First we had Forbes’ columnist Jerry Flint bellowing (meekly) “Remember the Maine!” Now we’ve got Automotive News‘ [AN, sub] engineering beat reporter Richard Truett defending Detroit in that scary ass demented stalker fan club president sort of way. “Here’s what I find especially disturbing: Whenever there’s a story about one of the Detroit automakers on a Web site that allows readers to comment at the end of the article, you can count on loads of vile bile from respondents who can’t wait for GM, Ford and Chrysler to go out of business. For the most part, these are angry people. But… I wonder: How long does GM have to be punished for making Chevrolet Vegas and Oldsmobile diesels or relying too long on the fat profits of trucks and SUVs? When does Ford get forgiven for the Pinto and other crimes against auto mobility? When will Chrysler be let off the hook for making everything out of the K car and for the rotten minivan transmissions in the early 1990s. When will people — environmentalists, especially — chastise Toyota for making its share of gas-guzzling behemoths? WHY CAN’T YOU JUST LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE?” I added that last bit, obviously. Anyway, there’s more after you click on that “more” button below
“I have friends at Ford and Chrysler just like Bradshaw and Welburn and Stephens — the friendliest, most unselfish people you could want to meet, hardworking guys who are trying their best to hang on in a bad situation…
“But the toxic comments attached to Web stories just keep coming, like this one: “With incompetent clowns like this running GM and Ford and Chrysler — it is no wonder that the Big Three is well on its way of becoming the Big Zero. How could the leadership of these companies be this bad?” They just rub a little more salt into a very bad wound that is starting to look as if it may never heal.”
Note to Richard: you might want to spend a little time reading comments about RECENT GM products and ask yourself a simple question: why should anyone risk their hard-earned money on buying products made by the incompetent clowns running GM, Ford and Chrysler? You know, assuming they are, based on past performance.
Here’s some insight for you – GM and F instead of spending time and $$$ on building better cars, reducing costs, and creating synergies within their businesses to ultimately increase shareholder value and job satisfaction, have teams of lawyers and investigators who pursue those who post negatively about them on message boards like Yahoo, TTAC, etc.
That’s a sure-fire sign that they have their priorities completely screwed up if you are hoping for a turnaround.
However, if you are short their stocks or long Toyota/Honda/etc. and just want to make money, they are playing right into your hands with this strategy of “catching the small fish”.
It’s actually sad to see what has happened to Ford and GM. Really. But they deserve it. Automotive News is only feeding the fire by calling out those who say/blog what they see in Ford and GM – which is a fact – diversity programs and a bunch of NON-WORKING salaried employees and executives created the Ford 500, anything Oldsmobile, the freakin PONTIAC AZTEK, the ugly as heck Ford Taurus. They destroyed the vehicles that made the companies profitable in a diversified portfolio.
UAW workers actually have done nothing (which is what they do anyway).
Short Ford and GM to 0. Bankruptcy is the only way to end this. Make some money too while you’re at it :)
[General Motors and Ford Motor Company] have teams of lawyers and investigators who pursue those who post negatively about them on message boards like Yahoo, TTAC, etc.
Do you have a source on that?
Here’s my personal story with my last GM car….
It was a 1992 Oldsmobile Achieva. In the 6 years that I owned it it had a leaking head gasket, 3 alternators replaced, the radiator replaced, a bad switch in the transmission causing the car not to back into 1st gear after highway driving, both front brake rotors replaced, both coil packs replaced, coil tower replaced, front struts and rear shocks replaced, and the ignition switch broke on it leaving me stranded.
Here’s the great part. When I was researching a replacement car for it on MSN’s used car review page I looked at the review of the 2003 Chevy Cavalier. One of the frequent trouble spots the 2003 Cavalier was for broken ignition switches. That’s right folk, ELEVEN FUCKING YEARS LATER and thir cars STILL have the same problems !.
Screw GM.
It looks like Britney is expecting rain.
RF,
How DARE YOU call a duck a duck. The temerity!
The short answer is……..never.
Never will GM be forgiven for the Vega nor Ford for the Pinto.
My last GM built vehicle was from the late 1990s … you known, the ones with chronic intake manifold gasket failures and a host of other shouldn’t be there problems.
When I needed GM’s support as a customer I got told tough luck. I’m not the only one. In fact, there are millions of once loyal customers who the 2.8 pissed off and sent on their way over the years. Eventually a company runs out of customers to send running away.
Here’s the comment I posted over at AN:
So they’re your friends and you like them. That doesn’t mean they’re doing a good job.
The sins of Detroit are not confined to the distant past. Operating TrueDelta’s Vehicle Reliability Survey, I continue to hear of cases where these companies lose once loyal customers through “customer care” that doesn’t remotely warrant the name.
I’ve had the unfortunate experience of experiencing Ford’s and Chrysler’s “customer care” first hand. In both cases I asked if they’d rather take care of the problem or lose a customer. They said they’d rather lose a customer.
That’s not how you stay in business.
I’ll be expanding on this theme in an editorial I’m about to write.
Interestingly, Truett himself wrote a half-page story just a few months ago about the poor quality he perceived in his 2006 or so Ford Mustang.
Why is ambiguity so difficult for some people?
Yes, the Big 3 have made some lousy cars, in fact, they continue to make some lousy cars. AND, some very nice people work for the very same companies.
These two facts are not in opposition to one another. We can be angry at the Big 3 and also saddened that so many workers are losing their livelihoods.
Lutz is a jerk; Mikey is a good guy. Case closed.
Yeah, I don’t buy lawyers scouring the internet for bad comments. We’d have heard that (or been sued) already.
I’ll forgive Ford when those Euro models come in and aren’t f’d up. I’ll forgive GM when they don’t constitute 2/3 of the worst of the worst used cars. Until then GM’s just whispering “I didn’t mean to hurt you, I’ve changed this time.”
Individually, I think we’ve forgiven the Big-3 over and over. At some point they must be accountable to either be IN the car business or to get out of the way.
If Hyundai can make the transformation in 10 years there isn’t any reason a company with the resources of Ford and GM couldn’t do the same. (Making one or two good cars every so often isn’t enough, they need to make them consistently and improve them regularly.)
I’m no longer interested in buying a Big-3 product when there are plenty of good, American made transplants available that offer better ownership experience.
Two points…
(1) Burning someone on the second largest purchase of their lives will leave a long memory.
(2) You still have not addressed the problem of how your dealers, who represent you, treat their customers.
My best friend is an engineer at GM. He’s a great engineer, and they keep assigning him to things that need to be fixed. Still, it’s an uphill battle.
He worked on the GMT900 and said the manager was great, had suppliers in the meetings, weekly meetings, kept everybody on deadlines and on target, etc. Now he’s on a different project and the manager is a moron. His hard work is negated by the stupidity of those above them. Styling takes precedence over engineering, and reliability takes a back seat to cost saving measures.
I feel bad for my friend, but there is only so much he can do. And I don’t think GM should be bailed out so bad managers can have a job.
There is a BIG distinction that needs to be made:
There are some people that have a chip on their shoulder and want the big three to actually “poof” disappear.
And then there are other people (a much larger number it seems) that want Chapter 11 Bankruptcy reorganization for the big three so that they can free themselves of bad dealers, managers and employees and start over again as fresh companies that might have a chance of becoming the great companies that they once were.
Those cheering for Chapter 11 are the people that truly want long term success for the big three and the history that they represent.
If someone really hates the big three then they should hope for a government bailout. They should hope that the big three all merge together, become “too big to fail”, and then become our version of British Leyland. Until the government gets sick of supporting the big three and sells them to a foreign auto company. And then that company finds their brands to be redundant and sells the big three to India or China.
The big three need reorganization just as badly as Britney needed (and probably still needs) rehab.
It seems Detroit doesn’t really get the depth of public anger against them. Purchasing a lousy vehicle from a crooked dealer and trying to get justice in the form of warranty work is like being molested. It leaves permanent psychological scars. No matter how good the candy that is being offered, those that have been molested will never take that candy again.
Adub: “He worked on the GMT900 and said the manager was great, had suppliers in the meetings, weekly meetings, kept everybody on deadlines and on target, etc. Now he’s on a different project and the manager is a moron. His hard work is negated by the stupidity of those above them. Styling takes precedence over engineering, and reliability takes a back seat to cost saving measures.”
This plays itself out over and over and over again at GM. In design, development, and production; the people who care and do great work, can’t fix the screw ups as fast as they’re forced on them.
I’ll say it a thousand times:
“Just compete.”
All any automaker needs is the same reliability, dependability, refinement, quality, and all of the other reasons why so many people are buying “the most popular” cars.
Got a third-rate pile of unreliable garbage that finishes dead last in every comparo from Motor Trend to Consumers Reports to Car and Driver to Edmunds dot com?
Well, golly, maybe that’s why your company has been heading straight down the toilet.
“With incompetent clowns like this running GM and Ford and Chrysler — it is no wonder that the Big Three is well on its way of becoming the Big Zero. How could the leadership of these companies be this bad?”
Did I write that? If I didn’t, I wish I did.
What? The Vega, Pinto and the K-cars are sooo passe. Get with the times! Now we have the Caliber, Sebring/Avenger, the Ion/Cobalt/G5 and the uglified 10 year old Focus!
Its a shame that the best car I mentioned (Focus) is one with a 10 year old chassis design. Why would I get that when a pre-owned Euro Focu…er…Mazda 3 5-door with low miles for $14-15k?
Also, has he driven ANY Chrysler without a V8? HELLO!!! Mediocre and wheezy motors (V6 Charger/300) coupled to lazy auto transmissions.
GM: Cobalt. Sure the mileage is very good but you do have to drive them around corners from time to time. And the interior is downright depressing.
I don’t think there is anything else say except that the new SS is the only one worth getting and even then its an arguable purchase as you have to look at it from the outside and drive it from the inside.
+1 on people have a long memory in regards to being burned on their 2nd biggest purchase. No one I know enjoys paying for bi-monthly repairs while they’re paying a note. Whenever someone I know considers a domestic purchase I tell them not to finance for more than 3-4 years.
I’ll forgive Detroit for the POS I bought in the past when they return the money I paid them back to me. The worst Japanese car I had was better than all of the Detroit cars I had. My biggest complaint with a Honda I had was that the seat material did not make it to 100K. The material developed holes and rips and required some fixes. Besides that ALL of the Hondas and Toyotas I owned in the past had over 100K on them before they needed any repair. A Ford I owned required so much work done on it at 70K that the price of repairs exceeded the value of the car, that’s when I went Japanese. Unless Detroit has competition they will continue to turn out the same crap over and over. Chrysler transmissions are still crap, their designs are horrible and they deserve to go belly up. GM and Ford need to pull their heads out and look towards the future. Both have successful European models they could sell in the US. It seems to me that Detroit car design is stale, living in the past, and is overly influenced by grandmothers in Dubuque. Why do they waste so much money on designing retro vehicles when past retro vehicles have not sold very well? They generate lots of hype but the sales aren’t there. It is unbelievable that Detroit complains so much about foreign cars when the solution to their problem is to just make better cars. Detroit executives are to blame for the dim-witted design choices they make and for the greed they display. Get rid of them.
Hate on the domestics all you want, but the basic problem with the US economy is that more money leaves the country via imports (oil, cars, profits of foreign companies with operations here, caviar, french wine, ALDI grocery stores…)than comes in from other countries. What does the US export that offsets these imports? Not nearly enough.
If the domestics tank, the cars they sold will be replaced with other cars, certainly some built here, but more built overseas. Even MORE money leaves the US economy. And fewer people here will have jobs, meaning even fewer dollars get spent in the US, and the cycle worsens.
The US has to figure out how to keep more money in our economy. The domestics going out of business is going to be tragic for America.
I will forgive Detroit right after I forgive Microsoft for making Vista.
66nova: “The domestics going out of business is going to be tragic for America.”
You ALWAYS get this argument on any big 3 thread. In other words, “Nice economy you have there, a pity if something happened to it”. Extortion pure an simple. So lets say we don’t want this “tragic” thing to happpen. At what point would you say we should let them die? When they don’t sell a single car? Would we have to pay people to take the cars and drive them?
In my opinion , the domestics are tragic for america the way they are. Let the workers retrain and change careers, I’ve done it twice. does building domestics give you brain damage that precludes you from ever doing anything else for a living?
Nut– Would you like fries with that?
Re: “But the toxic comments attached to Web stories just keep coming, like this one:”
Truett then posts a quote excoriating the Big 3. Too bad he deleted part of that quote that was very relevant (the quote came from an Autoblog poster and is covered in today’s Autoblog). Nice job Truett.
My wife and I finally gave in and bought a domestic, a 1995 Sable wagon (new – back in ’95). Apart from a myriad of minor problems, and there are no “nickle and dime” repairs any more, the car went through three head gaskets. Keep in mind the Taurus/Sable range was then 10 years old and the 3.8 litre engine was well established, yet these A-holes still couldn’t get it right. We finally dumped it for a Mazda which has been trouble free for 120,000 km.
I drive an 11 yr old VW that shares alot of parts with an ’84 VW. Control arms, seat frames, seat sliders, lots of clips and plastic parts, engine is a of direct lineage, tranny is similar, etc.
My 9 yr old Honda is the same.
I don’t mind tried and true designs if they work right. I am pretty angry when I see a part I know a car company has used for decades still being used and still failing.
The ignition switch in my VW is a good example. It is nearly the same switch as found in my ’72 VW Beetle, a former ’72 VW camper, my ’78 VW Westfalia, and my ’84 VW Rabbit.
They all fair for the same reasons and often several times over 200K miles. They are cheap thankfully but they do require a person’s time and effort to replace. All VW would have to do is use more durable plastics or switch to a ceramic perhaps or use relays to reduce the current passing through the switch.
The $14 is not a big concern. It’s the fact that these switches eventually handle so much current that they melt internally and the contacts no longer do their job b/c they can’t touch.
It was engineered for a car with a radio and lights. Now they are found in a car with power everything, fuel injection, and air conditioning.
That’s a dumb quality problem that shouldn’t be a problem.
With the current age of the internet – car makers and politicians have some wonderful tools available to them.
They can cruise the ‘net just like we do and see what fails on their cars via the enthusiast sites.
They can collect opinions and suggestions that we make but it surely doesn’t look like they are listening.
Of course it maybe like mentioned several times above that the managers just don’t care what their worker bees or consumers have to offer. Initial quality is their only concern, and concerns about costs during the warranty period.
The car company is too cheap to fix their problems and that would confirm a corporate culture that have long been alluded to here at TTAC that is ultimately doomed to fail.
They must think more of the same is good enough for the peasants. Much the same way our politicians seem to think their lies and half-truths just won’t be noticed by us average voters or we won’t be able to put two and two together and realize we are being lied to or that we won’t demand better information from the candidates before we vote for them. All we get are verbal promises. What we need are printed explanations of their plans and how they are going to pay for those plans.
Evidence that they have a good grasp on the nation’s current situation and a detailed explanation of what they intend to do about it.
This isn’t 1956 where the American citizens are a captive audience whose only sources of information are the big media outlets where we have to believe what they tell us in the papers, TV news, and on the radio b/c we have few other sources. This isn’t 1956 where we only have Detroit’s products to choose from either.
Other countries appear to be more innovative and more quality oriented.
What has happened to America? Has greed taken over?
Admittedly cars are a major purchase but the hate directed at the domestic auto companies, Detroit, Michigan and the people who live and work here is way over the top. Believe me, Wall Street, Fannie/Freddy and their Democratic enablers (Dodds got a sweetheart mortgage, Barney Frank’s live in boyfriend was a Fannie Mae executive, Reps Meeks and Waters played the race card over risky mortgages) did more to mess up our economy than the less than stellar performance of Big 2.8 managers and execs.
Looking through these comments I see mention of a 1992 Olds Achieva and a 1995 Ford Taurus. I wonder if the same folks bitching about American cars made more than a decade ago won’t buy a Kenmore washer because their vacuum cleaner they bought 15 years ago was junk. Do they boycott Singer sewing machines because the company has, for decades, stopped stocking replacement parts for non-current models? Imagine a Chevy dealer saying “you’ll have to buy a new one because we don’t fix the old ones” the way software companies stop supporting legacy application versions. Do American consumers avoid buying a HDTV from LG because Goldstar (and most other Korean goods a decade or more ago) made such crap that they had to rebrand the company (LG stands for Lucky Goldstar)? Do they say bad things about Seoul because the first Hyundais and Kias sold here were so low on quality that the company had to invest a ton in insurance (aka extended warranties) to entice Americans to give them a second try? Will the Toyota owners whose engines were damaged by sludge say, 10 years hence, that they’ll never buy anything made by the Toyoda family (the way people associate the inept Detroit Lions with FoMoCo)?
Bozoer Rebbe:
Since I’m one of the people that had a bad experience with a 1995 Taurus (Sable actually), it appears you have answered your own question:
“Do they say bad things about Seoul because the first Hyundais and Kias sold here were so low on quality that the company had to invest a ton in insurance (aka extended warranties) to entice Americans to give them a second try?”
If the N. American manufacturers are so cock sure of their quality, let them do what you stated about the Korean companies. Give me a long term warranty and maybe I’ll give Ford another try. The ball’s in their court.
the reason we hate these companies is because they built those stinkers in the first place, and they CONTINUE to build pieces of shit when they damned well know how to and can build fine automobiles.
Yeah, seeing Americans beat up Americans will always draw some defense. That is not surprising. But the skew shown here shows how many have been basically embarrassed to have such mediocrity represent U.S. design and manufacturing for so long.
Let ’em burn.
But, there’s just too many superb engineers, designers and marketers to stay down. Personally, after all the smoke clears, I’m pretty stoked to see what company comes next that better represents what this country is capable of.