The Deadly Sins by Kris Kuksi
Halloween – the perfect day to kick off CC’s GM’s Deadly Sins Month. The GM DS series started on June 16, 2009 back at TTAC, and it hasn’t really ended. There’s 25 as of the time of this writing, maybe more by the time the series finishes. We’d need just five more to make the month complete; maybe you have some suggestions?
Actually, the series will start tomorrow, so that each number sin corresponds to the day of the month. But perhaps we can reflect a bit on the task at hand. 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.
But GM’s decline was wholly the result of its cars; that’s what it was supposed to be in the business of making. And unless any given car was able to strongly counter (subjectively or objectively) GM’s decline, then it was part of the decline. That’s a bit harsh, perhaps, and clearly we’ve tended to chose those cars that were relatively more deadly than others.
Having said that, let me add that obviously there are personal, subjective, emotional and even humorous aspects to documenting GM’s decline. Which is where you come in, with your comments and your contributions with alternate points of view. We’re here to learn, but a chuckle or two along the way never hurts, especially on such a painful subject. Trick or Treat!
Here’s a current-model nomination to the GM DS series. Perhaps you can tack it on the the end of the month?
Chevrolet Express/GMC Savana (possibly the Chevrolet City Express, too)
Chrysler/FCA moved to European-style vans over a decade ago.
Ford joined in a few years ago, although they still make a few E-series cab-and-chassis.
GM still sells what is essentially the same van that was introduced in the 1970s. No apparent plans to join the competition in the modern world of vans.
Adding fuel to the van DS fire is the Chevrolet City Express. Clearly, GM sees that there is a market for small commercial vans, but why bother designing and building their own? Instead, they slapped some bowties onto an antiquated Nissan van and call it their own.
Two vans, two deadly sins.
The Express and Savana have nothing to do with the vans from the 70’s those were unibody and the current versions are BOF. Fact is they are doing well in the market and it makes no sense to me too a euro style van when the only one that actually sells in any numbers is the Ford and that is because it is a Ford van not because it is some euro piece of crap like the offerings from FCA and Mercedes.
I assume you know that the Promaster is built in the US and uses a Chrysler engine and transmission. What exactly makes it a “euro piece of crap”?
Promaster es hecho en Mexico.
Right; should’ said NA. Still ain’t Europe.
Well the basic van is a Fiat product but since it is Hecho en Mexico I should have said euro style piece of crap in regards to the ProMaster. What makes it a piece of crap? Google will answer that for you.
Scout:
Please allow me to apologize for personally offending you.
I was not aware that the Express represented a change from unibody to BOF.
You’re correct, of course, that people still buy the Express/Savana. There are traditionalists in every market. GM sells 3 vans for every 4 that Ford sells, so there are obviously people who want them.
My concern is that GM will be left behind when the traditionalists die off, or change their minds.
Again, I apologize for upsetting you.
Evan, I sincerely hope you’re saying that sarcastucally, because you have nothing to apologize for. The detail about the Savanna’s frame is a minor one; the reality is that it’s an old-school American design, and no doubt GM is looking wistfully at the Transit, with its much wider range of body sizes, better handling, and a much more modern and appealing cab. The simple reality is that in concept and design, the euro vans are leauges ahead of the old American vans. That leaves only the execution. Clearly the post-2008 Sprinter has expensive issues after 120-150k miles with its complex diesel emission system.
Scoutdude has long made it clear that he hates the new euro vans, and was even hating on the Transit a few years back before it came out. He repeatedly expressed doubts about it, and praised the old Econoline. Now that it’s a mammoth hit for Ford (and it is; it’s growth has vastly exceeded any other Ford vehicle), he’s grudgingly accepted it, since he also has a massive Ford bias.
So no worries about offending him; more likely the other way around, since his extreme biases can be off-putting at times.
Regarding the old school vs euro van… I bought an 08 ford econoline as soon as they came out with the new front end, it was great albiet a bit sluggish with the 4.6 (my mistake).
I sold it when i decided to go to college in 2010. My brother, still a remodeling contractor finally decided to buy a new work truck, he had been running a 2004 f-150 heritage work truck that he bought new and had a utility cap on it.
Long and short of it, he was devestated that he couldnt buy a new e250, he drove a sprinter but then read of thier diesel exhaust filter issues and scratched it off the list, then he thought about a cab chasis ford with the utility body but they start to look rough after a couple years. It was down to the the chevy/gmc if he was going to buy a BOF van but we have never been gm guys. He swore up and down that he would not buy one of those ugly transit vans… until he drove one. He bought that day, its really nice and miles ahead of the econolines. Drives better, stops better, and much more comfortable. It is a bit odd being in the fish bowl cab with the giant windshield and tall windows but beyond that its great. He has the long wheel base no glass with the nice aluminum wheels, low roof in silver. I was so impressed with the thing.
For guys who want a giant two wheel drive truck with/van the chevy is still the ticket but for just about anything else, the transits are really nice.
In my transportation business, we have switched over to Transit vans in various sizes. They are much better than the Econoline since they have much more payload for the fuel consumed. The cost per cubic metre per km is like half. They have back up cameras, a huge boon for us, and visibility is great. The turning circle is also very European. They are all 3.7 gas and are very low maintenance vehicles. The added space has allowed the promotion of two drivers to the plant, increasing productivity.
Win/Win, vans are iron for making money.
Only Econolines I like are the 69-74 generation.
One major advantage for the “traditional” van is that so many are for commercial use…and for those, new is BAD. Any company that builds buses, motorhomes, box trucks, service vans, handicapped vans, or equipment for tbose will need to either retool for the Transit…or just buy GMCs.
Directly from a commercial user…they have tried two Euro” vans. Neither made 150,000 miles before being dumped…the Sprinter was a neverending money pit; in the Transit, ratings notwithstanding, the equipment was too heavy for the chassis. His lowest-mileage GMC has over 200,000. He has one over 400,000.
@Evan, You certainly didn’t offend me, I was just pointing out the fact that there is virtually nothing in common with the current GM vans and the once from the 70’s other than the bow tie.
@Canuklehead, I thought that your company bought a bunch of ProMasters because they were almost paying you to take them? Did the prove to be that problematic that they were replaced that quickly. Lots of reports say that they are the worst van ever. In an attempt to keep the lines rolling they sold over 12k ProMasters to USPS at what had to represent a loss at $28K fully upfitted and livery applied.
Yeah, my BIL had an 2005 Express van in which he ran expedited freight.
5.3, 4L60E…real piece of junk; after all, the oil pump took a holiday at…
575,000 miles.
And that was after 100,000 miles or so of pushing his luck with 40 lbs. oil pressure tops.
99.9% of all work done on the van was routine maintenance. He had the trans rebuilt around 475,000 miles after it started to slip.
The power accessories worked, it always started, and the van could easily carry a 3,000 lb load cross-country. Not bad for a 2500-series extended body van.
My understanding is, this kind of service is pretty typical for those vehicles. So I respectfully don’t understand how the Express/Savana qualifies as a Deadly Sin.
It’s not the newest Euro-style technology? Not everyone looking for a van wants it. It is, as noted already, a BOF design which is a first for the GM full-size line. Its 1970-1994 predecessor was unit construction.
Deadly Sin is the ’86 Buick Skylark a friend bought new and scrapped within a year after the engine disintegrated. Then the dealer told her she was SOL. Has bought Honda exclusively ever since.
Deadly Sin is a 1960 Corvair where the rear sway bar was left off to save a buck.
Deadly Sin is the entire Cadillac line from 1971-76.
1971 Vega.
Cadillac Cimarron.
The 1997 Malibu. Based on the Honda Accord that was current during the design phase, once Honda brought out a new Accord, the Malibu was hopelessly obsolete before it hit the showroom floor.
Not a van built to go half-a million miles with basic maintenance, with the same drivetrain found in EIGHT of the 20 longest-lasting passenger vehicles on the road today.
There’s no question that these vans (and similar trucks) can run up high mileage on their drivetrains with this kind of use. His experience was hardly unique. Vans in commercial service are typically run 500k miles or more.
My point is this: the Eurovans like the Transit have a wider range of body lengths and heights, their body sides are perfectly vertical, and their cabs are roomier, more comfortable and have better visibility. And they handle better.
Sure, use the GM drivetrain, but sooner or later, GM is going to have to join the party or risk getting left behind. The eurovans are simply a more advantageous design.
I Do agree that the European Vans are best in terms of body types, handling and more modern built.
But I still think the american Vans are better in terms of Comfort, quietness and long term reliability.
Why can’t GM build a Van With the best from each world ?
After driving a Transit 250 recently, I have radically changed my opinion: the designer should be drawn and quartered. There is no excuse for any van to have THAT cramped a footwell!
Add the Cadillac, in the 90’s that had the Northstar. A great engine, smooth, good power, and gets great mileage. Only problem, was that the engineer’s great idea of using fine threaded 11mm head bolts in an aluminum block. Head gaskets don’t fail, but the head bolts pull out. If they would have used 5/8″ NC head studs, that engine would be bullet proof. I have a beautiful Eldorado (the Golden one) sitting here, because of that stupid stunt. Very expensive and labor intensive repair, even doing it myself.
The European vans can not match the comfort, quietness and reliability of the american vans. The Transit is usually finished when passing 200.000 miles. The Mercedes Van is ok when it’s new, but when the milage get high, it can be very costly to operate.
I’ve never understanded why american automakers want to make and sell European vans in the US. In Europe these are selling because of the gas prices, not because they are better vans than the american.
So you plainly havent driven any Euro vans quiet and comfort is what they do well plus good driver ergonomics and why is it Euro brands can clock up over a million kilonmeters without overhaul here?
Carrying how much weight? How many run at or over GVWR every mile? Because THAT is the use I have seen Savana 3500s shrug off!
Just an example here. The biggest Renault Master van has a 4,500 kg GVWR, that’s 9,920 lbs. RWD, dual rear wheels. Plus it can tow a 3,000 kg (6,600 lbs) trailer.
The very same van is offered as a GM product: the Opel Movano.
It’s just a fact that the Euro-way of building big diesel trucks, buses, vans and even motorhomes has become the global norm.
Of course, feel free to use a horse and carriage to haul goods the “proven way”.
Condescend much?
Nope. I just don’t think it’s necessary to type (winking) smileys all the time when a bit of irony is involved.
And to tell you the truth, nothing personal, I’m a bit fed up with reading “Euro-crap” or synonyms for the zillionth time. The global and widespread use and success of “Euro-crap-style” commercial vehicles (the ones I mentioned above ) tell a completely different story.
@Johannes Dutch sorry but the fact is that the Sprinter and ProMaster are crap no two ways about it. The Transit that we get in America may be “euro style” but it is a virtually all new vehicle designed with NA use as a primary criteria.
So far it seems to be doing well in sales but at least in my area there are way way too many used Transits with only a few thousand miles on them, which doesn’t bode well for how the owners felt about them. The real test is if there is ever a million mile van website for a Transit. http://www.millionmilevan.com/ Oh so close to 1.3 million miles on the original engine, rear axle and numerous other parts. It is also important to note that at least around here the prices of used E-Series has shot up significantly in that last couple of years.
@ Internationalscoutmister, well then, take damn good care of your BOF V8 gasoline van, while the rest of the world moves on.
@Johannes Dutch, no need to take good care of my V8 BOF van as it was built to take abuse like there is no tomorrow. See that million mile van website, sometimes it went 40K or more between oil changes.
For the record the E-series van tow capacity started at 6000lbs and 8600 GVW and went up to a 10,000lb tow rating and 10,500lb GVW. Move up to the cutaway chassis and you are talking about up to 14,500 GVW or higher.
Kiwi Bryce:
I live in Norway and have driven both Transits and Caravelles a lot. Those cars are very noisy, powerless compared to an american van. In Norway those cars get changed out after about 150-200.000 kms. An american van uses a lot more fuel and even then can be cheaper in the long run.
The Opel Vivaro is so bad built that if GM chooses to sell those in America it will be the Next deadly sin for GM.
I don’t know if you can find a VW Van who haven’t changed the Automatics or have some front end work before 150.000 km, if so they are rare.
Buick430: Sorry, but you’re wrong. having recently driven a Transit, it was decidedly more comfortable, quiet and better handling than the Econoline it replaced. And their bodies come in more sizes, and are more practical. I know you have a huge pro-American bias, but there really are good reasons the eurovans have taken over.
I live in Norway and have driven both Transits and Caravelles a lot. Those cars are very noisy, powerless compared to an american van. In Norway those cars get changed out after about 150-200.000 kms. An american van uses a lot more fuel and even then can be cheaper in the long run.
The Opel Vivaro is so bad built that if GM chooses to sell those in America it will be the Next deadly sin for GM.
I don’t know if you can find a VW Van who haven’t changed the Automatics or have some front end work before 150.000 km, if so they are rare.
Bear in mind that Dearborn offers more beefy Transit drivelines like those in their N. American market pickups/SUVs, so I think they anticipated such concerns.
Paul:
I drove Transits, Hiaces (Toyota, extremely good reliability, extremely bad comfort) and Caravelles for years, maybe they have changed in terms of comfort and quietness, but the older ones where not comfortable at all, 60-130 hp and a maximum speed of 130 km/t, and then the reliability issues. Same for VW and all European vans. They didn’t even had Power steering before the 90s. The last European van I drove was the 2014 Caravelle, TDi, it was very noisy compared to an 10 year older Chevrolet Van. NVH are something the Europeans didn’t care about before 2000 and newer cars. Even later in the Vans.
I do agree that they in terms of fuel consumption and payload are very good this days, but espescially the VW have some major problems with the front end and automatic transmissions, usually around 150.000-200.000 kms. That’s not impressive.
But still, I don’t think the GM Vans are a deadly sin.
Maybe the issue is the older ones you’re talking about. I’m hardly a “power user” of vans, having only driven them occasionally for job use some years ago and then as rentals. But I did, just a couple of months ago, rent a Transit from U-haul to move some furniture, the first one of those I had driven. In comparison to the many Econolines (both van and box truck) I’ve driven over the years, the Transit was much more comfortable and had far better road manners. Better seats, better ergonomics, quieter, and better handling. Now did it have the power of a V10 E350? No, it clearly didn’t. But it also didn’t feel slow or weak either (granted I didn’t have it loaded heavily). Pretty sure it was the 3.7 gas engine, and if you need more power the 3.5 Ecoboost is also available, as is a diesel I5. Though there is a part of me that wonders if it wouldn’t have been a good idea to make one V8 available–I tend to wonder about the longevity of the twin-turbo, extremely complicated 3.5 motor. Perhaps it wouldn’t have fit under the low, sloping hood?
A whole month of rehashing GM’s many failures and kicking its lifeless corpse? I’m in! 🙂 It is funny how, as a kid, I simply hated GM because it (through its products) was both omnipresent and seemed invincible. Who would have figured that later on, I would start to feel sorry for them.
Isn’t it amazing how time serves as the Great Equalizer. Or perhaps it is success, which leads to complacence, which leads to failure. There will be plenty to hash out here.
In the 1990s, the head attorney of my then-current employer used this quote in a speech – “Those whom the gods would completely destroy, they first give 40 years of success.”
In retrospect, he could have been talking about GM.
I’m still nominating the EMD 50 series locomotives; I know they’re not cars, but were GM; and after the very successful 40 series, EMD never recovered their market prominence. The 50 series debuted right at the time (early-mid 1980’s) everything else GM was going downhill as well. The rise and fall of GM’s locomotive division’s success paralleled that of it’s automotive business; the players are different, but the outcome was the same.
Any chance you can write it?
Where can one research such things? I used to read Trains Magazine but being a sort of fanzine, it seems useless for anyone wanting insider detail. Maybe industry periodicals?
I wasn’t paying attention during the period when GE exploited GM’s fumble.
I don’t know much about why the 50 series was troubled beyond reading over the years that there were a number of prime mover failures. It’s something I would have to do a lot of research on; I’ll see what I can do.
The issues with the EMD 50 series were primarily due to adding horsepower to the 645 series prime mover….That prime mover was upped from 3,000 HP to 3500 HP which stressed the design……When EMD came out with the 60 series, they upgraded the prime mover to the 710 which was better able to handle the higher horsepower ratings.
Will a reprint conjure the ghost of Carmine?!?!?!?
Oooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh… (rattling chains)
GAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! *runs and hides in Dan’s garage*
Good grief, does this ever end? Yes, I hated GM/Chevy from the late 1970s to around 2000, and have been back in their camp for 14 years now.
Whether I stay in GM/Chevy’s camp, time will tell. All I know right now is that I do not want a Toyota, Honda, Chrysler (wish I did, though) or Ford (the Fusion is rather nice).
I will agree on one point, though: Locomotives. GM did blow their leadership, seemingly once and for all. Automobiles? Hard to say, but I doubt they will ever achieve where they once were.
One can love or hate GM and still enjoy the Deadly Sin series, that is, unless one is so blinded by the Kool-Aid that one keeps on defending the most egregious examples.
Most manufacturers have produced at least one turd or two in their time, but few have produced so many and learned too little until it was literally too late. Much of GM has been re-surging as of late but there are still bone-headed things that one can poke fun at.
Of course you’re correct – I’m not drinking GM’s or anyone else’s Kool-Aid, and I agree that GM should have worked harder to maintain their leadership in the automotive (and locomotive) world. Typical of short-sightedness of American companies, though, and they’ll never see Chevy’s 30% market share domestically again.
Zackman, I’ve nominated my own ION for the DS Series. I see the humor in it and it’s ripe for a place on the list.
I love the bloody thing, perhaps for all the wrong reasons, but I’d look with pride on another honor like TTAC’s Ten Worst Automobiles Today award.
With you on not wanting a Toyota or a Honda and as long as Ford continues with that automated manual I’m not interested in the Fiesta or Focus either. [I’ve done with manuals. Would have had one in the ONION had the 5 speed been as slick as the one in my 95 SL1, but I found it irritating to drive].
Willing to stick my neck out on a Sebring/Avenger/ last Gen 200 or a Journey, though.
How GM flubbed up on EMD would make a very good read. The E’s & F’s managed to effectively kill off the steam locomotive in less than 10 years, would have happened in 5 if they could have more production. The only reason they tolerated GE & the other small manufacturers was fear of anti trust laws. But by the time GE was in a position to challenge them with a better product the political climate had changed and they evidently were unable to cope. A DS in my book.
Only a month? Surely, there is far more material than could fill a month on CC!
The GM DS series contain some of my favorite articles on the site. Not because I’m a GM hater, but quite the opposite: when I was growing up, until the early-to-mid 90s, GMs were seemingly everywhere, and it’s a fascinating story on how they lost the way.
+1
This. So much this. I’ve never really owned a GM (save for one for a couple of months), but I’ve always had a lust for some particular GM products. But yes, so many of them around for soooooo long, it is great to read about the “behind the scenes” of their gestation and release.
+1 and +1 for both the above
I’ve got plenty to share; I just gave away my 2001 Buick Lesabre to the in-laws, so this will be the first time since 1985 that I haven’t owned a GM vehicle. I’ve got two Hondas, a VW, a Ford truck, and now a Volvo in the fleet. I make no claims that the VW and Volvo are low-maintenance vehicles, but they are fun to drive and I do my own repair work.
I owned a 1988 Buick Electra T-Type (4-door sedan) for 16 years, and it was one of the best vehicles that I have ever owned. The 2001 Buick was one of the worst – the number of electrical component failures that occurred before 100K miles on the 2001 is too long to list, and only one or two of those same things ever happened to the 1988 in over 221K miles before I sold it.
One of GM’s more recent deadly sins has to be the 3800 engine’s plastic intake manifold (two-part, the Upper or UIM, and lower or LIM) that suffered from both EGR inlet tube heat degradation at the throttle body, and/or failure of the LIM gaskets against the heads. Both which could result in internal coolant leaks into the intake passages, causing potential engine hydrolock. Or coolant would leak into the lifter valley and contaminate the oil, ruining the bearings if not caught soon enough.
And to add insult to injury, GM had this same problem from the early 1990s all the way up to the mid-2000s when they finally went back to an aluminum intake, shortly before killing off the engine for good. This problem likely contributed to the early demise of tens of thousands of their vehicles.
In literature and folklore, there are only 7 deadly sins.
However, GM may have broken the number barrier with some of its past work (Aztec, X-cars, diesels, bankruptcy) and current offering (lack of an Euro type van as alluded to by Evan above).
Hoping Mary Barra (CEO) can clean house and keep GM on an even keel. As per the most recent earnings report, GM Euro is still hemorrhaging money. Don’t want it to turn into another deadly sin.
I think Barra gets it, and it looks like she’s forcing accountability into a culture that hadn’t seen in in my lifetime.
And look at the mess in Europe right now. On the other hand, though, Ford just had one of its best quarters ever in Europe, so…
I think you hit the nail on the with ” accountability” which was so lacking.
Companies like Ford, BMW, Toyota and Honda have benefited from family ownership or positions on the board. It was Bill Ford who brought in Alan Mulally, who saved the company and family’s stake. At the other extreme you have Chrysler under Cerberus where no one gave a crap because it wasn’t their money or name. Yes sometimes that can create a monster like Piech but until the diesel crisis they were doing rather well weren’t they?
Probably why the leadership at GM was allowed to wander as much as it did, not enough skin in the game.
Yes sometimes that can create a monster like Piech but until the diesel crisis they were doing rather well weren’t they?
Not really. Audi and Porsche are very profitable, as luxury cars usually are. The VW brand’s profit margin is razor thin, far less than Toyota’s. VW brought in a management consultant and the works council had a fit, because that management consultant’s default recommendation is to cut headcount in production. The works council suggested VAG cut costs by getting rid of the redundant models and brands.
Take a look at VAG and you’ll see GM of the 80s, littered with halo models and redundant brands. What the heck is VAG doing with Lamborghini, and Ducati, and Bugatti? Why can you walk down a street in England, past a VW store, to a Skoda store to see the same platforms with slightly different sheetmetal, or walk a bit farther to a SEAT store, with the same platforms again? Why do they keep trying to stick a VW badge on a big sedan that costs more than some Audis?
I keep hoping the diesel scandal, which revealed the level of hubris at VAG, will result in enough turnover in top management, and some introspection, so that VAG will shake off the hubris, before they drown in it, and get back to their core competency.
Greetings from Hungary!
I think that you don’t understand the role of Skoda.
It’s true that they share platforms with VW cars, but every Skoda model has some unique feature. Take a look at Octavia – it’s FAR larger than Golf Mk VII. On the other hand, Octavia intentionally provides lesser trim, soundproofing or extras. But in Europe, Octavia is a huge success, and it doesn’t cannibalize Golf’s sales. They simply run for other customers.
PQ25 platform Skodas (Fabia and Rapid) are the same case: they are great cars, but you definietly feel they are cheap cars, too. But in this corner of the Earth, we simply love cheap and relatively roomy cars, like the Rapid (or Peugeot 301, or Renault Fluence etc.).
I’m not saying that everything’s alright around VAG, but I don’t think Skoda is their biggest issue. Eventually, Skoda sells a million vehicle in every year – and their first SUV was released just 2 month ago…
Steve, whereas I agree with you on the exotic brands (other than the traditional connection with Porsche), I can confirm Jerome’s comments – Skoda has its own following here in Central Europe – I would not know how to explain it other than it’s (a bit) like VW’s Oldsmobile, that is, the sensible, middle-market brand. Most people buying Skodas would not consider a VW and vice-versa. Here in Austria (as I believe in Hungary) they don’t steal sales from one another. And SEAT – if you will – is VW’s equivalent of Rambler (with some Rebel/AMX sportiness added).
…PQ25 platform Skodas (Fabia and Rapid) are the same case: they are great cars, but you definietly feel they are cheap cars, too.
—-
…the sensible, middle-market brand. Most people buying Skodas would not consider a VW and vice-versa.
We old buggers remember when it was VW that made the basic, sensible cars, which were the largest selling imports in the US. In the 60s, Bugs were everywhere, with a few Opel Kadettes, early Toyotas and occasionally a Fiat or Austin in the mix.
VW walked away from a market they owned as they moved up market, and forgot to bring reliability with them. When imports, as a group, held a 10% market share in the US, VW was #1. Now that import brands have a 55% market share, VW only holds 1.7%, which is less than BMW, This thread talks about how GM lost share in the US, but VW’s downfall is at least as great, maybe greater as there have been times VW considered withdrawing from the US.
I don’t know if it’s true, but i read that, in the VAG pecking order, Audi get the best quality parts, Skoda gets the second best quality parts, and VW gets the worst quality parts because management thinks the VW brand is so strong people will buy them anyway (more GM scale hubris?). I have also read that the Octavia is wonderfully reliable, better than any VW. Here in the US, most Audis are far more reliable than most VWs.
There was a flurry of discussion some weeks ago when it was reported that VAG was registering some of the Skoda model names in the US, perhaps indicating Skoda models will soon be offered here, so we may see if Skoda adds to sales and profits, or simply creates more cost with a distribution network duplicating VW’s while cannibalizing VW sales. It has been reported that the US dealers, who were delighted with the volume they got out of the cheapened Mk VI Jetta where chafing at VW’s intention to move even farther upmarket, so offering cheap Skodas may be the response.
“I don’t know if it’s true, but i read that, in the VAG pecking order, Audi get the best quality parts, Skoda gets the second best quality parts, and VW gets the worst quality parts because management thinks the VW brand is so strong people will buy them anyway (more GM scale hubris?).”
I hardly believe Wolfsburg would risk that…
Eventually, I think VWs have not all that bad reputation for being unreliable in Europe. In the 2000s you could hear horrid stories, especially about PD TDI or EA 211 engines, but VW remained class-leader in almost every market segment.
Of course, in that decade reliability was a rather unachievable thing for several automakers. Passat seemed to be a solid pile of concrete next to a Renault Laguna Mk II or a Peugeot 407.
I know that Chattanooga-built Passat is a different car than what we got from Emden – maybe is it not just different, but not-so-well.built, too? I really don’t know.
As for your conspiracy theory: it does make sense. Certainly the herd in all three German-speaking countries seems to buy anything with “VW” on it regardless…
FWIW, Audi is doing very well in CR reliability polls. VW, not so well.
Introducing E. European brands here is an interesting idea, not sure how the economics would stack up compared with “maquiladora” cars.
Repeating Jerome’s thoughts:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/car-manufacturers/skoda/10018605/Skoda-from-laughing-stock-to-top-dog.html
Wiki says they’re considering entering the US market. Bring ’em on! They’ll have a job introducing this brand, despite its antiquity.
As for your conspiracy theory: it does make sense. Certainly the herd in all three German-speaking countries seems to buy anything with “VW” on it regardless…
The theory that VW branded cars get the worst parts because the brand is so strong? I realize VW has something like a 12% market share in the EU (20% in Germany, twice the share of the next best selling brand). The 1.7M VWs sold last year overshadow every other brand as well as the combined brands of the PSA Group and the combined brands of the Renault Group.
In the 70s, GM still had 50%+ of the US market and it sticks in my mind that Roger Smith proclaimed he wanted to push US share to 60%. Of course, we now know how deeply the rot had set in to GM by that time. Living in Michigan, I had a front row seat to GM (and Ford and Chrysler as well) meeting any and all criticisms by blaming either the union, the government, or the Japanese. “Deadly Sins” like shoddy or misconceived products and poor customer relations were never, ever the fault of GM management, we were told.
In some thread on another board, I read a comment that the worst thing that can happen to a company is to have 40 years of great success. Management starts to think it’s brilliant, becomes insular and arrogant and, ultimately, drowns in it’s own hubris. Then we see Management flouting the law, as in the case of VW’s diesel emissions cheat.
Repeating Jerome’s thoughts:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/car-manufacturers/skoda/10018605/Skoda-from-laughing-stock-to-top-dog.html
Interesting article. Reads very much like a US article would about how Hyundai has cleaned up it’s act over the last 25 years.
The burning question is, if VW can build a Skoda that is both aggressively priced and reliable, why can’t they produce a VW, which is positioned up market from Skoda, that is just as reliable? The most likely answer is Piech, Winterkorn and others replicated the GM Deadly Sin mindset that they can push anything out the door and sell a million of them, because of the badge on the grill.
Steve, yes. I think VW suffers from the same illness which afflicted GM back in the old days. In particular the obsession of being the world’s no. 1 producer of cars led to reducing standards (as well as downright fraud). I still have contacts in the motor trade from when I used to work on cars for living and it was a well-known fact amongst my “cabal” that VW has been skimping on quality for some time. It was one of the main reasons why I did not seriously consider buying a VW before I got my current car. As I said, I’m in Austria, where at least workshops have intimate knowledge of the cars and their foibles. In the US such problems would be magnified for sure. In a way, the emissions scandals a blessing in disguise for VW if it has the effect of waking the management up.
This is gonna be fun 🙂 I’ll go start the popcorn…
I’d better go to costco, I’m going to need a bigger jar that I can get at the grocery store.
We bought Costco pretzels so we could get the big container. Cheaper than buying the container alone, I think.
I think CC’s DS Series has covered the worst and actually have a hard time thinking of five more.
Of course there’s the ION, vTi, L Series from Saturn. Aztek and G3 from Pontiac. Aveo from Chevrolet.
Yes, I know the G3 is the same car as the Aveo, but the nihilistic cynicism from GM to even offer the G3 would put it up as a separate nomination to my mind.
I know the G3 is the same car as the Aveo, but the nihilistic cynicism from GM to even offer the G3 would put it up as a separate nomination to my mind.
I wouldn’t call it nihilistic cynicism as much as management giving the dealers what they want, and in the process, destroying the Sloan ladder that provided the mid market brands a reason to exist.
In the 50s, if you told someone you had a Chevy, an image of a small, plain, but serviceable car would pop into their mind, but if you said you had a Buick, they would be impressed that you were doing well enough to have a near luxury car of substantial size and cost.
In the 70s, a Chevy Caprice was larger, more nicely trimmed and equipped, and more expensive than a Buick Apollo. No-one knew what a Chevy was anymore, and no-one knew what a Buick was. I suspect this blurring was due to pressure from dealers. The Chevy dealer didn’t want to lose customers that wanted to move upmarket to a Pontiac of Buick. The Buick dealer didn’t want to lose sales to Chevy because an Electra was too expensive for many people. In the mid 2000s, the Pontiac dealers probably didn’t want to lose sales to people wanting better gas mileage or lower prices, so the G3, and G5 were born.
Now GM is doing it again, as Buick is selling a thinly disguised Chevy Trax and is just now losing it’s version of the Cruze.
Same thing going on at Ford. They killed Mercury as they had become nothing but a retrimmed Ford. Now Lincolns are nothing but a retrimmed Ford.
But we can’t call destruction of the Sloan ladder by blurring what the divisions were supposed to represent a deadly sin for GM, because Ford and Chrysler did the same thing, with DeSoto and Plymouth joining Mercury, Olds, Pontiac, Saturn, Geo and HUMMER in the redundancy dustbin.
The Buick, GMC (former Pontiac) dealer I know always swore he only took G3s under duress. There were times they made him take _# of G3s if he wanted G6s or G8s he could actually sell.
Makes sense. The dealers drove that brand dilution, certainly. My melodramatic spin, Steve.
But still, chasing short term gains over long time viability didn’t pay off in the end. And GM allowed it to happen.
I cannot forget the GM spokes holes repeatedly saying something to the effect that GM was no longer going to offer products just to have “something to sell in the segment”. And it wasn’t just once at a certain point in time.
And then came the Malibu based Olds Cutlass, the minivan clones, the G3 etc.
This goes back to the 60s. Did Buick and Oldsmobile really need compacts in 1961? Or the A body mid size cars of 1964? For that matter, did Chevrolet really need a B body car in 1965? The spread of the X body through the BOP lines in 1971-74 showed the disease progressing, and by the time of the Monza clones in the second half of the 70s, the die seemed to have been cast. From that point on, it would be the rare car at GM that would not appear in Chev, Pontiac, Olds and Buick dealers. The dealers want that extra sale ever month, so I get how they would demand a car that is selling well over at Chevy. But nearly indistinguishable clones of almost every Chevy model made the BOP Divisions redundant.
Chevy is not without blame here, because they were in a fight to the death with Ford, and felt the need to directly compete with every model Ford brought out. Problem was that Ford had no answer for BOP and thus had to do more with just the Ford Division. Chevy won many sales battles over Ford in the 60s 70s and 80s, but eventually lost the war. My prediction is that it will not be long before Ford Motor Company overtakes GM as the highest volume US company for the first time since the 20s.
I think that this (your first paragraph) is the true deadly sin.
The question about the need for a B-body Chevrolet in 1965 highlights GM’s dilemma. The B-body Chevrolet alone accounted for about 14 percent of the total market – not just the full-size market, but the TOTAL market – in 1965. There was no way that GM or any other automaker would walk away from that number of sales, either in 1965 or 2016.
Nor was GM going to tell potential buyers to buy a Pontiac Bonneville or Oldsmobile Delta 88 instead of a full-size Chevrolet (let alone deal with the Chevrolet dealers ready to storm corporate headquarters as a result).
This is all true, as far as it goes. But elimination of the B body Chevy would not have eliminated all of those sales. Had Chevrolet offered only the A body, or maybe something a little bigger than the A body, most of the people who bought B body Chevys would have bought whatever else Chevy was serving. Some would have gone to Pontiac or Olds, but most probably would not have.
Chrysler and Ford both blew up the playbook for a low priced car with their 57 models. Ford tried offering a more traditional sized 116 inch wb car, but those were gone by 1959, so they must not have sold that well. You can’t blame the customers for wanting a bigger nicer car from their favorite brand/dealer. Who is to say that Oldsmobile should not have become the powerhouse brand in a country where everyone’s standard of living was improving. In my view, GM had this very workable system. But like all systems, it required some oversight and maintenance. There would have been nothing wrong with Chevy shrinking so long as other Divisions were growing even more.
What Ford or Chrysler was doing in 1965 couldn’t have been (or at least shouldn’t have been) less relevant to what GM was doing with its 5 healthy car divisions. I think that while Ford was doing Ford, GM should have been doing GM. Instead, GM tried to be GM and Ford at the same time by creating a copy of Ford Division with three shadow “almost Ford” divisions. That was a losing plan.
So well observed JP. And I think you are correct about Ford overtaking GM at some point.
Steve: in defense of GM these days, there is more value in the Verano than the Cruze for the price premium: larger engine, brand specific styling, extra sound deadening.
Same with the Trax/Encore: they, at least, don’t look like they came off the same line, much less Sonic based.
Far better than the A J N body clones or the NOVA clones of the early 70s : brand specific jewelry, perhaps a different engine and not much else. Not much more for the extra money.
What Ford never learned with Mercury either. Nothing much to compel a purchase just to have an upmarket nameplate on the hood.
“Far better than the A J N body clones or the NOVA clones of the early 70s : brand specific jewelry, perhaps a different engine and not much else. Not much more for the extra money. ”
From an outsider’s perspective, the 1977 B body cars are not much different. But then again, twas ever thus back to the 1930s – try telling those cars apart without the grilles. Of course there were substantial driveline differences then, but that was basically gone by the 1960’s.
No, the Trax is a cheaply turned out Buick Envision(? – not really following their models closely, especially not the SUV’s). The Buick was there first, and needs to be credited as the beginning of a new market. Probably one of the better moves GM has made in the last decade.
Trax = Encore. The Envision is the new Made in China one, slots between Encore and Enclave.
Thanks.
The Envision is a platform mate (not twin) of the Equinox/Terrain though, is it not?
I thought the Trax was at first a fleet car only for Chevy, then Buick took it to make their tiny SUV, and then Chevy started selling the Trax to consumers. I could be wrong.
The real problem here was that the Sloan brand ladder. If GM had rigidly adhered to it in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the divisional structure would have quickly become a straight jacket.
By the late 1950s, the Ford Division was moving aggressively into the medium-price market with the Fairlane 500 and four-seat Thunderbird. This was followed by the LTD in the mid-1960s.
If GM had strictly adhered to the Sloan concept – keep Chevrolet as the low-price offering, and direct people interested in LTDs or Thunderbirds or Monte Carlos to their Buick, Oldsmobile or Pontiac dealers – Chevrolet would have quickly fallen from the number-one slot in sales. GM had a lot invested in keeping Chevrolet as the number-one selling brand during those years. Realistically, that was never going to happen.
Ford did allow its namesake division to trample all over Mercury’s turf, but, in the long run, that was the right decision. Today, the Titanium- and Platinum-trim Fords are the new Mercurys. Buyers scoop them up without a second thought, and no one outside of a few classic car buffs miss Mercury. And Ford doesn’t have the expense of maintaining a Mercury Division, or the expense of using styling and marketing to create the illusion that Mercurys are different from Fords.
As for Lincoln’s current state, that resulted from Ford’s attempt to enter the luxury market with Aston Martin, Jaguar, Land Rover and Volvo in the 1990s and early 2000s. When Ford had to sell those marques to keep the lights on in Dearborn, Lincoln was the only brand left.
But Ford hasn’t had the money to both rebuild the Ford brand and give us Lincolns on unique platforms. The current Cadillac ATS and CTS are based on a unique platform and aimed right at the Germans. (Although GM did base the new Camaro on that platform, but even with Camaro sales added to the mix, the total volume of that platform still hasn’t reached GM’s original projected figures that originally included only the Cadillacs.)
Given their cool market reception, perhaps Ford is wise to concentrate on the Ford brand and base Lincolns on Ford platforms for now.
So true, as well, Geeber.
I was especially horrified when one of the Ford people said: “We’re not going to chase Cadillac upmarket”. Well, then what was it’s reason to exist? You’re spot on with jerking the rug out from under Lincoln and concentrating on their “Premium Group”. I don’t remember if Lincoln was even part of that.
Ford was in the same position with Lincoln from 52-55 with models that looked like Fords as much as Mercuries.
They’d pulled a Packard Clipper on Lincoln. No way Lincoln of that period had the cache of Cadillac.
I was especially horrified when one of the Ford people said: “We’re not going to chase Cadillac upmarket”
Don’t be too horrified. Cadillac’s attempt thus far to do just that has not exactly been setting the sales charts on fire…
Love it. LOL
When did Lincoln really fall in a hole? In the 70’s they seem to have been going pretty well, and I assume in the yuppie 80’s with new product like the Taurus-based Continental.
It looks like around 2000-2005 when sales dropped off, including the Navigator.
Nope, totally incorrect. It was because they didn’t yet have Matt McConaghey to extol the merits of their brand. 🙂
Edsel bombed, but in long run, Ford LTD and various Brougham trims succeeded and took Merc’s place.
Only when the domestics had 90% market share did all the brands that car guys “miss” make sense. And, also when they could afford all the different styling and advertising campaigns.
No Ford is sorely missing the Mercury brand, of of no other reason to keep Lincolns out of the Ford stores. Mercury + Lincoln meant enough volume to keep a dealership viable. Dropping 50% of their sales made stand alone Lincoln stores nonviable which put them into Ford stores. Meanwhile Lincoln is treated as a redheaded step child at most Ford Lincoln stores, and Lincoln customers are treated to a non-luxury sales and service experience.
Lincoln-Mercury dealers didn’t provide a luxury sales experience to buyers of Lincolns, either. Mercury buyers weren’t any more discerning or demanding than Ford buyers are today. If the dealership was focused primarily on selling Mercurys, it was going still going to give Lincoln buyers short shrift.
The Mercury brand was meaningless by 2000. Ultra-deluxe Fords fill the same niche, and at less cost.
Companies should maintain a brand around because it satisfies a customer need, not because it needs to give dealers something to sell.
Like CJC above, I used to love GM and that made the taste in my mouth even more bitter when they managed to find a way to destroy the company. Born in the 50’s, my frame of reference is the great cars of the 60’s; everything since gets compared to those beauties.
I used to think that the great fall started with the rush job of the Vega – but in hindsight I can understand that the rot caused by cost-before-substance had started earlier…
My dad foolishly gave in to my new-driver fervor and bought a red 69 Camaro. True, it was only a 307, and it had an automatic (3 speed) with no console, but hey! I loved that car….until it broke an engine mount and the throttle stuck wide open. I managed to shut down the car without a wreck, but my dad blamed me. Only later did we learn that I was only one of 6.7 million people who had gotten shoddy engine mounts from GM.
http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1971/12/05/page/10/article/g-m-issues-repair-recall-for-6-7-million-autos-and-trucks/
GM ‘fixed’ the problem for $1 a car…which they’d been too cheap to spend at the factory.
Same thing when the car broke a real leaf spring. Seems GM cheaped out on the 307 V-8 cars and used a single rear leaf spring. Lots of them failed…. The solution was to install Firebird springs which were multi-leaf. However in those days, GM still had the aura so my dad blamed me rather than GM – and I paid for the new springs, not GM
Of course all this is just bitching, but the underlying problem is exposed by the anecdote –
Because GM felt they had a captive market, they viewed cost-cutting as the road to profitability rather than worrying about continuous improvement to retain customers. When they finally recognized that they might have actual competition from imports, rather than improve existing products, they went for a “Great Leap Forward” with the Vega. They repeated the pattern with the Citation, and
the purge of big carsdownsizing of 1986. Same with Saturn. Why build a new company instead of improving the junk they were selling?I don’t know which car to use as an example of this deadly sin, but surely the pattern of cheaping out on the small stuff on every vehicle they sold while focusing on hugely expensive and dramatic changes to their organization and product line (but continuing to cheap out on the small stuff there too) is the central deadly sin that ruined them.
Lokki: the single leaf spring had been in use since the Chevy II dating from 1962. It even got some kind of “engineering award” from Car Life magazine.
But your point is well taken. The use of the parts bin for inappropriate applications has caused the manufacturers no end of problems, another form of cut corner engineering.
Why create a new engine for the Vega when the Nova 153 CI 4 cylinder was a proven unit ? Yet cut costs on rust proofing and other essential product needs ?
Schizophrenia at it’s finest.
Why create a new engine for the Vega when the Nova 153 CI 4 cylinder was a proven unit ? Yet cut costs on rust proofing and other essential product needs ?
Chevy probably was feeling pressure to offer something “up to date”, hence an OHC engine because the Pinto and several Japanese models had OHC engines. iirc, the sleeveless aluminum block concept was used successfully by other manufacturers..
But Chevy cut corners on R&D. When in college in the 70s, I heard a talk by a couple guys who developed that Vega engine. I remember them talking about how the camshaft would walk out the front of the test engines. Instead of figuring out where the thrust was coming from, they put a flange on the shaft to hold it in place. One Vega owner in the audience asked how to adjust the valves so they didn’t rattle so terribly. The engineer’s response was if he adjusted them tight enough that they did not rattle, they would burn.
The engineers making the presentation seemed like nice enough people, but there was this pervasive mindset of doing everything cheap and nasty.
In fairness to Chevrolet, most of the engineering work on the Vega (including the engine, as I recall) was done by GM’s central engineering staff. Chevrolet’s engineering people had a very bad attitude towards the Vega, because their own small car project had been ashcanned by Corporate.
Plenty of solid lifters clattered…from the slant 6 to the Cologne V6. Unnerving to someone used to hydrauloc tappets, but harmless.
OMG! Love the inside dirt, Steve. Thanks.
Yes, the auto scribes at the time got all moist over that new tech. They would have savaged the Chevy II 4 cyl in the same way they did the Iron Duke and Tech 4 [at least until 17 years or so later when it got balance shafts].
Add in the fact that it was GM’s first corporately designed car and assigned to Chevrolet to build and perhaps the trouble was built in.
GM had just discontinued an OHC engine, the Pontiac OHC 6. It would have not been to hard to lop 2 cylinders off of it and fix it’s main shortcoming, oiling of the upper end. All the hard work had already been done, just needed some refinement. Or just make the 153 4cyl with an OHC. Pontiac had taken the 230 6 cyl which the 153 4 cyl was made off of minus 2 cyl and used it to create their OHC 6. They would have ended up with something more reliable and at probably 20-30% the cost of the engine they put in Vega But no, they had to try to reinvent the wheel which ended up octagon rather than round.
There was also the Opel CIH four.
There was the 1.9 CIH four from Opel and 1.6,1.8 2.0 and 2.3 OHC fours from Vauxhall in England.
They weren’t worried about being up to date. If I recall correctly, in theory, wasn’t the sleeveless aluminum block supposed to be cheaper to produce, thus increasing the profit margins on the car? I also recall that’s why they had an iron head. GM was trying to squeeze every dollar they could out of that car…
If I recall correctly, in theory, wasn’t the sleeveless aluminum block supposed to be cheaper to produce, thus increasing the profit margins on the car?
It was certainly cheaper that a sleeved aluminum block. Whether cheaper than an iron block, I don’t recall. iirc, the block was an exotic alloy that Reynolds had developed with silicon suspended in it. After the cylinders were bored, there was a chemical etching process that ate the aluminum away a bit, exposing the hard silicon for the piston to run on. The special alloy and the etching process sound like more money that generic grey iron to me.
Woo hoo – a whole month of my favourite stories! This is right up there with a month of Bette Davis films on TCM.
Luckily a little of our schadenfreude guilt can be assuaged by acknowledgement of GM’s recent achievements in quality ratings, and the Chevy Bolt.
One aspect of Lokki’s observations on GM’s focus on big headline grabbing initiatives, instead of building a better product: the propensity of 80s GM products to rust.
We old buggers were used to seeing cars here in Michigan hole through at the bottoms of fenders and doors in a few years. The 80s GM products broke new ground in accelerated corrosion. I would see GM products only 3-4 years old, with rust breaking out everywhere. Not only the usual places, but in the middle of panels as if the car had been peppered with gravel hard enough to dig down to bare steel. I got a close look at a coworker’s car, no more that 3-4 years old: rust coming through from the inside in every corner of the hood and trunk lid, along with the bottoms of the doors. Rust around every bit of exterior trim. Rust bulls-eyes randomly around the car where the elements had found thin spots in the paint.
The biggest deadly sin that hasn’t been covered is NOT a car or a truck. It was GM’s willingness to kow-tow to the short-sightedness of the dealers, giving them models and variations that were, at best, not necessary, and, at worst, completely at odds with the brand ladder and marque identities. All so the Pontiac dealer up the street could compete for the same customer as the Chevrolet dealer two blocks away – thus killing any chance of a profit for either dealer.
Another deadly sin that isn’t a car or truck: How about a detailed rundown of the Roger Smith era? While the failure of GM is too large to be able to reasonably pin it on any one person, if there is any ‘one person’ who can be held up at the figurehead of GM’s long term failure it’s him. It was his long term vision for the corporation that doomed it. Even my father (twenty years out of the business at that time, but still a GM loyalist) hated him.
Another article on the locomotive division mentioned previously. That’s three. Over the years, you’ve covered all the real vehicle failures in detail, and to add any more would be stretching it while unfairly classifying cars who’s worst sin was being mediocre when more was demanded. And that’s probably best dealt with in the Roger Smith article, anyway.
About the only true failure you’ve got left that uncovered is the Copper Cooled Chevrolet. Which is about sixty years too early for this series.
Well made points. Stripper ’60s Buick Specials and many other vehicles were very short sighted. If that was the best Buick you could afford, you belonged at a Chevy dealer.
The copper cooled crossed my mind as well, but even Vega buyers had probably forgotten it.
Excellent points. I would not have made similar comments in reply to another comment had I read this first.
That first problem rests (IMHO) at the doorstep of Fredric Donner, who succeeded Harlow Curtice as chairman in 1958. Before Donner, the guys who ran GM had engineering or manufacturing experience from one of the Divisions. Donner became the first in a long line of finance guys to run the company, and it was on his watch that “centralization creep” began, with GM Corporate taking over functions that had previously been the responsibility of the individual Divisions. To Donner and his ilk, it was wasteful for each Division to duplicate the others’ efforts by designing and building their own engines and other pieces. He looked at the great forest that was GM and saw nothing but trees.
One of their hugest Deadly Sins was certainly when GM purchased EDS and then paid Ross Perot to go away because he was too critical at the board meetings.
+1000
I have thought they would have been better off treating the company as GM writ large with all the marques as “flavors” of GM.
Want an economical, basic car? Chevy. Want something a little better, and maybe a bit sporty? Pontiac. Want a conservative stately car with a healthy dollop of luxury? Buick. And on and on. They should have never sullied Buick and Olds with all those rebadged little Chevy crap boxes. Likewise, they should have made people pony up for the big luxo Broughams and not made Chevy and Pontiac versions.
Running it like this, profits for any of them mean profit for GM, which is what should have mattered.
Of course, everyone seemed to crap all over their distinctions. Newport? There should have never been a stripper Chrysler, they needed to get a nice Polara or Fury. Or a Mercury Bobcat.
Insanity.
The dealer issue is interesting, especially from the perspective of a single sales channel for the D3 here in Australia.
Surely at some point from a range overlap point of view it would make more sense to consolidate dealerships so that you didn’t end up with wonders like the Pontiac G3 but rather could offer the full range of GM cars? Does FCA do that in the US yet? I don’t imagine that would have been easy from a legal point of view let alone doing the deals with thousands of individual businesses, but would it have been impossible?
One of the things that seems forgotten, or at least not mentioned here, is that back in the day, the Chevy dealer *only* sold Chevys. The Olds dealer *only* sold Oldsmobiles. With the advent of Gas Crises I and II, you can see the impetus behind the dealer’s demands. You can also see the desire of GM to serve it’s biggest customer, their dealers. You can also see GM’s strategy in keeping their dealers from taking on other (foreign, especially Japanese) marques. In all honesty, it didn’t work all that well.
Fast forward 40+ years and GM has gone ’round and ’round with companion marques, captive imports and duplication on a scale that only Xerox Corporation could appreciate. One of the best things that came out of the clusterf*ck that was Cerebus Chrysler (Chryebus? Ceresler?) was that they finally got all of the marques under one roof. The Sloan ladder has been broken which (IMO) is great news for consumers.
One of the worst ideas from the clusterf*ck that is FCA right now is the demands for dealers to have a separate “Studio” for Fiats and Alfas, etc. I see these demands have subsided, but not without ill effect on the Fiat brand. GM is using a hybrid strategy with their outlets, Chevy, or Buick/GMC or Cadillac or some combination of the three. Very few retailers have all three marques at the same time it seems to me. Ford, well, they were almost down to “One Ford” there for a while. They re-booted Lincoln in the US, but to me it’s a mixed bag. These Lincolns seem more like “SuperFords”, kind of like Mercurys used to be.
It’s a far different world than when many of these Deadly Sins were first released. I hope Detroit has learned it’s lesson.
One of the worst ideas from the clusterf*ck that is FCA right now is the demands for dealers to have a separate “Studio” for Fiats and Alfas, etc. I see these demands have subsided, but not without ill effect on the Fiat brand.
I read something a while back that FCA was dropping the requirement for the separate Fiat “studio”. and elsewhere that, with the demise of the Dart/200, FCA dealers are looking to Fiat to fill the low price end of the market. I noticed that, in the October sales report, the Fiat 500 showed the first sales increase in a year or two, so either more stores are selling Fiat, or they had whacking big incentives on them.
As for dealers offering multiple GM or FCA brands, bankruptcy expedites that process.
The Dodge/Ram dealer in Plymouth, MI now carries Chrysler and Jeep as well. Meanwhile, the owners of the Chrysler/Jeep store a block down the street, which was force closed by FCA in 09, suied to get their dealership back, so they are now back in business selling Chryslers and Jeeps, while the Dodge dealer is also carrying Chryslers and Jeeps.
All three Chrysler brands in Kalamazoo were sold in separate stores and each store was dualed with another brand, either Japanese or Korean. FCA yanked all three dealerships so owners of Chrysler products suddenly had a longer drive for service. Now, Chrysler/Dodge/Ram is sold in a stand alone dealership and Jeep is sold in a stand alone store across the street.
I read somewhere, a couple years before the bankruptcy, that GM was pushing Buick and Pontiac dealers to merge. The Buick dealer in Kalamazoo did that, merging with the Pontiac dealer a few miles away in 07 or 08. At that time, I thought it was Buick up for the chop as Pontiac had a much broader line. What had been a Pontiac dealer in Plymouth, MI, is now a Buick dealer.
I looked up the Adam and apparently it is on the small version of a shared Fiat/GM that also underpins the Fiat 500X, 500L and Jeep Renegade, so presumably it would be possible to comply it for the US if they thought they could sell the car in sufficient volume.
I read an article where GM honchos were pointing out all the places where the Adam would need to be modified to meet US standards, things like headlight height, which would make it prohibitively expensive. Perhaps, while the 500 uses the same platform, Fiat had designed the body to meet US standards, so federalizing it was not as expensive as federalizing the Adam.
In my small home town of Shippensburg, the local GM dealer had always sold Chevrolets, Oldsmobiles and Cadillacs. This dated from at least the 1940s, according to my father. (This dealer, incidentally, is still in business and owned by the same family, currently selling Chevrolets and Cadillacs.)
The two GM dealers in nearby Chambersburg (population, about 15,000) were Frank Gayman Chevrolet-Oldsmobile and V.T. Angle Sons Buick-Cadillac-Pontiac. I remember these dealers from the early 1970s, and I’m certain that they were in business well before that date.
In Harrisburg, there was one dealer who sold Cadillacs – Titus Cadillac-Oldsmobile. Again, the dealer had sold both brands for as long as I can remember (early 1970s, before the first fuel crunch).
In the small towns, most GM dealers sold more than one GM brand, even before the first fuel crunch.
Hmmm… Well, in my neck of the woods, we still had one marque dealers up until the first Fuel Crisis. I forget how many Chevy dealers were in the Metro Youngstown, Ohio area, but the vast majority were single brand dealers. Even in neighboring Sharon, PA, we had two stand alone Chevy dealers. After 1973 the bigger of the two acquired a Toyota dealership, the smaller one just concentrated on used cars. Both are still in business and still have their franchises. Even after 1973, a number of dealers were still single brand, but 1979 changed that.
Fort Wayne was all single brand GM dealers too. You had to go to smaller cities to find GM dealers dualled up.
One of my biggest gripes about GM is the column mounted ignition that debuted in 1969 and was used for way too many years after that. Ford had a double sided key and their column mounted ignition was smooth as butter. There was no upside down with a Ford key. GM’S key went in only one way and the ignition itself was a very clunky affair that would never roll back into the accessory position when they were more than a few years old. But did they look at Ford’s ignition and acknowledge that they should build something similar, because it was far superior to their own? No they kept building the same old junk. Apparently in their conceited ignorance they didn’t believe that their customers ever drove the competitions products.
On that note, I always wondered why GM didn’t look closely at its Asian competition in the ’70s/’80s and adopt some of their manufacturing techniques and designs. For example, why were the door handles on the X/A/J bodies so clunky to operate while the door handles on the Honda Accord/Civic had such a precise, Swiss-watch feel to them?
In business, you should always look to your competition to see what they are doing, and do it better. But GM never did that, and now they are just a ghostly shadow of what they once were.
The GM mentality was that acknowledging the existence of competition was a faux-pas. To drive a competitor’s car was a career-limiting move in a culture of obedience, arrogance and conformity, when their engineers should have been driving and poring over the best cars from Europe and Japan for ideas.
I’d like to see a GM Seven Deadly Sinners series, detailing the actions of the arrogant jerks who ran the place into the ground. Roger Smith would probably be #1 and Rick Wagoner #2.
Your phrase “conceited ignorance” really sums up everything that went wrong.
What is so heartbreaking to me is that GM had tons of really talented people whose entire careers were wasted by being directed to work on least cost solutions and ideas, not best possible solutions. Just imagine what could been achieved if the marking orders were “do it right”.
Not to mention GM’s column locks would wear to the point that hitting minor bumps would cause the keys to fall out! My long gone ’77 Silverado did that trick well, and if you shut the truck off but didn’t turn the lock all the way one could start the thing without reinserting the key! Fortunately the old girl was such an ugly old beater that I never had to worry about anyone stealing her!
What I see is that during the 50’s the Fords and Chevrolets became larger cars, probably a result of market demands. However, this left the smaller car market with less to choose from. At the end of the 50’s or beginning of the 60’s, Chevrolets are now full sized and basically the same thing as a Pontiac or lower end Buicks or Oldsmobiles. Dealers of all four divisions (Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick) want smaller cars. This is really the beginning of the decline. But I don’t see that GM could have done anything different, partly because dealer franchise’s are protected to some degree, and the market is evolving. Imports are making inroads. GM could have focused on making fewer, but better quality models. Unfortunately GM’s retirement benefits were tied to selling more cars, not less.
I’ve been a little extra busy lately, hence my lesser number of published articles, but I’m more than happy to try and add another GM Deadly Sin by the end of November.
This’ll be a real treat. I grew up in a GM family, by and large. An uncle worked for the corporation. Step-grandfather worked in a plant. And my parents decided they would never own another Ford after their early-’70s Ford pickup stalled as they were trying to rush two-year-old me to the hospital for what could have been a critical injury in 1983.
I can tell you that most of the GMs we had were actually pretty good to us. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I only have the parents’ stories of the Oldsmobile Firenza that they got rid of within nine months of buying, but I definitely remember Dad’s 1999 Chevy pickup with the transmission that was failing by 45,000 miles. Of course, when we say it was a good car we in the family have to ignore that one time mom’s ’96 Grand Am tried to burn itself to the ground in 1999. And now as I’m typing I suddenly remember Dad’s 1986 S-15 pickup, the one we waited for an unseasonably warm day in January of 1992 to trade in with the hopes the salesperson wouldn’t turn on the heater or try to engage the 4×4 while looking it over.
Wait… Ok, I can tell you some of the GMs we had were good. Some were by and large reliable at least. Only a couple were truly junk. But that’s also kinda my point-Memory runs long and is not a great filter through which to run information. For every family like mine that remembers nine years and 120,000 miles of service from a car instead of the fact that it tried to burn itself down only three years in but fortunately melted the wiring first, there’s another that would have been at a Honda dealer the next day, vowing never to own another piece of GM junk again.
And to that point, how many families were racing their kids to a hospital when their crappy GM car failed them? Had it been an old Chevy my broke-ass teenaged parents were driving to rush me to the hospital, we’d certainly have become a Ford household instead.
Actually, my family, and others like them, I think are the only reason GM’s still going at all. We lived an hour’s drive from the closest “city” (which had a population of 30,000), and our little town of 3,000 was the biggest in our farm-based Midwestern county. Our choices were GM, Ford, and Chrysler unless we wanted to drive 1-2 hours to even look at a Honda or Toyota. And given the nature of the place where I grew up, even in the 1980s, walking was preferable to a foreign car. One egregiously bad experience knocked 1/3 of the choices out of the running.
When you’re part of the working poor somewhere far away from where the trends and fashions are set, you don’t care about styling, and your perceptions of luxury are quite a bit more generous. It’s only as an adult that somehow managed to escape the small town and become a professional that I can see GM with a more critical eye.
I’m looking forward to seeing the whole DS series!
Perhaps this is the right place to ask a question that has been haunting me for some time: Was a smart move from GM to kill Pontiac instead Buick?
Wrong question: “Ask not what China can do for you, but what you can do for China.”
The only truly necessary GM brands are Chevy and Cadillac. Every Buick is a variation on some other platform and every GMC is a Chevy with slightly different styling. Cadillac has a mixture but has a few unique offerings.
Actually the 2017 LaCrosse is on a new platform (P2XX) not yet shared.
But I’m sure will be the next Impala when that platform gets replaced. They won’t have just ONE vehicle on the Super Epsilon platform for very long.
The Impala is quite new, so it will be a while. I don’t know what Cadillac plans for the XTS, but it would be more likely the next P2XX unless they dump it. A new XTS would probably become a CTsomething. Maybe 3 or 4 or 5? I am not sure what CT the CTS should be, maybe the 4?
Perhaps the question should be does GM really need more than a basic car/truck line (Chevrolet) and a luxury line (Cadillac). Keeping Buick was mainly because Buick is big in China, otherwise it would probably have gone down with Pontiac, although perhaps they should have dumped Cadillac.
At least Buick has good overall CR reliability stats lately. That’s quite an accomplishment even though they’re not on my short list.
Buick has actually scored well in the past, primarily because many of its vehicles used well-proven drivetrains, and most buyers were senior citizens who didn’t push their vehicles too hard.
Can I add one more sin??
There was a point in time (late 80’s or early 90’s) when GM only made a profit off of GMAC (financial arm) while it was loosing money on car production. This went on for several years. At that point, I think the finger needs to be pointed at the GM board of directors. As long as GM was making quarterly dividends, they didn’t care. What a failure of fiduciary responsibility. ☹️☹️
+1000! From 1984, GM made more money by moving money than it did by manufacturing. Another one on Roger Smith. That buoy turned into a pair of cement shoes when the financial crisis hit in 2007-08.
GMAC is a pure corporate Deadly Sin.
I wouldn’t agree with that, an in-house finance arm was a very worthy addition to a major manufacturer. More like not making a profit from the core business was a symptom of the accumulated DS’.
GMAC gave GM an important competitive advantage, particularly during the early postwar years, when the federal government put restrictions on the length of car loans made by banks, and instituted strict down-payment requirements. From what I understand, GMAC loans were not subject to these restrictions.
And long before that, GMAC may have been the real reason why GM succeeded. Ford was huge when people had to save their money in order to pay cash for a car. GMAC goes back to 1919 and made it possible for folks to buy cars on credit at a time when it was difficult (if not impossible) for most people to get a loan from the bank to buy a car.
GMAC’s value was allowing folks to buy a nicer car for “just a few dollars more a month”. Once GMAC got a foothold, the Model T began to ebb as much nicer (and more expensive) Chevrolets became more popular.
Years ago, Jerry Flint (Forbes’ late automotive journalist) was disappointed to hear GM reps boasting about their financial offers while others at the event were talking up the cars themselves.
Having a financing group isn’t necessarily a problem unless it preempts design execution as a business priority.
As a kid in the 50s, I resented GM’s dominance of the American automobile industry. I thought they were “too big” with U.S. market share at well over 50%. GM dictated styling trends and pricing with few exceptions. The reality was, however, they produced on a consistent basis some of the finest cars in the world at the time. Even at the age of ten or so, I would compare the build quality of various cars belonging to my family or friends’ families. The GM cars seemed to be better built…more solid, doors that closed with a gentle click or a nice solid sound if slammed, no rattles or squeaks…looking at you Ford. I believe that they began to lose this dominance late in the 60s and it accelerated in the 70s. The underlying causes are probably complex, but certainly too many nearly identical models and the relentless drive to cut costs.
I think you could do “GM aluminum engines” as one DS or do the Vega, HT4100 RWD and Northstar separately.
Those powerplants did more damage to the company and brands, especially Cadillac, than any one model. If you owned one of these engine you likely never owned a GM again. The 4100 took a huge chunk of classic Cadillacs off the road which makes it all the more deadly and sinful.
In one year my bosses 86 Sedan ‘dVille went thru 3 of the 4100’s. The first one failed at 57 miles two days after he bought it.
Failed at 57 miles after he bought in!!!?? Wow. As far as I know, the main problem with the HT4100 was that the iron heads on the aluminum block had created expansion rates between the metals that warped the surfaces between the block and heads. IIRC, it was originally supposed to have aluminum heads, but there was some sort of even *bigger* problem with those. My take is that GM and Cadillac had sunk so much money into a failure of a project at that point, that they decided to put it out anyways as some sort of “flawed product is better than zero product because zero product = zero sales”, and then they would just deal with the fallout that happened. That HAD to be the mentality. I can’t see any company purposely wanting to release a product that was that bad, unless it was close to (if not) their last bet at the table before they’d completely lost their backside.
In all 3 instances the 4.1 ate the camshaft.
Here are my nominations for possible Deadly Sin Status:
1) GTM201 minivans (Chevy Uplander, Buick Terazza, Saturn Relay, Pontiac Montana). I think there may have been a Buick Terazza Deadly Sin article, but search shows Article Not Found. What was GM thinking with these psuedo SUV minivans. They were horrible. The mini-van game was up after these.
2) GMC – Why did GM invest so much in marketing and “differentiation” for essentially the same as a Chevy truck? Now that there are luxury trucks, slap the Caddy badge on it instead of the GMC badge. Why have the seperate brand for just luxury trucks?
3) Geo – Another brand to sink money into. Why not just absorb those into Chevrolet (which ultimately happened). how much money was wasted to try and launch a brand with only captive imports???
Hear here! YES!!!
Brian, I wholeheartedly second 1 and 3.
2, I’ll point out that GMC has really stepped up their differentiation from Chevrolet, and as GM has finally allowed Chevy to compete in the premium space, it enables some real choice.
BUT with that said, GMC basically exists to give Buick dealers a truck to sell.
It’s important to remember, Brian, that GMC was once a “halo” brand of sorts; 50 years ago you could own a pickup truck built by the same division that built all those tough Detroit Diesel-powered over-the-road tractors and Greyhound buses. And for many years, GMC’s engines and transmissions were different, more heavy-duty than what you could purchase in a Chevy.
Of course, it was exactly 50 years ago that GMC really began to rest on the above laurels; the new 1967 pickups differed from the Chevies only in the grill/bumper. Unless you got the V6 model, which disappeared after 1967. After that, the drivetrains were exactly the same. Only with the 1999 full-size models was any attempt made to again differentiate the sheetmetal from the Chevies, as had been done before 1967.
And by 1999, GMC was long out of the large truck and bus business.
Anyway, I’ll agree that getting Paul’s take on GMC’s raison d’etre, then and now, would be quite interesting. I’ll offer that if GM were to decided to let Buick be China-only, then I’d definitely pull the plug on GMC.
I’ll offer that if GM were to decided to let Buick be China-only, then I’d definitely pull the plug on GMC.
If GM made Buick China only, we all know what would happen in the US: we would see Impalas with Cadillac nameplates on them.
We already do… Cadillac XTS
Not knowing the roots of GMC, I can see the rational prior to 1967. Most of my knowledge and recollection of GM trucks starts with that 67 year model, but primarily with the box trucks from 73-87. Those were everywhere, and all I saw (as a kid) were essentially the same trucks. I did always see GMC as a touch more upmarket compared to the Chevrolet version.
I think that’s where I was trying to go with my point about GMC. Would it have made more sense after 1967 to badge those as either Buick or a Cadillac since they were the more upmarket truck? There were already dealers for Buick and Caddy, you don’t need to invest in the marketing dollars for a whole brand new brand just to market the upscale truck. You fold that in with either Buick or Caddy, and that money saved could be used for additional differentiation of the upmarket truck. It could have even had the tag line “Made by GMC” or somethng similar, to tie it back to the heavy duty line prior to 1967.
3) Because for GM imports had cooties, and to incorporate them into Chevy would have been acknowledging that they had merit. An arrogant GM being beaten in marketplace by imports could never admit such a thing, so they had to be sequestered in their own brand that the rest of GM could sneer at and give wedgies to.
The same reason they squandered their chance to learn from Toyota at NUMMI.
Some GM folks at Fremont did learn the Toyota Production System, but corporate couldn’t make it work in all their factories, don’t know the reason but I’ll guess it was turf-protection. Supposedly even GM Brazil, with trade unions & all, made it work.
The Fremont Novas, as CR admitted, were every bit as good as Corollas.
Better in some ways – Toyota never did sell a 4A-GE in a four-door in the US but from 1988-1992 you could buy one from a Chevy dealer. (also a 5-door hatchback in 1989-91).
I guess that also rolls up into the points made above about the Roger Smith era.
I can comment on the GM201s. Think back to the environment in which they were launched. SUV-looking things were selling like hotcakes, and GM needed a way to get some more life out of the platform. I really don’t think it’s any more egregious than Chrysler launching the SUV inspired Caliber or the equally lumpy Dodge Nitro. They too, were just trying to capitalize on a trend.
The GMT201s were far better than their immediate predecessors, but few focus on that.
The whole -Daewoo -> Let’s rebadge them as Chevrolets -> Hey, why don’t we try to kill off our own Opel- story in Europe.
The whole -Daewoo -> Let’s rebadge them as Chevrolets -> Hey, why don’t we try to kill off our own Opel- story in Europe.
At one time GM was trying to sell off Opel, so anointing Daewoo as their small car vendor and badging them as Chevies in Europe did make sense. iirc, when the first gen Cruze was introduced, it was described as designed by Daewoo and tweaked by Opel. Then they did a 180 and kept Opel, creating two pipelines for small models…GM North America having ceded small car development to the offshore divisions.
I read an article recently about why we will never see the Opel Adam in the US. The Adam is on a platform that was never designed for the US regulatory environment, while the Daewoo platform under the Spark and Sonic was. That is apparently how GM has it divided up now, with the B platform at Daewoo and the C platform at Opel.
If they really wanted to differentiate Chevy from Buick, they would give Chevy all Daewoo platforms and powertrains and Buick all Opel sourced platforms and powertrains. but the beancounters will never allow the expenditure for two B and two C platforms.,,,besides the Chevy dealers would cry a river and file class action suits about being stuck with crude, noisy, Daewoos while Buick had more refined models.
Daewoo aka Chevrolet also offered a D-segment sedan which was also available with a 6-cylinder, it was called the Chevrolet Epica. An Epic(a) Fail, that’s what it was.
GM Europe is Opel, and Opel only. And let the islanders call them Vauxhalls, soit. In Europe a Chevrolet means that you drive something big with a matching V8.
…it was called the Chevrolet Epica.
aka Daewoo Magnus and later Tosca, sold in the US as the Suzuki Verona. iirc that transverse 6 was an inline, not a V6.
The Daewoo Lacetti was sold in the US as the Suzuki Forenza (sedan) and Reno (hatchback) The hatchback version was also sold in China as the Buick Excelle and in Canada as the Chevy Optra 5. Car and Driver tested the Suzuki Reno, and, among other gripes, described the shift linkage as feeling like it was made of “bungee cords and plastic forks”.
There was also a Holden Epica. I don’t know why they bothered, as it didn’t get good reports, and I’ve only seen one.
Steve, are you referring to GM trying to sell Opel during/after the GFC, or at another time?
It was in 2004/05 that Daewoos were re-badged as Holdens and replaced the Opel-sourced models (or were sold alongside them in some cases). They were not regarded well, eg the Barina (Kalos) sedan getting a 2-star ANCAP rating.
With Opels going upmarket in step with VW I can see how introducing a lower-tier line would make some sense as Renault have done with Dacia. Using the Chevrolet name was a bit strange but the only option really I suppose (Geo/Saturn???).
By the time the Cruze was designed, Daewoo was more integrated into GM and the car is much better than earlier models. I gather that it shares much with the Opel Astra platform, one significant difference being the rear supension (torsion beam instead of multilink independent).
I looked up the Adam and apparently it is on the small version of a shared Fiat/GM that also underpins the Fiat 500X, 500L and Jeep Renegade, so presumably it would be possible to comply it for the US if they thought they could sell the car in sufficient volume.
Okay, I’m going to throw some mud onto this wall of comments and hopefully something will stick.
First off, their biggest sins weren’t models or even brands. It was acquisitions and joint ventures.
Let’s go through a brief list.
EDS: Drained billions out of GM’s coffers and resulted in a $750 million payout to a guy who offered oceans of criticism, but teaspoons of substance.)
SAAB: GM already had three aspiring import fighters with Cadillac,Saturn, and Oldsmobile. Throw Pontiac into the mix, whose Grand Am was often compared to the Honda Accord, and you had enough import fighting brands to give an army of MBAs plenty of fictional ammunition. SAAB was a mistake that embodied GM’s desire to spend first and think later.
FIAT: Remember this acquisition? Well, it never quite happened but the contractual obligations involved with purchasing a borderline welfare case turned out to be a billion plus dollar debacle.
GM was a master at diversifying their way into a state of conscripted mediocrity. From GMAC Real Estate to Hughes Aircraft, the management of GM never saw an accounting trick or a marketing hallucinogenic that it didn’t see as the future. From Japanese robotics to American real estate agents, GM’s acquisitions were arguably their deadliest sin of all.
All relevant, although most/all were in the range of pocket change compared to the really big DS. It was the perpetual loss of market share that killed GM most of all, because as they had to shrink, they had to support an ever-bigger number of employees in job banks, buyouts and with retiree healthcare from an ever smaller base. That was the key to their death spiral, and it was directly the result of mammoth market share losses in the 80s, and further losses in 90s and 00s.
All the issues you mentioned were just further self-inflicted pain, but none of them as deadly as losing market share year-in, year-out. That’s what really destroyed the business.
GM had always been diversified, as were Ford and GM. But undoubtedly, these were all stinker deals.
Saab was a classic GM mistake.
I agree. Although I think if GM had simply not made these types of acquisitions and perhaps shut down Oldsmobile and Pontiac, they could have gone on limping along for a long time to come.
The interesting juxtaposition of GM’s history is that the very structures that made the company successful were also the ones that eventually lead the company into bankruptcy. The five-tier branding structure that got flattened into wafer thins that were filled with an endless array of low quality products. Union agreements that eventually went beyond stability and metamorphosed into a long-term parasitic drain on the company coffers. Retiree benefits that were unsustainable. All the things you mentioned were definitely the main ingredients in what became a stale and lard ridden recipe.
Is there a way to list the past sins that have already been published? I wouldn’t mind writing one or two so long as I wasn’t repeating the sins of the past.
Yes, they’re listed at the top of the GM Portal. But note that the links to most won’t work right now, because they’ve been re-scheduled: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/american-brands-gm/
It’s hardly all of them, so sure, bring it on!
Read the book “paint it red” by Nicholas Kachman. Talks about a big deadly sin, building new GM factories in the 1980s with inefficient painting systems. Kachman ia a retired GM employee, he was involved with environmental compliance.
Weren’t those robots painting each other instead of the cars?
Yes. That was the story reported at the time, Frank.
GM probably should have gone Chapter 11 15+ years ago. Close outdated and/or redundant factories, jettison the dead wood, renegotiate the crippling UAW contracts.
Sounds like this is going to be a bad week to be a GM or a Cubs fan. LMAO !!!
Thankfully, I like my Mopars and the Sox, so I’ll be enjoying this.
“The seven deadly sins, also known as the capital vices or cardinal sins, is a grouping and classification of vices of Christian origin. Behaviors or habits are classified under this category if they directly give birth to other immoralities. According to the standard list, they are pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth, which are also contrary to the seven virtues. These sins are often thought to be abuses or excessive versions of one’s natural faculties or passions (for example, gluttony abuses one’s desire to eat).” [Wikipedia]
Deadly sin–Greed
GM purposely pushed a known toxic antiknock additive (Tetra Ethyl Lead) because it was both cheap and patent-able. The US crime rate has been directly and positively linked to the prohibition of TEL, as have birth defects, learning disorders in children, etc. There was a public housing unit in NYC straddling I-95 near the GW bridge, I knew an epidemiologist who told me about the study that cleared the first 8 stories of it from occupancy because of the damage done to children from TEL emissions.
GM bribed municipalities to replace streetcars with buses, adding pollution density to areas where it would have been spread out, among the other quality of life reasons like to comparatively quiet operation of trolleys.
GM has several times purposely decontented a vehicle to save money regardless of safety or environmental consequences. This repeatedly bit them and yet they continued to do it. The early Corvair suspension, bias vs radial tires, the Vega coolant recovery tank, the X-car development, the lack of training of service depts on the 350 diesel, the ignition locks in more recent vehicles that resulted in needless fatalities.
One of the greatest engineering companies in the US, reduced to looking like a shady perp over comparative pennies.
I’m sure, with the minds on this site, we can fill in the other 6 deadly sins of GM. Nothing more scary than a confident and reassuring two-faced man in a nice suit.
Great words, SpeedyK! I had no idea of what TEL was (or that GM pushed it).
“Nothing more scary than a confident and reassuring two-faced man in a nice suit”. Indeed, there is nothing scarier than someone that wants to maximize profits, while knowing a minimum about what they’re selling or who they’re selling it to. In a way, this is no different than a big time drug dealer that is basically a distributor; they have no (or little) interaction with the actual end user, and see none of the actual problems associated with it. They just see the money rolling in and will do anything to keep it that way, no matter if they ruin people’s lives in the process.
That’s a pretty powerful analogy – and all the more chilling for its truth, whether rooted in disinterest or contempt for the end user.
The link between leaded gasoline and crime rates is not quite as clear cut as some researchers make it out to be. There are other factors that have affected the crime rate, such as the increased availability of abortion and birth control, improved policing techniques, and greater availability of low-cost home security systems.
And aviation fuel still uses lead, so apparently its use in automotive fuel wasn’t quite as evil or unnecessary as some would have us believe.
And GM didn’t have to bribe any municipal officials to replace trolleys with buses. Municipal officials were happy to get rid of the trolleys, because the tracks made repaving streets difficult, the trolleys interfered with other traffic and buses were not tied to one route.
Most importantly, those street car lines had been owned by electric utilities, and were not regulated by state utility commissions. The electric utilities used the losses by the street car lines to offset profits generated by the sale of electricity to residential and business customers. President Roosevelt and Congress banned this practice with the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935. Once this act was passed, utilities divested themselves of their trolley lines.
If you want to blame anyone for the loss of trolleys, blame President Roosevelt and the federal legislators who voted for this act. It wasn’t GM’s fault.
At any rate, GM didn’t go bankrupt because it built cars that used leaded gasoline or sold buses to municipalities eager to get rid of their trolley systems.
+1. For every problem there is always some evil corporation to blame…. but often when you start looking carefully, you discover that many in the 21st Century have just substituted blaming the Devil for all the evil in the world to blaming “The Corporations”. It’s easy and it’s fun, everybody just nods when you do, so why not?
The whole thing with blaming GM for the trolleys going away has always irritated me a bit. Does anyone really thing that post-WWII Americans had to be dragged off trolleys kicking and screaming, and be forced at gunpoint to buy cars?
As for the economics, as geeber points out, buses are a much cheaper and more efficient choice for cities. No commuter rail in America even comes close to being actually profitable. Even in Japan it’s impossible for commuter rail to turn a profit outside Tokyo….and even in Tokyo private rail companies are subsidized with low cost loans.
I’m not sure if this is yet on the Deadly Sins list, specifically, but it should be–G body quality (or lack thereof). I don’t know when the really bad era of Monte Carlo started, but I can say that our 1980 was by far, the worst build quality that I’ve ever seen on a vehicle. And with a Monte Carlo, you’re paying for something that should be of higher quality (and of more prestige), but considering the problems that people would say they had of Vegas and Monzas and the like, I can’t see our Monte being much better. Here’s my plea for the case:
–my parents bought it in about 1983 or so, second owners, but by then, the car had already been re-painted. Just a few later, we had repainted it again
–we were constantly getting the transmission replaced; we had the car about 8 years or so, but there were multiple transmission jobs
–cams were soft and would wear out quickly
–severe rust problems. The doors, within a few years, had severe rot that was unfixable…..you needed a brand new door. Also, we were on a trip to the US, when I noticed a mound coming up under my feet when I was sitting in the backseat. We stopped the car, looked underneath, and the floorboards were completely rusted out. Literally, the only thing stopping me from falling through the floor was the carpet. It is a Sin, and that could have been Deadly. How would that have looked in the headlines, “child falls through floor; GM lawsuit pending”
–doors never closed properly; had alignment problems or were sagging. Also, the door seals never sealed properly…..the rubber was of poor quality, and would either rot or deteriorate, and as a result, the car was very loud on the highway since you were usually getting some wind noise whistling in
–bumpers had that chrome foil in it that would rip or deteriorate, and the translucent plastic would usually be sun bleached and very faded
–speedometer problems (there was a period of time where my parents just ballparked the speed, based on the traffic around them). Dashboard clock also bit the dust early.
–we finally had the final straw when it was burning oil profusely at 11 years old (probably the piston rings). We could not afford this car anymore, so we sold it for parts, basically, for $500
Not to mention, another huge Sin…..my parents never had that much money, but they wanted an upscale car, so they bought the Monte. It was something that gave them something to aspire to, something that was supposed to make them feel better about themselves. It literally put us in the poorhouse with its inferior build quality, and I grew up thinking that it was normal for a car to be in the shop almost every month. Add to this that when GM put out this inferior product, when working class families spend more on cars that should last them longer (otherwise, just buy a Cavalier or Vega), the double whammy is that you leave your customers with a piece of junk–that they’re making monthly payments on, that has no resale or trade value or collateral towards their next purchase of your products, because word gets out on the street about the problems that these cars had. THAT is truly Deadly.
I would make a case that somewhere between something like the 1980 era Montes/ G Body “premium” cars, the HT4100 and Oldsmobile’s near fatal diesel, the company should have gone out of business and should have received no bailout. It was willful and knowing sales of severely flawed products that damaged their reputation to an incredible extent. I have no idea how they are still in business. I had owned a couple of other GM products after that, and I can say I was burnt…..I will never go back.
I should also add that we had a clapped out ’72 Dodge Tradesman van that was high mileage, and was about 19 years old when we ditched the Monte. That Slant Six was still going strong, whereas the “premium” GM product limped to 11 years. We joked that, “the van looks like crap, but hey, at least it runs!”. 🙂
Lots of interesting commentary here … looking at the present, not the past, with Olds, Pontiac and Saturn gone, I think there is some decent differentiation between Buick and Chevy. But personally, I think that hanging on to GMC trucks (all Chevy clones) is unnecessary, badge-engineering at its worst. But it may be profitable, as others have said, it puts trucks into Buick showrooms. However, where I live, Cadillac is almost invisible, and ironically the most popular Caddy is the Chevy Suburban clone Escalade. The investment in unique RWD platforms, racing etc seems like money down the drain.
The reason GMC dealers were attached to Buick, Pontiac, and or Cadillac dealerships was for coverage in the country side. If the farmer’s wife wanted a Buick, the dealership could also attempt to sell the farmer a GMC truck. The wife was getting a “respectable” car to park in front of the church on Sundays and the farmer got a new truck. The wife was not going to step into a Chevy dealer at any cost.
Today, the GMC brand has morphed into more of a stand alone image due to the emphasis on SUVs. Also, the areas surrounding many of hese old multi dealerships have shifted from rural to suburban.
Maybe not a Deadly Sin, I don’t know, but how about the LT5 DOHC V8 put into the limited-production ZR1 Corvette in the early nineties? I guess it improved the hi-tech image for the Vette, but it must certainly have been a money pit for GM.
This one may already be on your DS list, but a few years ago we did a lot of traveling with the family, renting cars right and left. The rentals were a good way to learn about the various cars out there, and what worked and what didn’t. For example, the Volvo derived full size Ford was a lot sturdier feeling than the Camry. The Dodge Avenger was a car that felt nimble for its size. But the looks were wrong and you just knew that things would start falling off of them at 50k miles or so. Which leads me to the Captiva, a GM SUV. It was a nice SUV, if it was still 1990. The features, ride quality, driver’s feel, and sense of quality were rather awful. I don’t think you could buy one, they were fleet cars only. Even the name, Captiva, made it sound like you were in jail. So GM had the opportunity to introduce me to its cars, and gave me a crappy thing that I couldn’t have bought even if I had wanted to. What was the logic in that?
Dutch, the Captiva started out as the Saturn VUE in 2008. GM had to make something back from their investment, so Chevy Captiva fleet only it was.
GM’s deadliest sin was when they started listening and believing Wall Street. The pundits believed every time GM posted a profit that all was roses with the General. Yet never once in the quarterly reports was profit per unit even considered. You did not need a calculator in the early ‘oo’s to see they were going down when compared to most other car companies.
At the time the glowing pundits infuriated me because I was sure I was missing something in the reports. After all, these were the financial wizards, the brains of banking, the masters of accounting. And I was too dumb to understand their glowing reports of the General. In fact by 2002 I was sure bankruptcy was eminent if their profit per unit did not go up.
Unfortunately the Board of Directors believed the pundits, not the market.
Unfortunately the Board of Directors believed the pundits, not the market.
The pundits that show up in places like CNBC are either shills for management or talking their own book. Listen to them at your hazard.
Brian, the pundits were still flogging Enron and Lehman Bros. stock right up to the days of their crashes. And the ratings agencies were putting AAA on all those toxic mortgage securities, again, right up to the crash.
Enron accounting practices didn’t end with Enron.
Trust your instincts.
Also remember that, up until the 2008 financial collapse, the consensus among the business press was that GM was the best equipped to survive, and Ford would be the one to file for bankruptcy.
Ford had arrange for a substantial credit line before the collapse, which got them through without going bankrupt. But I don’t know how Ford handled its retirement benefits, which is where GM make its biggest mistake.
The fact that Ford management had the foresight to realize that the country was due for a recession, and that the company needed to completely restructure, and that it would take a hefty line of credit to tide over the company during this process, is evidence that it was better run than GM or Chrysler.
That option, of taking out so much more, was not even a remote option for GM, given its balance sheet and what it would have taken to survive. GM’s only solution was bankruptcy. And Cerberus was in no position to bail out Chrysler either. They were both doomed.
Ford could do it because they were already substantially better positioned to do so. It’s not a reflection of management’s brilliance at that time. It was Ford’s only last ditch hope to avoid bankruptcy, which would have wiped out or drastically reduced the Ford family’s holdings.
If the recession had gone on deeper and longer, or Ford didn’t have enough assets to collateralize, they would have joined the others in bankruptcy.
I don’t think anyone saw a global economic collapse coming.
Mullally and his people at Ford had a Boeing mindset (Mullally came from Boeing). Plan five or ten years ahead of time where you want to be. The rest of Detroit was much more focused on hitting the weekly and monthly sales numbers, by stuffing the dealers with inventory and calling them sales. Ford’s dealer relationships were much better than the others. Their position was precarious, but they seemed to get that you had to plan ahead and not make any big mistakes along the way.
Ever since I published the RTS II bus post, I’ve been thinking about whether to classify it as a DS – I understand the arguments for – but my main argument against was the fact that it stayed in production so long and survived three different manufacturers.
I’m now having second thoughts and may go back and re-edit my old post – and crown it with this esteemed honor….
A broken clock is right twice a day. My 09 Chevy HHR SS Turbo w/stick shift is going great at 92K miles. Only last week was did I have my first break down (alternator). Fast, fun, reasonably priced and practical – the DS in this case is that GM no longer makes this or anything like it.
Going to nominate two deadly sins- the J cars that debuted in the early ’80s, some were decent (Opel), some awful (Holden Camira, Cimarron), mostly mediocre that stayed too long on the market.
The other was the Sloane Ladder. Was it ever really such a good idea, or just Sloane making a decent go at the mess of brands he inherited in the 1920s?
Sloan Ladder worked when all cars were virtually the same size class, from the 20’s to the 50’s. Then, all the compacts, Pony, Personal Lux, and Middies all overlapped.
So after a while, entry/middle class buyers would get an Olds Cutlass versus an Impala, for example.
Any chance of a Ford or Chrysler DS? Coming here, you’re likely to to get the impression that no other car maker committed any DS.
Plenty for Chrysler:
– F platform (Aspen/Volare)
– Lean Burn
– R platform (St Regis, Grand Fury)
– ZH platform (aka: Chrysler Backfire)
– Special K proliferation (two edge sword)
– 1960’s expansion in Europe (silver lining was the Omni)
– Merger of Equals (open mouth and insert foot)
– Cerberus Capital (insert other foot)
– FIAT purchase (verdict still out on this one, but not looking good)
I grieve for I am a Moparite.
I’d say just the poor quality of the first F bodies, since they got the bugs out, renamed them M and kept them going until 1989. Long past 1976.
Since Ford never went bankrupt, it doesn’t get a Deadly Sin series. That isn’t to say that Ford hasn’t made its share of clunkers and mistakes, but they obviously weren’t enough to sink the company.
Part of that was greater willingness to borrow from Europe (Cortina → Pinto, Escort, Köln V6, etc.), & pulling off hat tricks during crises (Fox, Taurus). Also, sticking with the obsolescent but profitable & reasonably reliable Panther didn’t hurt either.
Chrysler also handled their domestic 4-cyl small cars better than GM.
It’s not that Ford couldn’t have gone bankrupt, but it was likely in the Ford family’s best interest if they didn’t.
I have a mind to do an article on the decline and fall of the Australian Ford Falcon, but I am loath to commit to the amount of time it would require this side of Christmas. There were a few Deadly Sin models and decisions that lead to its downfall as well as other issues imposed by external forces (ie Dearborn), separate to government and market pressures that have killed off the entire local vehicle manufacturing industry. (noting that there are still quite a few companies that will continue in the supplier space)
To me – and I have said this before – almost all of GM’s DSs are more or less intertwined with reliability, or lack thereof and/or (sometimes connected) being cheapskate when it really was unnecessary. Best case in point is the Citation, which was essentially a good design with one or two easily rectifiable faults (steering, brake bias). It was more or less the Lancia Beta – back then, recognized as the best handling mid-size, FWD sedan – translated into American English. Had it been as reliable as the 60s Nova, it would have been seen as a milestone car today. The same goes for the Vega or any of the Cadillacs using the HT4100 and Northstar engines. Even the Corvair would have been remembered in a very different way: a dead-end alley, but one which provided many people with a reasonably cheap and reliable transport before it became clear the way forward in that class was FWD – had GM not skimp on spending a bit on the suspension. The mind blowing thing is that GM until recently kept repeating the same mistakes over and over again, but it seems under the current CEO failing to learn from the past is being breeded out from the corporate genes.
The fourth-generation F-bodies were fine performance cars, but had their clocks cleaned by the SN-95 Mustang in the sales race. Their poor sales even drove GM out of the ponycar segment altogether until the sky-high sales of the 2005-generation Mustang became too tempting to ignore. Their non-competitiveness in a viable, uncrowded segment fits the criteria for Deadly Sin status.
Good points. I will add that although the Camaro and Firebird/ Trans Am had always sort of positioned themselves as more of a guy’s car (women did drive them, but I’d say not as many as the Mustang), what probably ended up happening with the Camaro and Firebird/ Trans Am is that in their quest to not be seen as a “chick’s car” or “secretary’s car” as was often leveled at the base Mustangs, you have to give credit to the Mustang–despite the Mustang II and other aberrations, the Mustang brand had always maintained its core values….sporty, if not necessarily with neck snapping performance. Sure the LT1 trounced the 4.6 Modular engine in terms of performance, but the people that drive cars for out and out race performance is only a very, very small segment of the market. Obviously the Firebird/ Trans Am went under because of Pontiac’s dissolution, but Chevy did discontinue the Camaro, which is something that the Mustang can never claim.
At same time, quite a few car guys are not into “mullet” culture and dismissed F bodies. Thus, they went out of production in 2002 for a while, and there’s still a ‘trailer park’ image with them.
Yep. And one can’t really blame GM too much for positioning those cars that way, since it was extremely difficult to go toe to toe with exactly what the Mustang has always offered. But the “mullet mobile” image and heavy metal banger image has never really escaped those cars, so I personally feel that there’s a stigma that has put certain people off of those cars, just due to other types of people that own them that are often associated with those “brands”. Once you swing too hard towards the machismo, it’s hard to reverse that. It’s also another reason why I kind of wonder if the next gen Mustang won’t step away from the “bigger/ heavier/ faster” arc that they’re on with the Camaro and Hellcat. It would be smart to let Chevy win the horsepower wars; what you win is the “bigger/ heavier/ faster” sweepstakes, and what they really need in the pony car market is “lighter/ smaller”…..”faster” is debateable, because at some point, someone’s always gonna make the faster car and you have to concede to it and realize that isn’t what sells the bulk of your cars. If Chevy (or Dodge) gets caught with their pants down by making excessively large and heavy pony cars when others are slimming down, it could be another Deadly Sin.
I think the “worst” deadly sin is when a manufacturer produces something so lousy, or they ignore the customer after that lousy purchase that it sways the customer off ever buying their product again.
That time came for me – after a fairly loyal GM buyer in a GM town. My daughter purchased a 2010 Chevy Equinox and her experience with this horrid vehicle (combined with me being averse to the GM bailout) resulted in my first new Toyota purchase (unless you count a 2007 Pontiac Vibe as a Toyota.)
So far, my Toyota purchase(s) have not swayed me to return to GM.
Same thing happened with my wife: her Chevette was such a lemon?, & her subsequent Camry was so good, she vowed never to buy domestic again. So while GM may make some statistically reliable cars now, like Buick, Toyota is still good enough for her to not make it worth the risk to change brands again. And no Japanese car we’ve owned has ever stranded us.
And we also detest “Too Big to Fail” gov’t bailouts. They effectively reward incompetence.
These aren’t necessarily GM DS material, but I did have eyeball to eyeball personal experiences with my boss of 8 year’s 86 Sedan ‘D Ville and my Dads 88 Suburban. Both were absolutely horrible.
Geez they were junk..very expensive junk at the time.
I’m starting to see early symptoms of DS from Toyota. Mixed messages in branding … which is the performance brand: Lexus (LFA, F models?) or Toyota (NASCAR?) or Scion (FRS? oops, never mind); the whole Scion thing; rebranded Mazda 2’s; the plug-in Prius and Prius C; the original Lexus “Corolla” hybrid; lots of criticism of drivability and quality on the new Tacoma (I own one and it’s mostly fine); general perception that dealers are arrogant living of return customers and that corporate customer service is fading; etc. I’ve bought 3 new and 2 used Toyotas but I can see signs of GM circa 1980 and later.
“…her Chevette was such a lemon…”
As people who “vividly remember” 1970’s age, newer buyers who couldn’t care less will move in.
But then there is the whole ‘driverless car’ thing, that may or may not be ‘a few years away’.
Cobalt. Not for the ignition key cylinder fiasco, just because it seemed to be designed and developed to be a failure from the very beginning.
During my beater search last summer, I drove a high trim 09 Cobalt and was favorably impressed. The engine was smooth, quiet and reasonably powerful. Steering felt good. Suspension gave a stable ride. Only fly was the seat, which was a shapeless bag of mush. All in all, a typical old GM product: looks good on paper, looks nice in the showroom, drives nice on a test drive.
What put me off of this example, with 56K on the clock, was the rattle in the steering column. A bit if research revealed that a gear in the power steering is made of plastic. In as little as 10,000 miles, the plastic gear wears enough to create enough slop with the meshing gear to rattle. It follows that this fast wearing plastic gear will eventually wear enough for the teeth to be thin enough to break. The fix is replacing the steering shaft: $800-$900.
The Cobalt begat the first gen Cruze. CR rated the 1.4T Cruse as one of the most trouble prone cars in the US market.
In the CR reliability projections for 2017 posted on this site a few days ago, the second gen Cruze is rated best in class, even better than the Corolla. Either CR is wildly optimistic about the new Cruze, or GM did some serious naval gazing and finally got religion on quality and reliability.
To a certain extent, GM’s worst enemy was themselves and their own divisions. DeLorean wanted to do much more at Pontiac, but was only given so much leeway and autonomy to do so. We know what happened with the GTO, but he had also wanted to do things like the Pontiac Banshee, but was told that it would compete too much with the Corvette. GM was likely right, but the slap in the face for DeLorean had to be that the front end (moreso the hood shape) had got used on the ’68 Corvette anyways.
You really wonder what could have been, had the divisions really been allowed to compete with each other. But they really couldn’t. I can only imagine what else had got axed, because it would have pilfered sales from another division. Pontiac, I feel, was the one that had probably my favorite ideas, overall, at GM after about ’63 or ’64 or so, but they weren’t really allowed to thrive. Take the Fiero, with the Iron Duke–great idea with an execution that was on a budget. It could have been so much more than what it was.
The Bowlong Green mafia were the biggest reason the Fiero never became what it should have.
Night on X Mountain…
Can you cast away the evil Sins of GM????????
!976-1980 Nova! I had to drive a 1976 Mercury Montego – a thoroughly detestable vehicle – to Lannan Chevy/Olds in Woburn MA in March of 1979 to get my replacement company car, a 2DR Nova hatchback. The Montego made it from Leominster to Woburn. The Nova didn’t make it to MA-2. Hell, it barely got from MA-38 to US-3 until I lost all forward movement, about eight miles. It wouldn’t even back up. Apparently, the crack team in Vehicle Service forgot to tighten the speedo-cable collar at the transmission housing, the fluid all leaked out under pressure, and burned out a brand-new transmission just shy of 25 minutes and ten miles’ worth of service.
GM Quality, my ass.