![\"Seventeen years and more than 1 million miles later, Gilbert donated his car to the Wisconsin Automotive Museum. The car survived eight deer collisions, including one that punched a hole in the radiator, before it was parked for safekeeping at the museum in Hartford.\" (pic and text courtesy jsonline.com)](https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/saab120506.jpg "\\"Seventeen years and more than 1 million miles later, Gilbert donated his car to the Wisconsin Automotive Museum. The car survived eight deer collisions, including one that punched a hole in the radiator, before it was parked for safekeeping at the museum in Hartford.\\" (pic and text courtesy jsonline.com)")
GM's Fastlane blog keeps the chuckles coming, with an awkward little paean to the General's legendary reliability. Penned by "GM VP, Quality" Jamie Hresko, the post lets webizens know that if you Google "one million miles" you'll find stories about two GM vehicles that have crested the million mile mark: a 1989 Saab 900 SPG and a 1991 Chevrolet Silverado. But wait; didn't GM first buy into Saab in 1990? Although the old 900 had nothing to do with GM, its achievements still reflect well on the General because, dammit, they shelled-out for the PR rights. By buying the owner a brand new 9-5 Aero when the 900 SPG's odometer rolled over and didn't die. Over two years ago. But the funniest (not ha-ha) part of the story: GM just reduced the length of its Saab warranties, cutting mileage covered from 100k to 50k. But as Hresko says, this whole affair proves that "the real gap is not between GM quality and that of our competitors, the real gap lies between perception and reality." Like when he encourages the perception that "we back up our products with the industry's best transferable powertrain warranty, five years/100,000 miles," despite the, well, reality. [hat tip to kixstart]
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Dude should have kept his ’89, from the sounds of it, it would have lasted longer than length of the current warrantee and/or GM’s non-bankruptcy.
The worst part about this is that it shows how good Saab used to be.
The same post mentioned a significant reduction in warranty repair over the past three years, which is part of the author’s argument for improved quality from GM. You may or may not believe it, but not even mentioning it smacks of bias. Your point about taking advantage of Saab reliability is well argued, but is not the entire basis of Hresko’s point.
doubt there is anyone more critical of GM than yours truly. however, much good can be said about many aspects of the company and quality is one of them. Hresko is correct about the diminishing warranty claims. dealers are experiencing reduced factory defects and focus is being placed on increasing customer pay service to make up for the reduction in revenue. this is particularly true in regards to fit and finish.
couldn’t agree more that the General’s difficulty is the wide gap between perception and reality. this is the fault of incompetent marketing as the true story of GM quality is not comprehended by the purchasing public.
Now if only my 2004 Grand AM GT didn’t have so many quality issues with the interior components and HVAC controls – the thing literally is falling apart piece by piece.
Look, if you baby a car, it will last a long time. And Saabs really, really respond well to that kind of treatment. I can recall more than one comment from a fellow Saab owner of “It went 250,000 on the first engine” or “It only needed regular repair work” (where regular means a new $1000 component ever six months).
It’s that special idea of “reliability” that appears only in the heads of European car fans and pickup truck owners.
I could understand cutting Saab’s warranty if leasing were still an option, because then you could dump the car just before either a) the electronics shake themselves loose and/or b) your first water or fuel pump, alternator, A/C compressor or what-have-you failure. But leasing is no longer on the table, and anyone buying a Saab is going to stand a good chance of having a really problematic car at the end of the warranty period.
GM must either be desperate, deeply ignorant, or both. One major reason for Hyundai and Kia’s success is the confidence that a 10 year warranty gives: it means “We stand beind the product”. Even Lexus would be stupid to cut warranty coverage; for Saab, it’s suicide. That someone in marketing could feel that anyone would swallow such a yarn about ‘perception” is amazing.
My perception gap problem with GM is that they make no cars I’d ever want to buy. I don’t think that’s my fault though. Why should I feel bad when they’re the ones who suck? It’s not like they haven’t had multiple opportunities to redeem themselves.
From my point of view, I’d rather buy a 10 year old VW without a service history than a new GM product. It all comes back to the POS Chevy Celebrity my parents bought 21 years ago. In my mind, all GM cars are still as bad as that Celebrity was. GM needs to do some serious work to prove otherwise. Looking at their current offerings just says “same sh*t, different year” to me.
Well, the reality is that it takes years to even start earning reputation back once its lost.
And http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/cars/used-cars/cr-recommended/the-best-worst-used-cars-406/overview/
Is my response to claims that GMs quality is good now.
It might be improved, but its not good.
The GM dealership service experience?
Brought to you by the letters: NPF
No Problem Found
One thing I’m not clear on for the new Saab warranty: does the powertrain warranty no longer last for 5 years / 100K miles as is the case for the rest of GM’s lineup? If this is true, this is a really stupid move on the General’s part.
But if the bumper-to-bumper warranty becomes 4/50, this doesn’t strike me as all that terrible.
GM is conveniently forgetting the intake gasket problem they allowed to continue for many years. Now that they have increased the warranty, I cynically ask myself if the gasket will now last 100K miles instead of the old 60K miles.
These kinds of problems are still very fresh in consumer’s minds. Crap like this takes 10-20 years to heal. You can’t just say one day “we don’t hate our customers anymore”
No comment on what they really do well?
Let’s examine his one .
The Silverado. It’s a solid piece.
“we back up our products with the industry’s best transferable powertrain warranty, five years/100,000 miles”
Exactly how is this better than Suzuki’s seven-year/100,000 mile transferable powertrain warranty? A longer warranty, from a company less likely to go C11, sounds good to me.
From my point of view, I’d rather buy a 10 year old VW without a service history than a new GM product. It all comes back to the POS Chevy Celebrity my parents bought 21 years ago. In my mind, all GM cars are still as bad as that Celebrity was. GM needs to do some serious work to prove otherwise.
And this is why, if they want to close the perception gap, they need to start with warranty and service performance. Customers will forgive a lot of quality problems if they’re fixed promptly and without effort, but screw a customer on service once, and you’ve lost them forever.
VW is a particularly bad example (Mercedes is nearly as nasty): they have–bar none–the worst warranty performance record of any North American make. VWoA takes great pains to either discourage warranty work at the dealer level, or screw dealers when they do make a claim. Dealers, of course, pass this right onto the customer.
Lexus, by contrast, bends over backwards (or forwards, or whatever) for the customer when warranty work is required. Even if a Lexus has a problem that’s not strictly warranty, the dealer has a lot of discretion for claims, the claim process is painless and the compensation fair. Lexus’ cars aren’t quite the mechanical perfection that they’re made out to be (they’re still very good) but the service covers the gap.
GM, today, falls somewhere in-between. What they need to do is move towards Kia-level length of coverage. If they’ve truly closed the quality gap, as they’re claiming, then this should be a non-issue and the minor increase in warranty costs should be offset by sales margins as customers flock to their brands.
And–this is important–they need to avoid “gotchas” like expensive inspections that essentially amount to gouging, or stonewalling claims when they do happen. That kind of thing makes a customer feel cheated; it doesn’t fool anyone, and it’ll put their reputation further into the toilet.
brettc : While GM is far from perfect, holding a grudge against the company for a P.O.S. that your parents bought 21 years ago is not helping anybody. If you’d take a 10 year old VW with no service history over a CTS, G8, Vette, etc., that’s nobody’s loss but your own
I never cut GM any slack. I had a 1982 Olds Ciera once that had the radio catch fire, and that wasn’t even in the top ten of major problems with that car. Still, I have to admit their quality is now very good.
After totaly avoiding anything GM since 84, a couple of years ago I was assigned a Company provided wart of a 2004 Impala – medicore car but zero problems for 75,000 miles. It was replaced by a new 2006 Impala. Now it was actually a pretty nice car and it also NEVER went to the dealer the entire 70,000 miles I drove it. Five quick oil changes and one set of tires – that’s it in 70k.
When I changed jobs last year I had to actually buy a car of my own. Since Ford makes zero 4-door full sized cars anyone could actually like, my Impala experiences lead me to buy a Northstar powered Lucerne CXS. At 35,000 miles it also has never seen the dealer since the day I picked it up. According to the dashbaord readout I have been averaging 21.9 mpg for the last 3500 miles (when I started driving a little gentler, it was 18.9 before that), so I am still glad I opted for the 8 even with $4 gas.
That’s three GM’s in a row for me that judged just on quality would be hard for any car, from any continent to beat.
Now, let me tell you about my friends purchased when new 2004 325Xi – and these guys don’t have a reputation for building crap? Now that it is just out of warranty (on time, only has 35,000 miles) she just had her first $750 brake job, something you also don’t get with a GM. There is no justice in car reputations I guess, just long standing perceptions.
Well topdog, that is how car branding works. Each POS you turn out causes you to lose customers who hold grudges. A true lemon will turn a person away from you forever. Once burned, buying their product is extra risky for you, because not only might it be a lemon, but you will feel like a fool for giving them another shot. People don’t like to feel stupid, especially when they have to make monthly payments to remind them of their stupidity.
Of course, it takes a long time to burn a companies goodwill; it took GM 30 years to lose 20% market share even when their products were total crap. If GM is really back on the ball, it will still take a decade before people start giving it a shot again.
And BTW, its telling that the cars you mention as counters to a 10 year old VW start at 30k. GM needs to have some Fits, not a bunch of cars that are in BMW pricing territory if it wants to stage a comeback.
Captain Tungsten,
I noticed Hresko’s mention of 13% reduction in warranty claims and my initial reaction was, “that’s a significant improvement, which will help GM’s bottom line.”
On reflection, though, I ended up wondering if what has changed is the intrinsic quality (good!) of the product or were dealers more aggressively ignoring problems until the warranty expired (bad!)?
More pessimistically, were warranty costs down because the dealers were responding appropriately to new GM warranty policies?
thetopdog,
That’s the risk GM took when they sold his parents a vehicle that did not satisfy.
toxicroach: I don’t work for GM or own any GM stock, so I’m not overly concerned about the ‘perception gap,” I just find it ridiculous to see people say things like “GM made POSs like the Celebrity/Cimarron/Cavalier/whatever 10/20/30 years ago so I will no longer consider a GM car.”
Sure that’s GM’s loss, but that kind of closed-mindedness is also the consumers loss as well. Totally writing off a company for one (or even more than one) incident that happened decades ago isn’t something to be proud of. It is possible that GM doesn’t make one car that brettc would prefer over a 10 year old Jetta, but chances are that GM has several cars that he would find attractive (none of which share a platform or any parts with his parents’ Celebrity)
thetopdog,
The name of the game is customer satisfaction. GM’s record of selling POS’s causes people to be very comfortable – satisfied – writing off GM vehicles. They buy a Toyota or whatever, instead, and if they have a few minor problems, they’re still perfectly happy because they didn’t get a POS. A 2008 GM might have served them better but they are satisfied with their decision. Being satisfied, they’ll buy another Toyota in 2013.
And, articles like Hresko’s don’t matter, even if Hresko cites 13% improvement in warranty claims. Even if it’s true. Because no one’s going to believe it for 5 years.
GM needs 5 years of historical excellence. That’s all there is to it. That’s all that there’s been to it all along, in spite of anything GM says and in spite of anything GM’s fans may wish.
In 2003, Lutz proclaimed that GM cars were, quality-wise, just as good as any. I went to the library last night and picked up a CR auto buying guide. Lutz was, clearly and obviously, wrong. Thus, the real, long-term effect of Lutz’ 2003 proclamation is to reduce the credibility of anything Hresko says.
Now, if Lutz had been right in 2003, GM would be seeing a payoff from 5 years of historical excellence. As it happens, the end result of Lutz shooting off his mouth in 2003 is to make it harder for Hresko to persuade anybody that GM’s got it all together now.
Not to go off on a complete tangent, here, but hasn’t Lutz done enough damage? What is his value to GM?
It makes perfect sense to me to write them off. Check that link I posted earlier and see if you can argue that anything has really changed. Emotional repulsion + empirical validation= perfectly rational reason to never look @ GM again.
What exactly is it about the new GM cars that gives anyone a real reason to buy them? From the sounds of it, they have a few solid models that are pretty close to the class leaders. The 80% cars, as someone on TTAC calls them.
Why not buy the class leaders? I don’t see any reason to give them another shot. I don’t believe in giving corporations mercy buys, and how many times have people claimed that GM had caught up in reliability, that this generation of GM cars was finally competitive, please oh please come back.
10 years later and even GM fans are admitting that the old product was crap, but THIS time they really are competitive.
Give me a break.
The same emotional attachment that still has people defending GM works against them when the experience has been negative. And when the competition is Toyota, Honda, BMW, and Mercedes, GM has a long battle to fight to make people look back.
GM is conveniently forgetting the intake gasket problem they allowed to continue for many years.
Funny, a friend with a meticulously maintained Monte Carlo with a 3.4 had these go recently at great cost. In an ancient car, I could have forgiven this, but this car was the definition of babied. GM’s perception gap is not derived simply from what has happened, it derives from what is still happening. GMs skeletons aren’t in the closet…they are out tapping people on shoulders and reminding them they are still around.
In his FastLane blog, Hresko asked for our “stories.” Nothing new since yesterday. If you read FastLane blogs and comments, quite a bit of uncnesored reality does pass through into the comments section. But in this case, I have to wonder if all of the “stories” submitted so far would have the effect of boosting Toyota’s sales and, so, have not escaped the censors:
“Dear Mr. Hresko, Thanks for asking for my story. Nobody at the dealer wants to hear my story, even though the dealer had a hand in writing it. And nobody in Customer Service seems interested in my story, so I’m happy for the opportunity to pass it along to you and your FastLane readers, so that others may profit from my experience…”
Uh-ohhh…
I learned about GM as a kid when my dad’s cars always had very serious problems the first year and he always bought a new GM every year for years…he had no answer when I asked why? when he switched to corvettes, he had two in a row that caught fire in the driveway when not even running. I would never consider buying anything from this outfit. I went with Fords for 25 years until I got sick of them dissolving at 80K or less….Honda for me from now on.
It’s absurd to me that anyone would try to claim that GM isn’t out there right now burning bridges with new customers by selling them POS Aveo’s and Cobalt’s.
These massive changes in the market don’t happen very often and they are opportunities to get people to try your product that normally wouldn’t. By having nothing but penalty boxes available to those looking for a compact and subcompact will do nothing to convince the buying public that “it’s only a perception gap.”
I dunno, getting to 36k or 70k without problems is nice and all, but eh. I drove my old Subaru from 80000-140000 before I had to get a repair. And I was not maintaining it properly at all. Even @ 140k, it was a 200 dollar problem. Don’t get me started on my wife’s Malibu. Same age, less miles, WAY WAY more problems.
But personal anecdotes are irrelevant to a real discussion of quality. The numbers show GM is deficient by current industry standards. End of story.
toxicroach : I am not arguing that GM has done things in the past few years that may make a rational person not want to buy a GM car. Thare are many valid reasons to avoid most or all GM products.
All I’m saying is that using an experience that occurred over 2 decades ago as justification for a decision you are making today (and one that is traditionally the 2nd-largest expense the average person will incur) is an incredibly narrow-minded and self-destructive way to think, not something to be announced proudly on an online forum.
My perception gap stems from my car that ranked at the top of JD Power’s survey. My last GM car I’m ever buying. Here are a few examples of my dealings.
Wheel bolts breaking. “you must have tampered with it…I can’t believe they came out of our factory that way. We’re not covering them under warranty.” Steering rack leaked and needed replacement. “we didn’t see it last time and you’re 50 miles over your warranty. We can’t cover that.” Engine misfiring – “there were no engine codes thrown so we didn’t have anything to fix. Here’s the bill for the diagnostics”. Headlight bulb socket (plastic) melts. “Those are $50. We seem to be getting a lot of those on Cavaliers and Cobalts”. Odometer LED readout fades and eventually stops displaying. “We’ll have to replace the entire gauge cluster. ($$$)”
Tough to watch all the car sites telling me that the Malibu, CTS, Corvette are great cars and GM has turned the corner, when I know that every other car, including the lesser model Malibu, or base level CTS, is probably absolute crap. Ask any former GM fanboy, that has switched to another brand, why they won’t consider a GM car and they will tell you they don’t get the same problems with their current cars. That is the perception gap GM has to work with and they will need 10 to 20 years to rebuild their reputation. Unfortunately, under Mr. Wagoner and Mr. Lutz’s tenure, they have not done anything to change my opinion of GM.
My GM car won’t make a million miles.
My GM car won’t make a million miles.
My GM car wont even make 100,000 miles, and it’s a damn Cadillac not what they hate making, small cars. Jesus it’s the biggest damn thing they make besides the SUV’s. Read my other posts if you want to hear just a portion of all the things wrong with it. They still make it with the DTS name on it now, so I know they are still pumping out the same pile of sh*t I have right to this day, changed my a$$. I feel sorry for anyone on this site who bought anything with a Northstar V8, your in for a rude awakening after 60,000 miles.
The company HAS NOT CHANGED, if the guys running the show just a few years back when they were producing crap are still running the show and the mindset really hasn’t changed(they are still blaming the customer, and giving us the same lip service without real results) how can the focus on the products have possibly changed. You put crap in how can you not expect crap out the tail end. Your work speaks volumes about who you are, and GM is a crook.
The total distruction of Saab is enough for me to wish GM to the grave(but I have more reasons too). I used to love those quirky cars, and between me and my brother we got almost 2 million miles out of the 6 we have collectively owned, some over 1/2 a million they simply ran forever and were fun cars to owen right to the end. All pre-GM Saabs. Now I wont even look at the brand it makes me want to cry or at least puke.
I just wish GM would go away, the world would be a better place.
I guess my point is that an emotional response to a brand is not necessarily irrational or close minded.
After all, if the thought of spending 20,000 dollars on that brand makes you a little sick to your stomach, and there are other brands that are equivalently good, it is rational to avoid the cars that make you feel bad, the same way you would avoid a model that just didn’t do anything for you or a color you found disgusting.
The only case where it would be irrational to avoid GM on emotional grounds alone would be when it was clearly better on all possible grounds; styling, reliability, price, etc… and you just couldn’t stand the sight of a GM badge on it. Which is simply not the case; there is no company that dominant, which means that emotional reactions to the badge are legitimate reasons not to buy, whether its because your parents had a Chevy Lemon, or you just don’t like Lutz’s face.
@ kixstart
You are thinking clearly, sir. I wonder myself how that 13% reduction in warranty claim figure has been manipulated.
This thread is good evidence of the perceptual quality issue GM faces. Assuming Hresko is correct, how do you get people to believe it? Has the bear cried “wolf” one too many times? It’s certainly possible, and given that cranking up revenue is GM’s only real chance to get out of this mess, I wonder how they will accomplish it (they haven’t really told us anything about that plan yet…)