto were solid. There’s no reason interior parts had to fall apart in your hand while large pieces of paint disappeared from the hood and roof.
“I got dosed wit acid once, back in ’68… I was wit ya dad an’ them at the Copa, fuckin BOAC stewardess put it in my drink. Jerry Vale’s singin’ on stage, next thing I know I look ova’ and ya Uncle Joon’s got LAZER BEAMZ shootin’ out his eyes!!!”
As for ugliest GM, some cars are just too easy but I got to nominate the 1992 Buick Skylark 2 door. Along with its homely sister Oldsmobile I read that these cars were delayed because of a dealer revolt when shown to dealers in long lead previews
That is indeed a very ugly car. A former girlfriend of my brother’s had one. I believe it had the disastrous Quad 4 engine.
I said to her, “Isn’t that the one that eats head gaskets?”
“Yes. Mine’s on its fourth one.”
I did not ask why she continued replacing them instead of scuttling the thing. Maybe they failed so quickly that they were still under warranty.
I liked that Skylark. We almost bought one for my wife. Went with a T-Bird instead because it was bigger.
I liked that one too at the time. And if you didn’t like the looks, you could always buy a Beretta, Grand Am, or Achieva. They weren’t the most reliable or best performing cars of course, but all had more style than anything Honda or Toyota were building back then.
+1
My friend had a skylark handed down to him in high school, which we affectionately named “the beak” due to the original grille treatment. His was a sedan which I think was even worse than the two door. I agree, that might be the worst looking GM design(I’m struggling to think of one that’s worse). It’s just miserable looking, almost as if the VP of design had the flu when it was approved.
I remember we piled into that thing once, including two people in the trunk and it took the foot to the floor just to get that thing to hit 25mph
The challenge with this series is that almost all car companies have had a few deadly sins. When you consider the recent demise of Suzuki cars, the sins would be almost every product they pooped onto the public.
Even Toyota has had a few. Didn’t they have van in the ’80s that was so bad that they recalled and crushed them all instead of repairing them? I’ve tried to research that in the past, and couldn’t come up with much. If you take a broad view such as has been done with GM, you could argue Scion is a deadly sin.
Honda was spelled R.U.S.T. for a dozen or more years. They’ve had some horrible transmissions.
GM has had maybe a half dozen deadly sins. I’d agree with the Vega, the Citation and it’s cousins, Cimarron, the ’80s Cadillac engine debacle. These cars or issues really stank up GM’s reputation with small car buyers and luxury buyers.
But the ’73 Olds 88? Seriously? Take a tired version of perhaps a too low line trim line that should not have been offered, and yes, people that don’t know these cars won’t like them. The various Royale versions could be very handsome and comfortable near luxury cars. The 88 was the best selling Olds through 1974 – over taken by the wildly popular Cutlass.
The ’76 Malibu? It was not a very inspired version of the ’73-’77 Malibus, but it was a sturdy car on a wildly popular platform that sold in the millions every year for GM, and was the basis for the very popular ’77 B-bodies.
GM’s challenge is that it had tons of product to juggle through some very tough times. Many nameplates developed an image or a legend, and when the time came for big change, a lot of people were upset. Sure, the ’86 Riviera was a deservedly ignored car, but two door cars were a dying breed anyway. Could anything have saved the Riviera in the long run? Probably not. The slow death of an entire category (large 2 doors) was hardly GM’s fault.
Here’s a handsome devil from ’73……..
Dave B., Nissan was the one who recalled every one of their vans:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-asian/curbside-classic-1987-nissan-van-how-did-this-turkey-escape-the-crusher-or-oven/
Thanks! I knew somebody had a van that went to the crusher. Was going to comment that it would make the ultimate CC find – kudos to Paul for finding one!
The earlyToyota and Nissan mini vans have Deadly Sin written all over them:
– Rushed parts bin engineering.
– Tone deaf read of what the market wanted.
– Every element of bad ’80s styling.
– Nissan was so bad it had to be crushed. Imagine if it had been a runaway hit before problems set in like the Citation. If they had to crush 800,000 cars Nissan would have been gone from the scene. Kudos, though to Nissan for owning up to it’s engineering excrement.
Dave, we don’t include other brands in our deadly sins because that would be hypocritical 🙂
Lovely Oldsmobile and my favorite Olds of them all. My ’73 Royale (posted elsewhere in some other CC thread) isn’t quite deadly enough so I brought this guy home to keep it company. I can’t say “no” to a ’73 Olds.
Argh! The whitewalls. Where are the whitewalls?
I nominate the HC Vauxhall Viva for #20 – it’s the car that epitomised local GM stock as rust prone unreliable garbage for me growing up, and yet has an appropriately DS kind of charm to it all the same
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vauxhall_Viva#HC_Viva_.281970.E2.80.931979.29
Oh my, yes, the Firenza. Good looking car by the standards of the time. The engineering looked nice, if basic. OHC engine.
Then they hit the streets. And disappeared.
Based on the original DS criteria, maybe the Cavalier & Cobalt need some attention. Not because they were necessarily such terrible cars but because, 35 years after the arrival of serious Japanese competition, GM still couldn’t (be bothered to?) do any better in a market segment the imports had mastered. They represent another major lost opportunity, one more precisely-placed nail in the coffin GM was building for itself.
Sorry for the double posting – I got caught in the Great Site Switchover!
Funny thing with the Cobalt is that looked and performed exactly like the Cavalier it replaced, which certainly didn’t help it. Really, I didn’t even realize it was an all new platform until it was pointed out to mein 2007, and I was driving the damn thing at the time!
I have several nominations:
1. The H2 Hummer and the whole Hummer division – why didn’t they brand them as GMC Hummers and sell them through existing GMC dealers as a way to differentiate GMC from Chevy trucks and SUVs? The investments made by stand alone Hummer dealers that was lost when the brand was abandoned didn’t make GM any friends either.
2. Buick Reatta – late 1980s and the largest car maker in the world introduces a new sports car with lame 3.8 pushrod engine – at least they could have used the turbo-version, but that would have required some effort. Technically and ergonomically challenged touch-screen was also another half-effort feature.
3. All GM push-rod car engines introduced after 1974: Buick 3.8 V-6, Pontiac Iron-Duke, Cadillac HT-4100, GM 122, GM LE2, etc. The largest car-maker in the world designs and introduces new OHV pushrod designs that are used on its “upscale” brands during the same time period that competitors are moving from SOHC 2 Valve to DOHC 4+ Valve.
4. Post-1964 GM automatic transmissions. World’s largest automaker and inventor of automatic transmission takes 10 years after first fuel-crisis in 1973 to introduce a 4 speed OD automatic. Doesn’t get up to 5 speeds until 2000, and 6 speeds until 2007, while Germans and Japanese competitors are moving from 7 to 9 speeds.
My favorite General Motors Deadly Sin? Pick a Geo, Any Geo! Except for the rebadged toyota, they all sucked. low tech (carberation, TBI, 3spd auto ), rust prone, underpowered, third world crap-boxes that made Dae-Woos look good and Corvairs look safe at any speed.
Their only redeeming qualities were low price and high MPG. That might have gotten them somewhere if it wasn’t for timing. In the 90s the economy was running great, and the gas prices were low most of the time. The only people interested in Metros were rich older people looking for something little to tow behind thier Motor homes.
There has been a bit of a resurgence, particularly for manual trans metros as fuel miser commuters, but most of the metros have met thier rusty demise.
My 2-cents is that GEO, in cahoots with Yugo and a few other bad actors, are the number 1 reason a good number of non-gearheaded Americans believe that all small cars suck, That all economy cars suck, that all cheap cars suck, and that any combination of the three built by a domestic brand will definitely suck. Which means that these crummy little crackerboxes are partly responsible for Americans love of large steel, particularly SUVs, CUVs, and Minivans.
Funny story on that. My parents recently bought a used Buick Rendevous, and I asked what settled it for them. “Its’ got a V-6” They bought it to replace thier 98 Dodge Intrepid (V-6,) which had in turned replaced a 91 Dodge Dynasty (V-6) Which in turn had replaced an 86 escort and an 82 diesel Chevette. I asked about another CUV they had been looking at. “Naw, it had a 4banger. 4 cylinders just don’t last long.” Got to love this mindset. I don’t have the heart to tell them the Rendezvous is a deuglified Aztek.
The little one, the Metro, had a cult following in Canada. The were dirt cheap and were actually really reliable, since they were all Suzuki. There were all over the place in Canada, especially the models after 1988, which were much better to drive. It was a great deal, since the cars were cheap to buy and run and had Japanese reliability with GM price. I recall a 1988 five door being advertised for $7200, which was thousands less than any Honda or Toyota. Were these good cars? Well, they were cheap and mostly owned by people who didn’t do a lot of maintenance.
There is a Gen 1 Sprint, a 1985, parked near me. I should take some pics.
Someone mentioned the GTO and that got me thinking. Could one argue that the GTO is the car that ultimately killed Pontiac?
The 1964 GTO re-launched Pontiac as the “sporty” brand within GM. If Pontiac had had a performance image back in the early 50’s it would’ve probably got the Corvette instead of Chevy. Oddly enough, the hard core sports car segment is probably the only one where Pontiac never fielded an entry, specifically because it would have stepped on the Corvette’s toes and GM management wouldn’t want that. As Paul pointed out in the Fiero DS article, DeLorean tried with the Pontiac Banshee concept.
GM management likened Pontiac to a BMW fighter as early as the mid 1970’s. In more recent memory, Pontiac played-up the sporty association with ad slogans like “We build excitement”. In reality, how many consumers seriously cross-shopped a Pontiac against a BMW? Pontiac was typically too hamstrung by beancounters and corporate platform sharing to launch a serious contender.
Everybody remembers Pontiac for cars like the GTO, Firebird, Fiero, and Solstice. These were the cars that lived up to the “excitement” brand image, either in looks or performance. When viewed through that lens, most of the rest of Pontiac’s offerings came up short, especially when their showrooms were filled with boring/ugly people-movers, econoboxes and obvious rebadge jobs.
When the F-body Firebird was discontinued after 2002, Pontiac was sadly lacking in the performance image department. The 2-door Grand Prix was discontinued at the same time. By the time GM disted off the storied GTO badge and glued it on the front of “captive import” Holden Monaro in 2004, it was too little too late for Pontiac. This was soon followed by the Solstice, which was too much of a halo car and not practical enough. Also, when you introduce a 2-seater convertible named Solstice, unveil it close to the summer solstice, not the winter solstice.
It’s not like the goal wasn’t achievable either; consider Mazda. They seem to have done pretty well infusing all their vehicles with “zoom zoom”. The Miata is legendary. The RX-8 came out even after everyone figured that the rotary engine was dead, a victim of emissions standards. Looking for a sport compact? Madzaspeed3. Even the Mazda6 wagon and Mazda5 minivan are regarded as sporty alternatives in their segments.
I never thought about it before, but Mazda has evolved into what Pontiac should have been, if it was going to be true to its stated mission. Instead Pontiac is dead. We can blame GM management for incompetence, or we can blame John DeLorean and his GTO for having ever tried.
Interesting idea on Mazda being what Pontiac could have been- I can certainly see that!
I agree. Saying a T-1000 or my ’83 Bonneville was exciting was a huge stretch. How deluded could GM be to actually believe that? It’s amazing. A BMW is just that, most Pontiacs would just be cheap knock-offs in comparison.
Pontiac did do pretty well in the late ’80s and early ’90s with cars like the Grand Am, which looked very BMW-like (I recall reading something in Car and Driver at one point that BMW complained about that, trying to argue that the dual grille was somehow infringing their trademarks; if that was true, they didn’t get very far with it). Of course, no one was actually going to cross-shop the two, but I’m sure the chances of a neighbor or coworker saying, “Hey, Joe, is that a new BMW?” didn’t hurt Pontiac too badly.
Pontiac’s role as GM’s sporty division really went back to the late ’50s, after Bunkie Knudsen, Pete Estes and John DeLorean arrived. The GTO didn’t reinvent Pontiac so much as bolster its existing sporty image at a point where GM’s anti-racing policy was making it harder to do that with the big cars. (Frederic Donner had sent out a memo earlier in the year saying, “Yes, we still abide by the AMA anti-racing resolution and if you do it under the table, you will be fired.” It was aimed at Pontiac, Chevrolet and Oldsmobile, which had to various degrees been doing end-runs around the policy for quite a while.)
At various points, Pontiac demonstrated that it could do pretty well with the sporty direction even with fairly mundane hardware, but it look a concerted and savvy marketing effort of a kind that many GM execs either didn’t really grasp or actively didn’t like. (Throughout the Estes/DeLorean era at Pontiac, they got in trouble fairly often because the corporation’s senior management was uncomfortable with the advertising or promotional gimmicks.)
The Uplander killed the minivan at GM, which in turn killed my interest in GM. At least for now.
A CUV is a poor substitute for a van. Or an SUV. Or just about anything, really.
I’ve owned/own four of the deadly sins, I only disagree with one. That said, when trying to decide what qualifies as a deadly sin it boils down to when I think of a particular model either at the time of introduction or what it became in retrospect, if the thought makes me cringe, it’s a deadly sin
BTW, love what you’ve done with the place
I nominate the Chevy Cobalt as another GMDS. They took the last gen Cavalier and made it worse.
I am not exactly known as a GM lover, but the Cobalt wasn’t a bad car at all. During one of the many long absences of my POS Aveo, I had one. It was peppy, drove quite well and was an all around good little car, nicer than a Corolla in my opinion, but not as reliable. Still, parts are cheap for them. Just don’t go high mileage on anything GM.
In retrospect, I agree that not all cars worthy of the DS moniker were necessarily bad. It was what happened after it went on the market that often is what made it so.
Either it was a misreading of the market (and at times, this was simply failing to see trends as they were playing out), or in the case of the Chevette (a car I happen to like BTW, faults or no), and left it selling along side the J car, which was SUPPOSED have replaced it, then left it virtually unupdated until it finally was put to pasture, about 5 years too late, and thus was woefully out of date by then, then did much the same for the J cars through out all lines of it.
I’ve never found the J cars terribly bad for they were reasonably reliable (after they replaced the first POS 4 pot motor that made more noise than it did in acceleration for something that could get the car out of its own way if need be), exciting, I doubt it, though some iterations (Pontiac j2000 with its soft nosed front from 1982 in the hatchback body mainly) had good looks, and were sporty looking.
I rented an ’06 Cobalt, and found some of the interior bits lacking durability (window/power lock switch plates being one, and it was less than a year old), though decent enough to drive, it was NOT an exciting car however.
I’m going to nominate the J-car as a group- while some models were decent it epitomises the serious rot in GM in the 1980s. Plus while the Saturn was only NA market, the Js did GM few favours world wide. The Holden version was generally reliable,but mostly seriously under powered and did not cope with new emission controls well. It had serious fit and finish issues of the type that sent customers to Toyota and never had the hatch back that buyers wanted. It was developed into a resonable eventually, but by that time it was too late and sales had tanked….sound familiar?
Where’s the Pontiac Aztek? Surely the vehicle that virtually single-handedly killed off an entire division deserves DS status.
+1 on the Aztek; I’m pretty sure I saw Richard Hatch recoil when he saw it for the first time (it was the grand prize on the first season of Survivor ).
I nominate the “DustBuster” minivans. The minivan market was exploding when these rolled out, but they failed spectacularly. It is amazing that tens of thousands of design engineering, marketing, and testing hours (not to mention hundreds of millions of dollars) were invested in putting these things out into the market without anybody pointing out that they were horrifically ugly inside and out.
They flopped, and GM ultimately surrendered the entire segment to their competitors.
Chrysler, Honda and Toyota are still cranking out Front wheel drive minivans by the tens of thousands 20 years later.
Not only did GM totally flub it with the Dustbusters, their replacement was even more awful. A loaded Dustbuster with 3800 V-6 was actually kinda cool in a spacey, weird kind of way and it least it went well. The Uplander is a hideous abomination that should have never seen a road, it was so cheap and crappy it got a dreadful crash rating since it was so damned flimsy. Stuff broke off since it was just so cheap. To top things off, every one had the intake manifold gasket fail at 60,001 km which was, even then, a $1000 job, twelve hours of labour. A good tech could do it in half the time. They got fast with all the practice. After a decade the party was over.
I am generally not a fan of the GM Deadly Sin series when cars like the all style, no substance Ford Tempo or self-destructing ’90s Chryslers get a free pass, but if it has to exist, I really think the J-bodies need to be nominated.
They sold well and lasted a long time, but I think they turned a large number of people away from GM and into arms of the competition. They arrived on the scene underpowered and soggy, they went 13 years without any major improvements, and they were never any better than adequate.
When you look at what Opel and Isuzu were able to do with the same platform, it’s especially disheartening to see how rotten North America’s J platform cars turned out to be.
GM cars in the US can be counted on, despite everything else, to have good power and a generally overstuffed expression of comfort, but the J cars failed to deliver in this regard, while still showcasing the company’s weaknesses in assembly quality, and small car refinement and sophistication. It may have helped GM to crank them out in large numbers for a low price, selling an Accord sized compact (by early ’80s standards) at Civic prices, but the moment customers could buy a more sophisticated polished car, they did, and they often didn’t buy GM again.
The comments left have a theme: GM spent money on the T-platform and J-platform and let them rot on the vine, then spent money on NUMMI and Saturn and still did not find success. How difficult would it have been to entrust the designs of their small cars to Opel and sell well-assembled, minimally altered clones here in the US?
Clearly, they-and Ford-have understood that this is the way to sell competitive product, but it’s taken about 30 years to fully grasp this idea. The J-body (and also the original Escort) exemplify the WRONG way to compete with imported cars, wasting money on re-engineering/dumbing down, while scaring customers away.
Granted, I’d love to have a Cavalier wagon with the 3.1, but the benefits of such a car appear almost accidentally. Let a car rot on the vine for 10 years, reach for an amortized, compact, large displacement engine architecture and throw it into a car it was never meant to power and you end up with something torquey, cheap and functional, but in the meantime, the customers you’re really after have all purchased early Japanese compacts.
The J cars, like Saturn and Geo, represent GM’s small car ADD, but also their own feckless efforts to produce a homegrown competitor.
In fairness, one of the big issues with having cars engineered in Europe is that there are quite different expectations of size, power, and price. Cars that in European terms were considered big E-segment sedans — large but not really premium cars, like the Ford Scorpio and Opel Omega — end up pushed uncomfortably into quasi-luxury territory, while cars like the Escort, a decent-size family car by European standards, were demoted to economy car duty.
Excellent points. Even as a young man thirty years ago, it seemed obvious the only way the American makers could compete was by spreading their engineering on global products. It took a long time to get there and only kicking and screaming to bankruptcy court. GM had global kind of thrust on it and it doesn’t like it at all but look at the results.
Small Cars: Korea, GM Daewoo
All other cars: Opel.
Truck: Good old USA.
All the passenger cars are sold globally and are basically identical. I had a rental Cruze in Germany a while back it iwas the the same as the one here, just with a smaller motor.
Now, if Opel were to be cut off its life support, GM could really get screwed.
I really enjoy the deadly sin series. Of course it’s subjective but I think Paul has stayed within the parameters that he’s set. My vote is for the cadillac allante. They aimed so high yet fell so short.
I second the Allante.
Launched with serious marketing hype, with bodies air-freighted from Pininfarina in Italy on a custom-equipped 747. But plagued by mechanical glitches and mediocre components, yet priced at Mercedes SL nosebleed levels, it could not hope to sell in decent numbers.
A classic example of GM arrogance, hubris and rank cluelessness.
Corvair (maybe)
Vega
350 diesel
X-car
’80s Cadillac engine debacle
Roger Smith / Eventual re org
NUMMI
Any diesel
Cimarron
Look alike cars / too many close sized platforms / can’t break from the past
Saturn
Door mounted seat belts
Hummer
Saab
13 deadly sins
I’d say the original Holden Commodore. It was down-sized in reaction to the fuel crisis but carried over the old drivetrain which by the time it debuted was 14 years old and not coping well with emissions regs. This handed market leadership to Ford after a couple of years, and led to the company nearly going bankrupt and having to be bailed out by head office. On the other hand it was actually a very good car, handled well (they actually had to tone it down a bit on the first facelift), was quite tough and spawned the Peter Brock HDT cars and a Group A racing program. But it wasn’t the proper-full-size family car that Holden should have had.
On an Australian market only basis, the variants of the Commodore based off the final V-car when they went down too many rabbit holes on products that I don’t think made money on the basis that they added very few incremental sales even allowing for fairly cheap development programs.
Or even the current VE Commodore that was promoted as the “billion dollar baby” after a lavish development program on the basis that it would also be produced in the USA (as opposed to a small import program). That was dropped at the eleventh hour and I gather must have induced panic at Holden as they realised how much they had overspent, eg the car did not see a proper update in nearly 7 years.
The VB was a nice-looking car, comfy and good handling, all overshadowed by the grotty old 173/202 engines (gutless AND thirsty!). I wonder if the availability of the 308 V8 (if not the 253) stops the VB short of being a DS? My late Uncle had a VB SL/E V8 new; the 308 was enough engine to match the rest of the car’s good design and comfort.
Holden certainly did go down a large number of small rabbit holes with the VY/VZ. eg Adventra, Crewman, Cross 8, HSV Coupe 4… The only ones I see in any number nowadays are the fleet of 2WD Crewmen operated by the police force’s truck inspectors.
The VE qualifies based on the sheer cost of the development; but it was an exceptionally good product (if decontented a tad in later years), and I’d argue it was good enough that it didn’t need an update as soon as usual. It was like a great movie: the sequel is always the hard part!
The VB was a great car (albeit with sub-par engines) but the down-size cost a lot of sales, just like the 1962 Mopars.
To expand on your list, at one point GM had the following in their locally produced line-up: normal sedan, wagon, lwb sedan, ute, 1 tonne pickup, crew cab pickup (Crewman), coupe (Monaro/GTO), awd coupe (HSV Coupe4 model requiring off-line modifications to the body-in-white), awd wagon (Adventra), awd 1 tonne pickup, awd crew cab pickup. That’s 11 different bodyshells for at I’m not sure that the sales of the awd pickups (Crewman and 1 tonner) would have covered the cost of the validation & crash testing.a guess 120,000 vehicles a year. Then there was the Adventra as a Subaru Outback-style crossover that never worked in the face of proper CUV competition, without a 3rd row option. It was also V8 only for the first couple of years, which severely limited sales of a family-type vehicle.
The VE was good, but initially it was too heavy, the same as the VT when that debuted and like the VT it underwent a crash diet which can’t have been cheap. They did several minor updates, and I’m sure if they had the money they would have done a proper facelift instead of the miniscule headlights and bumper only Series 2 after 4 years, if only because buyers on an average 3 year turnover cycle were faced with buying what was externally the exact same car they were trading in. I’m sure that drove a decent percentage of the wagon sales, so a new car was clearly new.
To add some additional thoughts to the deadly sins thread here. All manufacturers have their DS, but GM, for all it is, has had more than than their fair share.
Much of it was, especially in the past 40 years or so been more about cheapening out, and poor reading of where the markets were going. While everyone else (other than Ford and Chryco) were heading towards FWD, and OHC motors, GM kept trying to stay with the tried and true older technology and body designs that at times bordered on frumpy, but when they did move to FWD etc, they did so kicking and screaming, and we got cars like the X bodies, which set the tone for GM of the 80’s. Also, I think as others have said, they went at their fixes all wrong with new plants, models, makes (Saturn), which for all it was initially, never failed to fully retain that momentum, and thus was a totally spectacular failure in the end.
While the J’s and A body FWD’s were better in some ways, none of them were fantastic. Also, thinking we Americans wanted something different than what came from Europe in small entry level cars, often took what was a good European design, and redid it for the US that made it not as good. While they weren’t the only ones to have done this (cough, Ford and the early Escorts, cough), they did so more often, and it seemed more blatantly than most because they could not see that their actions were killing them, having been at the top of the heap for too long.
I remember discussing a possible GM bankruptcy with my Dad as early as the early 1990’s (’92 or so I think), but while that never happened, it was a threat of a possibility at the time, well, in 2009, it came to a head, and they so deserved it. Ultimately, they were grasping at straws, and not stepping back to see what really needed to be done to fix their situation, and just went after one crazy idea after another in a vain hope of staying on top, and improving their lines.
Today, much of their lineup is much improved, but I think they still have a long way to go.
Achieva, because it achieved nothing and the because name sounds like a sneeze
Well, I started to read the comments section but am running out of time. I can’t believe the V8 350 diesel isn’t on the list already. Perhaps because you’d have to pick a single model? I can think of no other GM product that destroyed GM’s reputation and drove more customers away. Esp. considering that ALL of GM’s product dealers had them on sale.
Yeah, I’d have to go with the GM 350 diesel as needing to be on the list. If a specific year/brand is needed, I’d choose the 1981 Oldsmobile LF9 because that was the highest volume year with 310k units sold (and that’s just one year). It goes without saying that very few of those cars so equipped were trouble-free, positive experiences.
More likely, as with all of the Deadly Sins, consumers who had gotten burned by the 350 GM diesel would swear off GM products for generations to come. This, alone, would qualify it as a GM Deadly Sin since the main criteria is that the vehicle in question would tarnish the company’s reputation so badly as to significantly contribute to its demise.
Carmine, I could not agree with anyone more. I, to this day, take a second look whenever I see one on the street. Up close, the detailing on the body of these cars approaches the sublime. the razor edge that runs to the rear of the car is remarkable. The front, debatable, from the rear three quarter view, Wow, I want to someday own one. In fact, in 2001, when I was new car shopping, I seriously considered searching for a nice example.
I can now see how you are having problems with the site. My replies are posted under an older post having nothing whatsoever to do with my reply. Oh well, I guess that ,being just a part of the ether, has it’s downsides. In any case, I am old enough to use the excuse that I can’t quite figure this all out.
Soltice/Sky. A lower quality version of the Mazda MX-5. Soulless engine (turbo has balls but still soulless). So massive looking that it needed 18″ wheels to look proportional. No trunk despite its size. Dumb coupe version that nobody bought. Didn’t make the cut in the bankruptcy reorg. In fact, both divisions represented here died with a thud at the conclusion of these cars’ production. And for the love of god, how delusional was it to expect someone interested in a convertible sports car to go to a Saturn dealer?
Huh?
Styling is subjective so that doesnt’ count.
The “dumb coupe” version was bought as much as it could have been…the car was put out of production. If you took your head out of the dark for a few moments you’d see that the coupe versions are widely seens as very collectable and still command sticker price or more.
No more delusional to go to a Saturn dealer to buy a convertible than it is to go to a scion dealer to buy a small rwd coupe or a subaru dealer for the same badge engineered copy…
Bitter about Pontiac’s demise, eh?
How about these other options for DS: The H2 and H3 had phony rugged bodies but were actually just overpriced tarted-up versions of the Trailblazer and Yukon. Once the collective wisdom of the Country nudged past drooling imbecile due to the shock of the 2008 collapse, the Hummer became so obsolete and unpopular they couldn’t be given away. And not just the actual trucks, but the brand itself was worthless. Worthless as in couldn’t be sold. To anyone. HUMMER may as well have be spelled HUBRIS. The GM edict build it big, flashy, inefficient, with obscene markups for profit is never sustainable. GM never fully learns that lesson.
Yes, still upset that Pontiac was killed.
Didn’t like the way the bankruptsy was done by the government.
Can’t understand how Americans can be so quick to dump on an American company. You would never see this in any other country in the world.
Just to keep things on the up and up…the H3 wasn’t a Trailblazer, it was a Colorado/Canyon platform mate. It was also a very very capable offroad suv, right up there with a Wrangler Rubicon.
You seem to be the one with a chip on your shoulder. Kind of arrogant calling the american public drooling imbecile.
Not sure what you mean about “value” of the name. Its difficult to sell a brand and not sell the intellectual property too.
Alright Philsqwack, this is boring. Instead of trying to bicker with me over my opinions, why don’t you take this in a more constructive direction and offer up your suggestion for the next deadly sin?
Hasn’t the Lexus ES just been an tarted up Camry with an obscene markup for most of it’s life? Or how about the Mustang to the Falcon? Or…. Or…. The H2 formula wasn’t the first, the last, nor unique to American automakers for being a marked up style>substance vehicle. It’s platform sharing and marketing, plain and simple.
The H2s only real sin is that it became the political antithesis of what a car like the Prius stands for. It became the singular object for people who hate GM, hate corporations, hate Bush, hate the war in Iraq, ect. ect. to focus their anger and frustration at. Otherwise It was profitable, considered “cool” at a time, and was perfectly fine mechanically. That’s a winning formula for any automaker, regardless of weather or not it’s ostentatious. GM wouldn’t have been in any better of a position in 2008 if Hummer had never existed.
If the H2 is valid and profitable concept, why can’t I go down to my Hummer dealer on Monday and put a down payment on 2014 H2? Yet I can go buy a Yukon. The reason: consumers wised up and voted Hummer out of existence with their wallets. Did it ever occur to you that if GM had dedicated the resources they were blowing on a division like Hummer or worse, their spectacularly disappointing hybrid trucks, they could have been developing, manufacturing, marketing, and SELLING vehicles people actually wanted? Bad product killed the old GM. Not the political philosophy of its potential customer base or lack of national pride. Bad product. That simple.
Why can’t you get one? Because it was an easy target during the reorganization which just happened to occur during a massive economic crash and all time high fuel prices. Yeah the future was a tad grim for Hummer in 2009. Ten years earlier though, it was what people wanted and people did indeed buy them. Times change.
Sorry, you lost me when the name calling started. Not worth even having a conversation with someone who needs to act like an ass.
Just trying to add a little fact to your opinion. That wasn’t working for you so I guess it ends there.
Next deadly sin suggestiongs
1. VW Beetle: VW let it rot on the vine so long that it stopped selling them in the USA and almost destroyed the company as a whole.
2. Chrysler K-car platform: Chrysler put all of its eggs in a crude platform and then made every car off of it, deeming every car instantly non-competitive right out of the box after 1983
4. Toyota Tundra: Why can’t Toyota compete with the US in large trucks?
5. Scion: the whole brand…Why? Why so unsuccessful?
6. Mercury: Ford’s GMC, only it didn’t work.
Certainly major sins there, every one of them. However, none of these cars led to the demise of its maker. I think that Paul’s concept of the DS series was to examine just how GM went from the market leviathan that it was in the late 1970s to extinction in 2008 (Today’s GM is, after all, a completely different entity).
It seems that every company has an overarching theme. Chrysler’s theme was “How can we screw this car up?” Following the death of Walter Chrysler, the company rarely (if ever) provided the whole package of appeal, performance, quality and durability. There was almost always something missing, and the company has been to the brink of extinction multiple times because of this. Ford’s theme is “Gem or crap?” Ford has spent years fooling us, having a string of really good cars then out of nowhere they turn to dung – like the 69-72 big Fords. Or, after years of turning out dung, they sneak in a gem like the Fairmont. With Ford, past performance is not an indicator of future performance. You could get a Panther or a Windstar at the same time.
But GM’s story is about a long, slow, excruciating downward arc. It was the company that went from being the best in the industry on a consistent basis to being one of the worst. And every single wound was self-inflicted.
I understand how his DS articles work. I think it might be time to change it up a little or just drop it all together. If not for a couple of lucky circumstances, and they were just that, luck, ChryCo and Ford would have been in exactly the same seat as GM. Heck, it was expected that Chrysler was going to become part of GM at one point in 2008, but we don’t include that in the DS articles?
Ford got lucky buy selling assets and taking enough TARP money to stay out of the modified restructuring.
Instead, we choose to kick a company while it is down, or armchair quarterback on how it shouldn’t have happened (all by people not in the industry at any point in time). Why are we not doing DS articles on cars such as the Scion brand that could be so much better (which I believe is the other main point of the DS series) but are not.
Here is where, I think, we disagree. I do not see the difference between Ford/Chrysler and GM as just a few lucky breaks. Chrysler had been through multiple wrenching near-death experiences, particularly 1962 and 1980. Ford had been through one in 1979-80 as well, and again around 2005. Those experiences (of varying depth) led to fresh blood coming in to fix problems that had been allowed to linger and fester by prior managements. In 1961, Chrysler was led by people who had been there back in the days when Walter was signing the checks. However, the upper ranks of management had rotted badly. The same happened under the Lynn Townsend years. Even under Iacocca, the AMC guys (and Lutz) came in and led some significant changes in process, systems and attitude. The same thing happened more than once at Ford.
But GM was different. I see a lot of 1961 Chrysler Corporation in the GM of 2008. I have read John DeLorean’s book, and have read the memo that Elmer Johnson turned in to upper management before he quit in the late 80s or early 90s. Both sources confirm each other that the internal systems of the company had slowly, quietly but persistently starting to fail. GM’s system was not growing good managers, but was growing people good at doing the GM system. An earlier crisis and some fresh blood would have helped a lot. We saw a little of it when Lutz showed up. He was only on guy, but managed to improve their product quite a lot between 2002 or so to 2008. GM failed because of its systems and processes, which resulted in unappealing or bad cars, and it finally pulled them down.
Every car company has done stupid things, or has made tradeoffs that led to bad results. We have endlessly debated some of the boneheaded things that Studebaker did in the 1950s or that AMC did in the 60s-70s. Chrysler, well, is just Chrysler and will be ripped repeatedly for the next several decades due to all the material they have left us. Ford as well (though to a lesser degree, probably). I really don’t see why GM should be exempted from this kind of treatment. Every company should get credit for the successes and blame for the failures.
One question I pose. Do you think things would have been the same had the housing market not crashed causing GMAC to blow up and loans to dry up?
I don’t believe you can call it all unappealing and bad cars when they were still number 2 in the world can you? Just like everyone else there were some turkeys, but the DS articles are written with a cynicism that is over the top. As we all know, there is a difference between bad and unappealing to an enthusiast and bad and unappealing to the masses.
So, looking at it like that, why isn’t the whole DS thing extended to all companies or dropped? Looking back and writing about a car from 30 years ago and calling it crap because the author doesn’t like it is a little over the top and one example of where CC and TTAC cross paths and loses class.
I will give you my answer to your question: Yes, I think the same result was in store, but perhaps not quite so soon. Every graph I have ever seen on the topic shows a long, constant, almost uninterrupted slide in market share from about 1982 or so. This is true even though GM was hugely successful in large pickups and SUVs. GM owned the big SUV market with the Suburban all through the 90s, and even up to today. But you don’t give away that kind of market share by building the kind of vehicles that GM built in the 60s and 70s. GM drove away a lot of buyers with bad cars (and they were not alone). However, GM failed to bring those buyers back. Many is the 90s Ford or MoPar that brought customers back into their showrooms, like the Taurus, the Explorer or the Intrepid. There may have been problems with them down the road, but they were very appealing vehicles that brought people in the door.
I just wasn’t seeing that sort of thing from GM after the late 70s, and I don’t think I was alone.
Now, let me ask you a question. We have heaped a lot of scorn on cars like the 71-73 Mustang and the 70-74 Mopar E body, and lots of praise on the corresponding GM F body. I’m no great GM fan, but would have to agree that the GM effort was by far the best of the bunch for what it was intended to be. But in all of that, I do not recall a large outcry from Ford fans or Mopar nuts about how we are unfairly piling on to those companies. We were pretty hard on a recent Mercury Monarch, too. What is it with some GM partisans (and I am not saying that you are necessarily in this group) who seem to take it all personally when GM or its cars are treated scornfully? I loved MoPars in the 70s and let me tell you, I developed some thick skin. My theory is that GM was the golden child for so long in America (and not for no reason) that its biggest fans have never gotten used to acknowledging the kinds of failure that fans of other car companies have dealt with for years. Am I off here?
JP, this is true about the recent slams on others. Why are we not labeling these DS write-ups then? I have no problem saying GM screwed up. I’m more or less with Junqueboi on how I feel about GM post bk even though I bought a Cruze (although I can’t agree with the 4th gen f-body feelings, sorry JB).
The thing that gets tiring, and I think is fairly obvious (maybe I’m wrong) is that it quickly turns into a bashing of the car listed as the DS. The Fiero for example. Was it perfect? No way. Was it a POS? No way! So Paul didn’t like the styling, interior styling, wasn’t impressed with the suspension etc…You know what, it wasn’t that bad in reality and sales proved it by outselling the CRX and MR2 every year. Sure, the 2.5 wasn’t a great choice, but it was just as good as the 1.8 which is just as crude but with less power/torque. The 2.8 Fiero was a gem of a car, but we gloss over that.
But, it is his web page, his article and I respect that. Just don’t expect some of us delusional people to not cry foul when there is some obvious and criticism that is completely subjective. Had he had the ability to go out and drive an 88 MR2 and compare it to an 88 Fiero GT or Formula then I would not jump up and down as loud when subjective things are written.
Hate the game not the player… I won’t even get started on the “my cousin’s wife’s sister’s first boyfriend’s great uncle bought one of those new and it was a POS…so I will never ever consider one again even if it is 30 years gone by…” 🙂
You have, I think, summed up Paul’s point on the Fiero: the late V6 Fiero was quite a nice little sportster. Why did it take so long to get there?
As for the Deadly Sin theme, that is sort of Paul’s thing and I will let him address it. However, I know that there have been at least 3 Chrysler DS cars (the R body New Yorker, the Volare and the M body Fifth Avenue). He probably would count the 81 Imperial as another (and not without good reason), but I got there first. There have been some Ford labeled as sinners (if not deadly) like the Tempo, the Mustang II Cobra and the EXP.
I think that the 53 Studebaker sedans would be a huge deadly sin, as was the botched overhead valve conversion of the old Champion 6. The Henry J was probably one as well, as was the Hudson Jet. Mercury, DeSoto, AMC, all have legit deadly sins waiting to be written about. Lincoln is probably ripe for this treatment as well.
You must remember that Paul came to the U.S. at age 7 in 1960, when GM was at its peak. GM made him fall in love with its cars. Then he watched the company over the next few decades as it made a mess of itself. Isn’t it always the former lover who commits the most gruesome crimes of passion? 🙂
If it’s any consolation, the deadly sins have to end somewhere/sometime. There are are a finite amount of cars GM built and not all of them can fall into the DS category.
The question is…when do we stop looking? In my opinion, they’ve all been covered…although I think the later 4th gen Camaros & Firebirds might warrant a mention. Mustangs were selling like crazy so GM’s answer was to add more plastic scoopage to the Firebird, & genericize the looks of the Camaro. Mustang sales really put the whumpus on the F-cars until GM pulled the plug on them.
GM has been dead to me since the bailout and none of the new GM products are of the same “GM” that I grew up loving. It’s such a bummer: the “new” Camaro is as GM to me as a new MaxiCamCord
Philhawk: I mean no disrespect, but I don’t have the time to sit here and try to get you to change your mind and understand what the DS is all about, because i know you wont. You’re very invested in a different image of GM during their long slide period, and it’s a very emotional thing for you. That’s fine, but please try to accept that as your reality, and not the reality of the vast majority of those that experienced GM in a different way.
The problem I have with your comments is that you’re perpetually misrepresenting what I say. For instance regarding the Fiero, you say So Paul didn’t like the styling That’s simply untrue. I never said that ever,because I had no problems with the Fiero’s styling. It was rather cute, actually.
And you say: Had he had the ability to go out and drive an 88 MR2 and compare it to an 88 Fiero GT…. You totally missed the point of the article, which was right in the headline “Give US Five Years, And We’ll Get It Almost Right…”
The article was specifically about GM releasing (another) half-baked car (with 3 quart oil capacity and weak con rods, among other things), which they eventually fixed (mostly). THAT is exactly the deadly sin.
But you see how impossible it is to carry on a reasoned debate with someone who perpetually does that? I could go on all day with examples like this. But it’s certainly not the best way to spend my time rebutting what I actually said with one commenter.
BTW, do me a favor and go back and read all the comments in any/all of my DS articles. Even though I may not have owned or driven all the DS cars, there’s always plenty of folks who show up who have and comment. Like the guy who drove both the Fiero and MR2:
When these came out in 1984, the cousin of one of my best friends got a red one. Loved the looks of it outside, but the inside was not particularly comfortable and the plastic quality was dismal. The only thing worse was the way it performed. My buddy and I got to drive it, and wow, talk about underwhelmed. The thing was as slow as molasses (granted, it was an automatic, which didn’t help matters). The noises the engine made would have embarrassed a Cuisinart. The steering was leaden. The suspension was jarring. The list of demerits just went on, and on, and on.
A mere few years later, another friend got a new 1986 MR2. Also red, though a stick. Amazing car! Blast to drive. Much nicer interior. However, for all its appeal, I still found it nowhere near as good looking as the Pontiac.
An excellent summation, and I couldn’t have said it better. It seems that except for you, the overwhelming majority pretty much always agrees. Does that not tell you something?
I understand how you feel, but your emotions have totally blinded you to the reality of what happened at GM that caused them to implode. That’s your right, but just accept the fact that you’re going to be unhappy every time another DS comes along; and they will. Maybe better to just not read it instead of getting so worked up?
Scolded like a little kid. I get it, all good boss.
Philhawk wrote: “One question I pose. Do you think things would have been the same had the housing market not crashed causing GMAC to blow up and loans to dry up?”
This is a question worth pondering. It could be it’s own post all by itself, really. I happen to believe that if the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 (or GFC) hadn’t happened, there would have been a much different landing for both GM and Chrysler. I’m not sure how Ford would have fared, but to be honest, they were in dire straits, too. A combination of luck, hard work and good PR made the difference during the GFC for Ford.
I think that Cerberus realized they were in way over their heads and were working on an exit plan, which I believe was to break up Chrysler and sell the parts (intellectual property, engineering patents & such) to the highest bidder. They had already done a lot of the hard work (consolidating dealerships, slimming down the product line and revamping the worst part of the Daimler legacy: the horrible, horrible interiors on these vehicles. People give Sergio credit for this, they’re flat out wrong; even with shorter lead times these days, the interiors were worked out during the GFC, when Chrysler was very much thought to be a dead company walking. The kludged Mitsubishi/Daimler/Chrysler engineering (particularly of the FWD cars) will never be “fixed”, hopefully Fiat can inject some new thinking into Chrysler’s offerings in North America.
I really believe that GM was fixing it’s issues with branding and image; after the decision to base Saturn on Opel styling and in some cases complete cars, Pontiac was slimming down to a few decent models. The CAFE compliance and poor house specials, like the G3 were still there to be sure, but you could see a new attitude with the G8 and Solstice. Chevy was getting more of their lineup rationalized along with Buick creeping up into the mid-lux territory.
As a long time observer of the industry and a domestic fanboi, I’m not ready to say that the domestic industry had “turned the corner” in late 2008, but there were signs of life happening in all three companies.
I remain pissed at Roger Smith & Co., for instigating Saturn, and later admins for killing Oldsmobile and the government for interfering via the Automotive Task Force and demanding Pontiac be killed and Buick saved. Too bad Saturn went away, other than the Aura (and maybe the Astra), there weren’t many of them I would shed a tear over. I’d gladly take a J-body over any of the S series Saturns, but that’s another rant for another day…
“So, looking at it like that, why isn’t the whole DS thing extended to all companies or dropped?…”
I’m with you on this part; I think we should call a DS a DS, whether or not it’s a GM car or not. Granted, some of these “accidental” DS’s have come about as an innocent post, and a b*tchfest starts up around the post. You name a manufacturer, and there are folks who have experiences good and bad with a particular product. I’ve got no problem giving the domestics hell when they build crap, but I’m frequently the guy p*ssing on the Honda love fests (for example) with my stories of rusty bodies, weak trannies and other sins. I get that this is Paul’s site, but it isn’t just GM that phones it in.
I think it would be interesting to see what the readership thinks what current car is going to be a DS in the near future. There’s a huge “beehive” of knowledge here. I (foolishly) think I know something about cars and then one of the people here post something that just blows my mind. In five different dimensions.
Sorry for the long post, it didn’t start out as a rant, it’s just there is SOOOO much ground to cover.
Someone is off their meds and wants to hijack this into being about the failure of Scion? I see outlandish responses on Curbside occasionally; that ranks. I was enjoying the discussion about GM and its cars. When crazy talk starts, no fun any more.
I made a suggestion on DS ideas. Scion is Toyota’s DS. Sorry it’s no fun, don’t let the door hit ya on the way back to TTAC.
Someday I mean to write up the story of GM chemist Thomas Midgley, Jr., 1889-1944. Talk about Deadly Sins, he enabled GM to commit a couple of big ones. For now you can read about his astonishing life and horrible death in the Wikipedia (link here).
There is one big item missing in all of these discussions about the Fiero, price.
In 1985, we were going to buy my wife her first new car. I asked her what she wanted: A Fiero, she said. At the time, I had a full on love for the Fox body Fords; particularly the Mercury Capri 5.0. After much cajoling, I got her into one, but if I hadn’t we’d have paid a lot less for a 4 cylinder Fiero. They ran about $10K, (prolly less, even back then you could get employee pricing!) our 1985 Capri RS was about $12K.
The late production 1985 V6 Fiero was about $12K (MSRP), the contemporary MR2 was about $14.5K (MSRP) and the X-1/9 about $14K (MSRP). The approximately $2K less was big money back in the 80’s. I personally would have not purchased an V6 Fiero, X-1/9 or MR2 because you could get plenty of V8 power for roughly the same money.
Regardless of my tastes, the Fiero sold relatively well, just due to pricing alone. You may have had to wait for your MR2 or CRX, but the Fiero was right around the corner, waiting for you.
In the early 90’s I was selling Toyotas, a young man came on our lot to see about trading his 88 Fiero GT for a Supra (IIRC). I took the Fiero for an “evaluation” ride, it was a little beast. I really wanted to sell a Supra (they had big spiffs on them, as they were super expensive and slow movers), but I told the kid flat out that I liked the Fiero GT for what it was. It was all for nothing, he didn’t qualify for financing on a Supra and he moved on.