More than 90k purchasers of ’02 – ’05 Saturn Vues and ’03 – ’04 Ions have opted for GM’s VTi continuously-variable transmission. And though it’s tempting to trot-out ye olde caveat emptor, GM is taking responsibility for the widespread failure of its cogless boxes. Since the transmissions cost $4k – $5k to replace, and the preliminary settlement covers repairs, car rentals, towing and trade-in losses, plaintiff lawyers reckon GM could be on the hook for up to $100m. Meanwhile, according to Automotive News, GM’s lawyers demonstrate the carefree optimism of their corporate masters, estimating final settlement costs at $10m – $20m. The settlement will include payments to a yet-to-be-determined class of Vue and Ion owners based on the mileage of the vehicle when the transmission failed, and whether owners purchased the vehicle new or used. The vehicles must have failed within 125k miles or eight years of the purchase date. Although GM lawyer Joe Lines was happy to call the $90 – $100m cost “wildly exaggerated,” he declined to provide a failure rate for the transmission. More tellingly, the settlement means that GM must agree with the “exceptionally prone to premature failure” characterization in the original lawsuit.
Find Reviews by Make:
Read all comments
I know people will come here and knock the cars and transmissions (deserved), but this is good it is being taken care of.
What this doesn’t make clear is: Was this a lawsuit GM lost or was it the threat of a lawsuit that caused GM to instead take care of the problem? “Plaintiff lawyers’ makes me think it was a lost lawsuit, while “GM is taking responsibility for the widespread failure of its cogless boxes” makes me think this was a voluntary item.
If indeed GM is doing all this voluntarily, it should be commended. Toyota’s truck frame issue is one area where they did the right (and horribly expensive thing). Honda’s automatic transmissions another (though I’m not so sure Honda went far enough). It sounds like GM might be doing something similar.
How come Chrysler hasn’t replaced their fantastic transmissions yet? :)
The fact that the lawyers are involved indicates to me that GM was forced to do the right thing. There was nothing voluntary about it.
Also buried in the article is a useful nugget of information: vehicles must have failed within 125k miles or eight years of the purchase date
This tells me that GM thinks 125K miles is the useful life of their vehicles, which is exactly half of what I expect out my vehicles.
I suppose it’s because I live in the city, where my traveling distances are much shorter than in rural areas, but I think 125k is a a lot of miles to put on a car. It’s great if a car can hold up for that long, but once it hits the century mark, all bets are off for longevity as far as I’m concerned.
This tells me that GM thinks 125K miles is the useful life of their vehicles, which is exactly half of what I expect out my vehicles. – crackers
GM reportedly recently increased its durability specification. Formerly key parts were designed to last only 80,000 miles. They increased it to an incredible, for GM, 100,000+ miles. Some parts are even specified to last all of 120,000 miles. Wowee!
http://tinyurl.com/56wnfx
I was hoping the caption would read “Negative Ion”
seoultrain :
I was hoping the caption would read “Negative Ion”
Done.
Typical of GM. I would like to know what part failed and was it due to reduction of costs for an expected life of 50K, 75k, 100k miles.
GM gives bonuses for reduction of costs to engineers as long as the life expectancy achieves GM bench mark. I would like to know what GM bench marks are.
Mine ar 200k for a car and that is what I get plus some on my Buick 3.8, 4 speed autos.
crackers —
To be fair to GM for a moment, they only seem to be implying here that the life of their TRANSMISSION need not exceed 125,000 miles.
The vehicle the transmission is in can keep going and going.
Seen more than one Corolla with a 160,000-mile automatic transmission failure. That’s excellent service in Atlanta traffic, but not the 250,000 miles you seem to demand.
Most Detroit cars that go to junkyards unwrecked are constitutionally sound but for one or two big-ticket drivetrain items.
The only cars I ever drove where it seemed that ALL of the systems were entirely negotiable were a 1979 Ford (of Europe) Fiesta and a 1986 Yugo.
Gee, I can’t understand why GM can’t rid itself of the “Perception Gap”.
Anybody hear of troubles with Nissan’s CVT? Or even Chrysler’s?
The fact that Chrysler seems to make a more durable CVT than GM speaks absolute volumes.
I have read too many Death Watches. When I read “continously variable lawsuit” I thought it was all about Delphi.
Anybody hear of troubles with Nissan’s CVT?
You will if you google up ‘Nissan CVT failures’
The recall was not GM’s idea. Based on past performance GM does nothing to help their customers unless they are brought to court. Look at their coolant problem, head gaskets, rocker gaskets and the list goes on. This is the reason for the perception gap. I can’t remember when GM has ever voluntarily done a recall.
From the BW articled linked by Gardiner Westbound: “It used to be, for example, that key parts were designed to last only 80,000 miles. That has increased, say GM executives, to well over 100,000 miles, with many parts specified to last 120,000 miles.”
Holy ****, I’ve never seen it actually admitted to in print before. 80k miles as a target lifetime for key parts means a distribution of failures centered at 80k miles, which means some significant number were expected to fail even sooner than that. Now GM is upping that to 100k miles. What a crock! GM makes a big deal about advertising it’s 100k mile tune-up requirement, but forgets to tell you that everything is designed to fail at about that time.
No wonder the typical GM vehicle is a load of garbage after six or so years on the road for that is what is was designed to do.
I don’t know what Honda’s engineering target durability numbers are, but I can tell you from having one Honda at well over 80k miles that nothing has failed yet except for one electrical part; which Honda unilaterally extended the warranty on because even though it survived the normal warranty period, the durability wasn’t up to Honda standards.
I can tell you after owning many GM vehicles I have gotten alot more miles then 120K and things did not just start falling apart at some point all at once as you say, that’s stupid. I have a Impala that went 305,000 miles on the engine, I had the valve covers off once and 1 timing chain. One of my current cars is a 88 Ford Escort that people always say that thing won’t last but it’s so far at 142K and has been great. Hardly burns oil and get’s 35 mpg. You have to take care of things. That’s the key! It’s a fact that people take better care ofbthere foreign cars then they do American cars. I know because I’ve been in the service biz for both!
Dude, Dude, Due, GM has too many hands in its pockets. They have to cut costs everywhere, Micky Mouse engineer everything. They just can’t compete with Japanese car makers when they got union workers, CEO glut and greed and in-fighting and not enough low pay workers and Asian engineers who die from overtime. Have you seen the materials and design of their trucks. Who the hell thought to put the door handle in that place in side the truck, the materials are crap, etc.
The cars are crap because, to skim any profit, they cut corners everywhere.
Repairs are all about getting people to come in sooner and buy a new car. When everything goes to hell around the same time people are stretched to the breaking point and cave-in and buy a new car. In the end they are always having a car payment. Why let the customer escape the trap? They need your money.
It probably doesn’t matter much to you folks, but that article was written two years ago, so these changes in specifying the minimum amount of time a part should last without failure isn’t something new.
But hey, if digging up old articles to prove your point floats your boat, whatever.
Again, what has happened to GM? The CVT in my Audi was flawless.
On the plus side-the ION and VUE were not Civic/Camry popular. Imagine what that would cost.
Then again, maybe if their durability standards were higher the vehicles would be more popular.
Hmmmmm…
Bunter
It probably doesn’t matter much to you folks, but that article was written two years ago, so these changes in specifying the minimum amount of time a part should last without failure isn’t something new. – quasimondo
It will require a decade to design and produce parts that meet the inadequate revised specification and replace the fleet built to the former durability standard.
Trumpeting a 100,000-mile tune-up interval for cars engineered to fail at 80,000-miles speaks volumes about GM’s business ethic.
“Perception gap” my ass.
I think we are avoiding the biggest concern here – that fact that there were some people who bought an Ion and Vue in the first place.
Trumpeting a 100,000-mile tune-up interval for cars engineered to fail at 80,000-miles speaks volumes about GM’s business ethic.
“engineered to fail.” Interesting choice of words to describe a part’s MTTF.
GM reportedly recently increased its durability specification. Formerly key parts were designed to last only 80,000 miles.
Considering that every GM vehicle I ever had always seemed to toss an alternator and a starter at right around that milage, I would believe that.
Anyway, it’s good to see GM standing up and taking the hit on this one. Too bad that it took a few lawsuits to get them to do so.
An expected lifespan of under 200K is just too little for what a vehicle costs to purchase and operate. I think GM would have gotten better press if they had put the threshold at 150K miles.
FWIW we have a Vue in the family at 80K miles and the CVT is on it’s way out. It’s been offered to me at a good price but I just can’t bear to own it knowing that the tranny quality is dubious and the cost to repair would be staggering.
I’m going stick with my VW/Honda cars with five speed trannies. They easily last 200K miles+. 162K Honda, 153K VW = so far. VW has had alot of little things go wrong, Honda has needed almost nothing be maintenance.
I agree with the commenter above – you can’t let the problems pile up.
John Horner :
Holy ****, I’ve never seen it actually admitted to in print before. 80k miles as a target lifetime for key parts means a distribution of failures centered at 80k miles, which means some significant number were expected to fail even sooner than that. Now GM is upping that to 100k miles. What a crock! GM makes a big deal about advertising it’s 100k mile tune-up requirement, but forgets to tell you that everything is designed to fail at about that time.
John, that’s quite likely a misrepresentation of the truth. No automaker is going to invest in the massive amount of testing necessary to take a statistically significant sampling all the way to 80k or more miles to center the failure distribution at that mark.
Life or reliability measures are probably going to be stated in terms of R90/C90 reliability. So for a R90C90 life of 80k miles, you will have a 90% statistical confidence that 90% of the products will survive to 80k miles. That’s a VERY different picture than a distribution of failures centered at 80k miles.
Part of the reason for this is that many components, particularly electronics, do not fail in a normal distribution. Electronics suffer from infant mortality but the ones that don’t die immediately tend to live until they all give up the ghost due to long-term NVH/heat exposure (failure distribution of |___/ ). Choosing the proper estimated failure distribution or beta-shape for the R/C calculation is critical and where you could see companies like GM screwing the pooch on items such as a CVT where there isn’t enough field data to be confident you have selected the proper beta value. Pick the wrong beta, and you’ve screwed up your sample size or required test life to achieve your R/C rating, and then you have no idea exactly what reliability you’ve engineered into your product.
BTW, GM’s CVT was jointly developed with Fiat and was manufactured in Hungary.
“Negative Ion…”
Hahaha, you guys crack me up! Thanks for that.
John Horner :
From the BW articled linked by Gardiner Westbound: “It used to be, for example, that key parts were designed to last only 80,000 miles. That has increased, say GM executives, to well over 100,000 miles, with many parts specified to last 120,000 miles.”
Holy ****, I’ve never seen it actually admitted to in print before. 80k miles as a target lifetime for key parts means a distribution of failures centered at 80k miles, which means some significant number were expected to fail even sooner than that. Now GM is upping that to 100k miles. What a crock! GM makes a big deal about advertising it’s 100k mile tune-up requirement, but forgets to tell you that everything is designed to fail at about that time.
Oh sure! You can start with the water pump, which almost always fails between 70,000 and 85,000 miles. While you’re fixing that, you might as well swap out all of the belts and hoses. And you might replace that timing belt/chain. You know that chain is only made of nylon/plastic? Then around 75,000 miles, you can expect your MAP (Manifold Air Pressure) sensor to fail. That’s usually about two weeks before or after your O2 sensor. Unless your main computer module has called it quits, which means that your car is already in a parked state.
Once you get all that crap fixed, you had better start saving up the cash to fix the automatic door lock solenoids and the power window actuators. As a guideline, that’s $500 four times over.
Around 80,000 miles, you’ll probably have a motor mount or two fail. Hopefully it’s just the one that holds the tranny up. That’s the cheapest one to fix. If it’s one of the others, you’ll probably have to pull (or partially pull) the engine. Have fun doing or paying for that…
No wonder the typical GM vehicle is a load of garbage after six or so years on the road for that is what is was designed to do.
Yes, it is.
I don’t know what Honda’s engineering target durability numbers are, but I can tell you from having one Honda at well over 80k miles that nothing has failed yet except for one electrical part; which Honda unilaterally extended the warranty on because even though it survived the normal warranty period, the durability wasn’t up to Honda standards.
My Mazda Miata was also better built. I had the timing belt replaced at regular 60K intervals, and when I got to 120K, I decided to also have the water pump replaced, just out of principle. But it hadn’t broken down or anything.
And my current Toyota Prius is in that same area, 70,000 miles. I guess I’ll find out if things start to break soon…
GM’s lawyers seem to be pretty convinced that GM’s dealers will help keep the total costs under $20M and based on how they take care of current customers with issues I can see how that’d be easy.
I’m sure GM will claim all sorts of loopholes, exceptions, and expensive labor that the customer will have to cover themselves when they come in with they’re Ion on a hook. They’re good at telling their customers that THIS particular car didn’t follow the necessary process required to qualify for the free replacement. And then demand $100 just for bringing the car in along with a quote for $4k for the replacement transmission.
Oh, and good luck selling an Ion or a Vue with a CVT, even if it’s currently working. Just another benefit of owning GM that the salesman didn’t tell you about.
GM has a sense of humor. The burglar alarm that keeps no one out but the owner is built with a copper wire that bends everytime you turn the key to on or off or whatever. The GM folks decided to make that copper wire 26 gauge. I mean thin.
Now when this wire fails and it will you will not be able to start your car. Now, every thief in the business knows what two wires to jump for deactivation of this security system. that has now permaneantly shut down your car.
The fun part for this $400 joy ride (fix) is the dealer will tell you by law that he has to reinstall this BURGLAR alarm instead of a 25 cent resistor. So you can do this over and over…. By the way if you put in the resistor your key would cost $3 not $50
Oh sure! You can start with the water pump, which almost always fails between 70,000 and 85,000 miles. While you’re fixing that, you might as well swap out all of the belts and hoses. And you might replace that timing belt/chain. You know that chain is only made of nylon/plastic? Then around 75,000 miles, you can expect your MAP (Manifold Air Pressure) sensor to fail. That’s usually about two weeks before or after your O2 sensor. Unless your main computer module has called it quits, which means that your car is already in a parked state.
Once you get all that crap fixed, you had better start saving up the cash to fix the automatic door lock solenoids and the power window actuators. As a guideline, that’s $500 four times over.
Around 80,000 miles, you’ll probably have a motor mount or two fail. Hopefully it’s just the one that holds the tranny up….t…
Are you serious? I’ve owned some crappy cars in my youth and I never had to do most of this stuff…and most were the maligned American product…
“GM has a sense of humor. The burglar alarm that keeps no one out but the owner is built with a copper wire that bends everytime you turn the key to on or off or whatever. The GM folks decided to make that copper wire 26 gauge. I mean thin.
Now when this wire fails and it will you will not be able to start your car. Now, every thief in the business knows what two wires to jump for deactivation of this security system. that has now permaneantly shut down your car.
The fun part for this $400 joy ride (fix) is the dealer will tell you by law that he has to reinstall this BURGLAR alarm instead of a 25 cent resistor. So you can do this over and over…. By the way if you put in the resistor your key would cost $3 not $50”
I had a Grand Am that locked me out and after a 5 minute search on the internet found out which 2 wires that needed attention. Dealer wanted $450 to install a new ignition switch. Pathetic.
I should have read this news post earlier. Our Cadillac DeVille started shitting parts left and right at almost exactly 80,000 miles. And the main seal on the “wonderful” Northstar V8 crapped out shortly after that, leading to a partial engine rebuild, $2500. Remember this is the 100,000 mile tune up engine that didn’t last 85,000 intact.
Repairs are all about getting people to come in sooner and buy a new car. When everything goes to hell around the same time people are stretched to the breaking point and cave-in and buy a new car. In the end they are always having a car payment. Why let the customer escape the trap? They need your money.
I think you hit the nail on the head there. I wish I could prove it but I bet while they still had market dominance they figured out they had engineer their cars to fail at just outside the warranty to keep customers coming and the profits real high. If their cars last too long people don’t come right back after 4 or 5 years to buy another one and keep the money flowing.
cdotson’s statistical points are correct and I thank you for that. I would add, however, that GM stated the 80,000 mile target as a design point for “major components”, not for the entire vehicle. So even if every component individually has a 90% confidence of surviving for 80,000 miles you are still going to end up with a car (or truck) which has lots of things failing by that point. The number of components which goes into a vehicle is huge.
In any case, my experience with well maintained GM vehicles is that by the time I (and my friends) hit the 80k mile point there have been multiple over $500 repairs required. My friend’s impeccably maintained and gently driven Impala just racked up a $2200 repair bill at the ripe old age of 4 years and 66k miles. The fuel pressure regulator died and the transmission needed the valve body disassembled, cleaned and reinstalled. He had even changed out the tranny fluid every 30k miles instead of listening to GM’s 100k mile BS.
The reason Chrysler’s CVT is so good is that they don’t make it. JATCO (Former Nissan/Mitsu auto trans people) makes it for them. JATCO also makes the Nissan CVT’s.