GM Car Czar Bob Lutz doesn't know who we are (which is a shame since RF gave him the "Maximum Bob" moniker and we've named an award in his honor). GM's jeffe of press releases, Christopher Barger, doesn't want to admit he does. However, we know through our "inside sources" (i.e. server stats) that quite a few people in GM read TTAC. In spite of that, you won't find TTAC on GM's Fastlane blog's list of "Auto Links" and especially not in their list of "Blogs We Like." And we have never, not ONCE had a post or email or interview with a single GM flack. However, no one seemed to let GM Europe know of our pariah status. Yesterday, I was searching the web and ended-up on GM Europe's "Social Media Newsroom" web site. I scanned down the page to their Blog Roll. The list was in alphabetical order (after the GM blogs listed at the top, of course). And there, fourth from the bottom was The Truth About Cars. Clerical error? Secret admirer? Glasnost? No matter how you slice it, the Euro-blog (not bog) roll is the only GM part of the GM Empire that acknowledges TTAC's existence. Regardless of the reason, we challenge GM to show some balls and put us in the listings on all their other blog sites. After all, we put stuff about GM on our front page all the time. And remember guys: 800 words, unedited, whenever you like.
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I for one would love to hear from GM here. Contrary to popular belief, we are not a bunch of GM haters. I for one would love to see GM get off their duff, and start making world class cars again.
So while I may not be a GM hater, I am not a gambler either. After getting burned with various GM products in the 80’s and 90’s, I am not about to take a chance on my second largest purchase, which is why I only shop Toyota and Honda products. I’m guessing a lot of people here feel the same way.
I would have loved to have heard from GM when they sold me a brand new lemon. Ya’ know, other then “We follow minimum New Jersey new car warranty laws” and ‘fixed’ my POS Pontiac 8 times in 6 months.
Yes I am GM hater and yes I hope it goes under, if for no other reason than to save Ford from extinction.
If they added TTAC to the blogroll, they’d have to title it something other than “blogs we like.”
To make that change, they’d have to form a committee, and that committe would have to have a series of meetings. So it probably won’t happen quickly.
If they added TTAC to the blogroll, they’d have to title it something other than “blogs we like.”
“Blogs whose existence we grudgingly accept” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.
You hear from GM all the time, its just not officially from GM. The our cars are just as good as Toyotas line. The we only have a perception of quality gap not an actual quality gap line. The you don’t like GM line( poor persecuted GM). The you are biased against GM line and the GM suffers from media bias line. The only people who feel this way are employees of the big 3. They simply are parroting the company line.
Who else is going to actually get upset that many people don’t like their cars. Who else is going to attack people who don’t like their cars. I’m sure the vast majority of people that got banned are actually employees of the former big 3
Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. – Sun-tzu, Chinese general & military strategist (~400 BC)
thalter :
I have never understood the “I bought a piece of crap from GM/Ford/Chrysler/whoever back in 19XX, so I’ll never consider one of their products again”. Times change. I’m sure you’re not holding what happened in WWII against the Japanese anymore (not to mention the Germans).
Not saying that you should rush out and buy a GM, but if they make a car that you like (which may not be true) and recent (ie more recent than 20 years ago) reports suggest the car to be reliable, you’re only cheating yourself by not considering it
Empoyees are NOT just parroting the line. GM is top heavy and they, (those on top), protect the top.
When your 401K tanks due to misguided decisions, you want someone’s head. Just like in the real world. Whether it’s GM or Ford, or IBM.
They DO need a re-awakening. Maybe a sudden DE-tachment of their golden parachute would bing them back down to earth…
morbo
I hope GM fixes itself. If it goes under like you hope, it will not only ruin a lot of lives at GM, but will take one hell of a lot of businesses and people with it. I don’t know what you do for a living but it may even take you. So be careful what you wish for, it may come true.
gawdodirt “When your 401K tanks due to misguided decisions, you want someone’s head. Just like in the real world. Whether it’s GM or Ford, or IBM.”
I agree and when has GM held their top people accountable by sacking them like in the real world?
thetopdog :
I have never understood the “I bought a piece of crap from GM/Ford/Chrysler/whoever back in 19XX, so I’ll never consider one of their products again”. Times change. I’m sure you’re not holding what happened in WWII against the Japanese anymore (not to mention the Germans).
Branding is tough. To create a brand that people can link with a given attribute takes years of hard slogging. And constant reinforcement. Re-branding? Nearly impossible. It’s usually not worth the effort; best to just start over.
GM’s brand is cars that break. They created that brand. They have to change it. And you can NOT blame people who accepted GM’s existing branding for doing so.
The power of the branding cuts both ways. That’s the way it is.
Robert:
I’m not blaming somebody for not buying a GM car. Neither I nor anybody I know works for GM. I’m not even American (full disclosure: I do drive a Corvette, but my previous car was a Lexus) so I don’t care too much about pointing fingers. I’m just trying to point out how someone is only cheating themselves by adopting the attitude that becuase a car was terrible in the 80s means that a car produced in 2008, that shares absolutely no parts with the Cadillac Cimmaron they used to have is somehow unworthy of consideration.
I would also argue that GM’s brand is no more “cars that break” than Toyota’s is “underpowered rust buckets” or Mercedes’ is “Hitler’s chariots.” All 3 are generalizations based on outdated information. Not to say that even today GM’s reliability is stellar, but there are certain extremely reliable cars made by GM that shouldn’t be dismissed becuase of something that happened decades ago.
I agree that some of the blame has to be placed on the manufacturer for getting themselves in the unenviable position of being thought of as unreliable in the first place. GM should have been fully aware that narrow-minded people would refuse to consider another GM car after a series of bad experiences. But that still doesn’t mean that the narrow-mindedness is justified.
I’m just trying to point out how someone is only cheating themselves by adopting the attitude that becuase a car was terrible in the 80s means that a car produced in 2008, that shares absolutely no parts with the Cadillac Cimmaron they used to have is somehow unworthy of consideration.
Not really. The customer suffers no loss at all if he or she can buy another suitable product that works well.
That’s part of the problem that the losing companies face — their competition is good and often superior, offering desirable products that people want. People can buy these competing products without feeling that they’ve compromised unnecessarily. For them, giving GM a chance is just a risk, and not a very good one at that.
thetopdog: GM should have been fully aware that narrow-minded people would refuse to consider another GM car after a series of bad experiences. But that still doesn’t mean that the narrow-mindedness is justified. It’s narrow-minded to call people’s use of branding to make sense of their world narrow-minded. (Caution: There is a 1000+ comment thread on this somewhere.) Branding is a shorthand. Using shorthand to buy a products is normal, natural behavior. Sticking with that shorthand in the face of contradictory evidence (indeed, failing to even look for or consider such evidence) is also normal and natural. Back when people in my ‘hood (then called a neighborhood) were “Ford people” or “GM people,” you didn’t hear Detroit complaining. Now that their experiences (i.e. the automakers themselves) have turned them into “not Ford people” or “not GM people” or “not American car” people, calling them narrow-minded– even daring to THINK that they’re narrow-minded– is the kiss of death. Of course, I believe that kiss has already been delivered. But even if you disagree, at least understand that “blaming the victim” puts carmakers on a hiding to oblivion.
Well, what an arrogance is to think we are the only human beings in the universe. What a waste of space would it be! What a shortsightedness would be to think, that noone from Gm corporate heads reads TTAC.It is the general motors ,sorry, general rule that human curiosity takes over the common sense or common reason. Not that TTAC lacks it, the problem is that TTAC highly illustrates what reason Gm lacks. come on, CEOs, you should be proud of reading TTAC, not some junklets about celebritnies!
Pch101 :
The customer does lose in those cases where the GM/Ford/Chrysler product would be the absolute best product for them. In my case, my mother had a terribly unreliable Buick Regal in the mid 90s. If I let that influence my decision to buy a car, I would have not bought my Corvette, which is the perfect car for me. There is not one other car near the price that comes close to delivering what I want out of a car. So it would have been my loss to use that Buick experience and let it eliminate the possibility of purchasing a GM car. I’m sure I’m not the only person in the world for which a GM/Ford/Chrysler product would be the perfect car for their situation
Robert:
I am fully aware that you can’t ‘blame the victim’ in business, which I tried to make evident in the last paragraph of my last post. But since I’m not speaking on behalf of GM, I feel that I am able to blame these people for cheating themselves, not for hurting GM.
Sticking with a branding shorthand in the face of contradictory evidence may be natural, but so is blind patriotism. I don’t think either should be endorsed
If you want to call people narrow minded for giving up on GM, take into account that you ARE narrow minded if you are looking at only the CAR and not the whole “experience” of owning said car. GM could make a car that I would love to own, BUT they have to change the rest of the “experience” for me to even look at said vehicle. I have owned plenty f GM products in the past, and have been bitten by every dealer and mechanic I have ever dealt with through them, I include a member of my family in this. The car is only one part of the owner equation. You could make the best product in the world, but if the support isn’t there to back it up, it will just be a flash in the pan.
Avoiding a car by a brand that has burned thousands of people is smart.
Buying a car from a brand despite a large % of dissatisfied customers is stupid.
A coworker told me that he say a Honda Civic towing a relatively new Corvette with a tow rope the other day… The mighty lion being helped by the mouse…
Its a funny sight to imagine.
The link is there exactly for the same reason why a show like Top Gear can be produced in Europe but can not dream of being produced in the U.S.
It is there for the same reason why an outdoor advertisement displaying breasts is completely normal in Europe while verbotten in the U.S.
It is not in the US site as a direct consequences of corporate conscience in conflict with rigid perceptions of what is “right” in corporate and social behavior in America.
Of how it conflicts with the puritanism embedded in the american psyche, the same putitan attitudes and values that have been both positive and destructive in shaping the American character we know. Self-imposed censorship, if you will.
Americans have a very hard time probing the nature of “guilt”. Europeans (and most other nations), not so much.
Wulv :
The dealership experience is an entirely different issue. I totally understand if somebody wants a positive dealership experience, that was the one thing I liked most about my Lexus.
netrun :
If everybody avoided buying a car from a company that had burned thousands of people, nobody would buy any cars. Every car company has screwed over their customers one way or another. Even the aforementioned Lexus/Toyota has tons of dissatisfied customers. Ask 2nd Gen (1998-2004) GS owners how they like door actuators going out (at ~$250 a pop), ball joints failing (and when the ball joints on these cars break, the entire wheel comes off), starters not lasting past 100,000miles, etc. These are not isolated cases, they are very common in nearly every 2nd generation GS (I personally experienced all of them in mine), and the ball joint issue especially is dangerous. Toyota/Lexus has done nothing about the problem(s). Should everybody not consider buying a Lexus becuase of these examples? Or should people look at each car on a case by case basis and recognize that most Lexus products are extremely reliable?
thalter…times change?
Really? GM for over 25 years, the 2003 (bought new) has a list of repaired-under-warranty defects like NONE of the earlier ones. Now that the warranty’s over I’m paying out of pocket for the ongoing inherent design defects, no goodwill, no recalls. So what happened? They got better in the last 5 years maybe? I see a lot of cheap plastic and even thinner metal than ever (please don’t quote the “high strength” trump card) and made in Mexico and made in China parts. Fit and finish are improved perhaps, but still subpar compared to Honda or Toyota or even Hyundai now. Yet the executive bonuses reach record levels. Memo to GM management: how about reinvesting a percentage of that money into the organization instead? (That would include fixing the design issues up front AND the existing ones after the fact).
The customer does lose in those cases where the GM/Ford/Chrysler product would be the absolute best product for them.
I can’t think of many moments when the stars align in such a way that such an event occurs.
Much of the time, consumers do far better by avoiding the domestic product. Choosing the domestic becomes a costly, unacceptable risk best avoided.
The loss is incurred by buying the wrong product from the wrong company. I take no pity on Lexus, Honda and Toyota purchasers; its their anti-import brethren whom I worry about.
The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer. – Peter Drucker
Given superior alternatives a rational person who has been mistreated will not go back for more.