Popular Mechanics reckons “GM’s current precarious situation didn’t come about overnight.” Ya think? “Over the past few decades,” writes PM scribe John Pearly Huffman, “GM put some truly terrible products out on the market. Unreliable, uninteresting and flat ugly, these were cars that simply destroyed GM’s reputation.” The usual suspects get their due as PM hands it to the Vegas, X-Cars and Azteks that we all know and hate. But there’s a touch of controversy too. The EV1 was certainly no runaway success, but was it a “car that destroyed GM’s reputation”? I’m not so sure. And then there’s the 1991-1995 Saturns, again not without its flaws, but probably not a permanent stain on GM’s character. Where’s the last-gen Malibu, a car that cemented the mental association between GM and rental fleet mediocrity? Or the Volt, which proved conclusively that GM is no longer a reality-based automaker? I guess everyone has their favorites…
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Only 10?
I had a ’73 Blazer that was an absolute disaster. 11 MPG on the best day ever and I can’t list all the things that died. When towing my boat, the floorboards got so hot that they would burn you.
The worst GM I ever drove, though, was the Cadillac Cimmaron that once I test drove. The trim on the seat fell off when I tried to adjust the seat. The engine was rough and the transmission shifts would give you whiplash. To boot, the salesman treated me like a poor relative.
Hmm.. ‘shopped headstone needs more Photoshop..
“only 10?”
My sentiments exactly. GM didn’t need to build bad cars to damage their reputation. Their corporate culture did it. GM does build a few truly good cars. They also build some (a lot) of truly bad cars. But so do all their competitors. It’s what you do when you realize you’ve made a mistake.
I couldn’t disagree more with the SL, unless they actually meant the 96-02 version. It started getting rather uncompetitive. This was a competitive (initially) car that brought people who otherwise wouldn’t have bought American into the fold, with the above average reliability and an above average dealer experience. And it had what every automaker dreams of: loyal repeat buyers. The SL accomplished its mission of getting them in, GM/Saturn screwed up by not keeping the car competitive or offering a better car than the Opel LS. The Vue was too late, and those small SUV buyers went to CRV/Rav4.
I think they’re right about the EV1 in the top 10, at least from the perspective of those who care about mother earth. It cemented with them never buying GM again. And those folks are pretty vocal.
I agree that the EV1 and the Saturns don’t belong on there. I don’t think the Chevette should be on there either. It was a very popular car among high school students in the early 90’s. It was cheap to buy and drive, and it was reliable. It didn’t have enough power to get new drivers in too much trouble, and its RWD setup provided excellent opportunities for intentional low-speed winter fishtailing and the real-world driver training that comes from that. I don’t think I’d be nearly as competent a driver if I hadn’t spent so much many hours driving sideways in those things!
Late 70’s Chevette was my first car.
Within a week of purchase the shift knob came off in my hand. Thus began a parade of one broken bit after another.
After about a year my dad – a die-hard GM man if ever there was one – said, “wow this car’s a piece of #$%!, let’s get you something else.”
Next car was a Honda, and I’ve not owned a GM product since.
“Only 10?”
56 if you count badge engineering ;)
I’m with Cicero-10 falls far short.
The 80’s alone could fill that and more.
Personally I wonder if the Aztek’s “looks” are the full story. The public has often warmed up to some pretty ugly vehicles.
But does anyone need a minivan (regardless of what GM said we all knew that was what it was) that seats 4 (5 in a pinch) and a roofline that prevent carrying tall objects?
Slow and thirsty also.
Totally pointless vehicle.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Bunter
The Volt should be on this list. Come out initially with a low, sleek design and lots of promises on performance, then promise that this is it. Then do a complete 180.
There was a production Volt prototype outside my building yesterday as I left for work (sorry, no camera phone). Even with all the coverings and zebra paint, you could tell that this was not like the show car. The front end was about as tall as my S-10…..so much for sleek and cool looking. What a POS….I am glad I am not assigned to that project!
GM had been forking us for a few Generations, finally some of us had woke up to the real pain of riding down the Hershey Highway. Now enuf consumers wanted to just closed their Hershey Highway all together.
To name a few Corvair the VW imitator, as we say imitation is the most sincerest form of flattery, Corvair had just about copied everything so well that is like buying knock off Louis Vuitton hand bag from Hong Kong’s blackmarket hawkers, that even a Vuitton expert had a hard time to tell it apart.
The real problem was some how GM was too cheap to put in a proper rear anti-sway bar to cause the rear end lift at high speed. Causes a lot of untimely & un-necessary demise for her operators.
When I went to school in Toronto, a few guys told stories about how these cars had killed , maimed people relentlessly.
Nonetheless the car that had propelled Ralphy Nader to total stardom.
Chebby Vega was a a lemon in a Strawberry skin. Many folks thought GM had the answer to their prayer of small economic cars. It turned out u need a small fortune to keep her running.
A friend for what he did was bought a new Vega to move out to the wild wild West from Ontario. That was the first & last trip for the car, by the time it arrived it didn’t arrive with flying colours, it arrived with flying white handkerchiefs tied neat to the antenna. The 2000 miles trip proved too much for the little engine. He tried to talked to GM, u think GM would have dropped a hot blonde from a Helicopter to his rescue?
Solly no dice, u’ve bought the car for better or for worse.
I know need to say more about recent times, basically they don’t build anything up to snuff.
My Bro had a 87 Vette, he had his share of griefs, namely injectors problems. Not with standing a bunch of minor stuffs that u feel your car had been very much blessed as to count your blessings & shut the F up. Can anybody explain why none in our family weren’t driving new GMs now?
Just talked to a Diesel mech, he says the newer Diesel trucks weren’t delivering the fuel economy what it cracked up to be.
Something we need to ask, are we paying too much for the enviro future?
Thank God that I only owned one out of the group (Vega)and I bought when I was 16 and didn’t know any better…..
I think they’re right about the EV1 in the top 10, at least from the perspective of those who care about mother earth. It cemented with them never buying GM again. And those folks are pretty vocal.
Self professed environmentalists aren’t the only folks who “care about mother earth”. I’d be willing to bet my earnings against those of the producers of Who Killed the Electric Car? that I’ve recycled literally tons more than they have.
I agree with you about the greenies being vocal though (and self promoting too). At a book fair when I challenged Laurie David’s co-author about some of her own hypocrisies regarding energy use, I got shouted down by her environmentalist sponsor and was threatened with arrest for throwing a wrench into their efforts to indoctrinate kids.
Regarding PopMech’s listing the early Saturns, most of the folks I’ve known who owned those Saturns weren’t car enthusiasts and didn’t really care if the transmissions had 3 speeds or 4. It wasn’t so much the first Saturn cars that was a problem, it’s how GM mismanaged the brand. In GM’s mind, Saturn was a brand for people who didn’t like cars.
Ronnie Schreiber
Motorobilia
It’s not that the EV1 was a bad car given its known limitations, just that it did damage GM’s reputation, especially in CA with its “environmental-friendly” Hollywood types. And that’s the point – GM should have never allowed a limited build car to be “leased” to the public when it wasn’t ready for prime time, or at least perceived released only for a PR stunt to prove that electric cars didn’t make sense and few would “buy” them.
The Saturn SL1/2 did have some interesting and unique features, the best of which was the superb Hal Riney advertising campaign for the launch. GM never capitalized on the launch success down the road and hence practically ruined the brand. In some ways, it proves that brand dilution has been a problem for GM. As for the car, it was just ok.
rpn453 :
I don’t think the Chevette should be on there either. … It didn’t have enough power to get new drivers in too much trouble, …
Damn Shove-it damn near got me killed at the Ft. Lauderdale airport. Between the lights, the windshield wipers and the A/C, there was precious little power left for that sorry piece to get out of its’ own way, let along the oncoming car!
Pahaska :
The worst GM I ever drove, though, was the Cadillac Cimmaron that once I test drove.
Remember – it was the “Cimmaron by Cadillac”, not “Cadillac Cimmaron. As if they (Caddy) could distance themselves from that lovely piece of engineering.
Thank you, Roger, for foisting that cheap car on the US populace. Not like GM was building anything significantly better at the time, of course…
At least the landau trim and gear shift T-handle on my mothers newly downsized Monte Carlo had the decency of waiting about 18 months to fall off…
Bruce
I remember the GM diesel fiasco in the early 80’s. One of the engineers that worked on this project was fired because he insisted GM should not use this engine because it would not hold up.
GM was very successful in giving diesel’s an undeserved bad reputation with the American public that can still be seen today.
I disagree. To my mind, the cars that killed GM were the Corolla and Accord. Once Americans found out that they could buy cars that would outlast their payment books, they never went back.
It was NOT the EV1 that did the damage. It was what GM did with the EV1 that did the damage. In the eyes of the greens, GM drove a stake though its heart on the alter of the SUV gas-hog gods.
To name a few Corvair the VW imitator, as we say imitation is the most sincerest form of flattery, Corvair had just about copied everything so well that is like buying knock off Louis Vuitton hand bag from Hong Kong’s blackmarket hawkers, that a Vuitton expert had a hard time to tell it apart.
Copied? Perhaps the air cooled rear engined layout, and the original swing axles out back, but that was about it. The Corvair had a 80 HP six, not a 36 HP four, had unibody construction, not a platform chassis, had “A arm” front suspension, not trailing arms. By most standards, even the first gen Corvair was technologically ahead of contemporary Beetles. Were the Porsche 356 and 911 copies of the Beetle?
The real problem was some how GM was too cheap to put in a proper rear anti-sway bar to cause the rear end lift at high speed.
If GM “copied” VW by fitting the 1st gen Corvair with swing axles, wouldn’t that make VW just as cheap.?
It wasn’t the lack of sway bars that caused the problem, though sway bars would have reduced body roll and made the problem less severe. The problem was that, like all VW Beetles and Buses before 1969, 1st gen Corvairs had swing axles in the back, not true independent rear suspension fitted with axles shafts that had universal or CV joints at both ends. Because they were only jointed at the transaxle end of the shaft, body roll would result in “jacking”, the outer wheel dropping in relation to the body. Without an outboard joint in the axle, the wheel would tilt and not stay square to the ground, reducing the contact patch of the tire.
GM switched to a proper IRS in 1965, 4 years before VW.
Causes a lot of untimely demise for her operators.
Considering that Beetles outsold Corvairs, more folks were killed by that problem in VWs than Chevys.
When I went to school in Toronto, a few guys tols stories about how these cars had killed , maimed people relentlessly.
And we all know that stories told by guys you went to school with are credible accounts of automotive safety.
The car that had propelled Ralphy Nader to total stardom.
What propelled Nader to celebrity was the fact that GM hired private investigators to look into Nader’s life. He sued and won. It was the resultant publicity from the lawsuit that gained Nader great fame, not Unsafe At Any Speed.
Nader, like the producers of Who Killed The Electric Car, could have criticized other automakers but I suppose going after foreign companies isn’t as much fun as saying GM kills its customers.
Ronnie Schreiber
Motorobilia
Thank you, Roger, for foisting that cheap car on the US populace. Not like GM was building anything significantly better at the time, of course…
As I said in another thread, I think Roger Smith is more responsible for GM’s problems than Rick Wagoner. Wagoner didn’t right the ship, but it was Smith who set it on its course.
Ronnie Schreiber
Motorobilia
The 1991-95 Saturn does not deserve to be in this group, despite the oil use problem. These cars were actually fun to drive, and cheap to own, even if not nearly as reliable as Toyotas and Hondas. I suspect the real damage to GM’s reputation from Saturn came from the later models, which had none of the fun of the first generation. Note–Mr. Huffman if you are reading this–that the original Saturn SLx sold more units per year–almost 300k in the best year which was 94 or 95–than the four or five current Saturns.
@Ronnie Schreiber: the first Saturns were promoted as the practical person’s sporty car. It was. The cornering was quite flat, the steering very responsive. It helped that the car weighed less than 2500 lbs. I had shopped it against the Integra. One of my friends who had been a race car driver loved driving my Saturn, and other car afficionados who drove it remarked that it was fun. I bought it because it was the most fun of anything that I test drove that was less than about 15k (in 1993). It also looked cool. Subsequent Saturns have looked dorky (the second gen especially) to inoffensive.
I test drove the thing several times before I bought it. I would corner very hard, and take it on the highway, do very quick lane changes, etc. After I finally bought it, one of the salesmen said they thought I’d been sent by the factory to test them.
I disagree. To my mind, the cars that killed GM were the Corolla and Accord. Once Americans found out that they could buy cars that would outlast their payment books, they never went back.
Good point, but actually, the early Accords rusted terribly, at least in places, unlike California, where it actually snows and road crews use salt.
I remember the GM diesel fiasco in the early 80’s. One of the engineers that worked on this project was fired because he insisted GM should not use this engine because it would not hold up.
One irony is that GM owned Detroit Diesel at the time and could have had them engineer a proper diesel engine.
The Olds diesel and Caddy 8-6-4 were yet more disasters on Roger Smith’s watch. To be fair, the 8-6-4 concept was sound, since cylinder deactivation is pretty commonplace these days. It’s just that 1980s vintage technology wasn’t up to the task of implementing the design.
On balance, I’d say that Smith’s embrace of robotics and his push to modernize GM’s manufacturing were his only successes.
Ronnie Schreiber
Motorobilia
BTW, a case can be made that the Corvette and GM muscle cars also damaged GM in the long run.
SherbornSean: “I disagree. To my mind, the cars that killed GM were the Corolla and Accord. Once Americans found out that they could buy cars that would outlast their payment books, they never went back.”Indeed, the Corolla and Accord certainly did more damage to GM than Saturn or the EV1 ever did. The rest of the vehicles on the list are easily justified, though.
Of particular interest are the volumes that some of these vehicles sold. The Vega sold over 1.5 million from 1971-74, and the X-cars sold over 811k in the first year (and back then, the majority wasn’t rental/fleet sales, either). Those two GM vehicles, alone, would seem to have been a one-two punch that a whole lot of people will never forget.
X-cars deserve. My boss had one, he bought a white one because white is the “iron color”, it lasts the longest of all the colors, everything else being equal. Problem is, the car started to get an orange tinge, like it had Hepatitis. Turns out they forgot to primer it — it was literally rusting from under the paint layer. He went back to Volkswagens…
I agree with you about the greenies being vocal though (and self promoting too). At a book fair when I challenged Laurie David’s co-author about some of her own hypocrisies regarding energy use, I got shouted down by her environmentalist sponsor and was threatened with arrest for throwing a wrench into their efforts to indoctrinate kids.
Man, you must be a real gas at parties.
As for the list, putting Saturn on there is just retarded. It’s the ONLY car that people who shopped imports ever considered (I bought one and liked it); the ONLY small car GM made that CR actually said would be reliable; and it kicked butt in fuel economy over the absolute garbage they sell today to that segment.
For me it was the Chevy Beretta/Corsica twins. Rumored to be designed for National, the examples I drove were rentals. Slowness and poor gas mileage in a compact car.
I agree the diesel Oldsmobiles probably did more damage to GM, and diesels in general, than any other single example mentioned.
1982 Buick Century – every transmission shift felt like a sledgehammer to the lower back and gave the inpression something broke in the drivetrain
Strange that nobody seems to have mentioned–unless I missed it–the mid-’90s Impala, that enormous, bloated whale of a car that even at the time seemed ludicrously oversize.
Ronnie:
“When I went to school in Toronto, a few guys tols stories about how these cars had killed , maimed people relentlessly.”
“And we all know that stories told by guys you went to school with are credible accounts of automotive safety.”
Well, I’ll give you first hand experience. I had a ’63 Corvair (bought used one year old) and twice experienced the dreaded wipe out. Fortunately both times happened when I wasn’t hooning and no traffic around (both times on a wet or damp road) so no damage. Too bad GM waited until ’65 to correct this design flaw.
You missed the mid eighties V-6 which was derived from the venerable smallblock. The part that sucked was how they didn’t re-engineer the crank and the engine was permanently off balance. We had one in a Caprice and another in a Cutlass Supreme.
Add to this the failure of the 8-6-4 and the diesels in quick succession, and something simple and expected (running engines) was no longer a given.
We called it the Supremely Gutless.
In addition, don’t forget the full-sized (FWD) cars of 1985. The previous downsizing in 1977 came off rather well, but the ’85s just looked absurd. The Cadillac de Ville and Eldorado were especially ridiculous. Nobody wanted to spend that kind of money on a car people laughed at. Sales dropped, as I recall.
Everyone bashes GM for killing a BAD car???(EV-1)
And yet all I here on this forum is how G.M should dump this and that….
The car Didn’t work,period!!!
The liability to G.M.in our litigious society forced them to crush em…
Maybe if they had been introduced in ANY other state than California it might have been possible to cure the many ills B-4 the lawsuits began.
By the way…no credit to G.M.for giving it a try?
Not on this forum…..
_
The Saturns helped ruined GM? I don’t think thats entirely true; of course they did feel like Styrofoam cups on wheels. There was a lot more factors than these ten cars that ruined GM. A lot more.
To my mind, the cars that killed GM were the Corolla and Accord.
Exactly. The car that killed GM is the car they never built – a domestic mid-sized car with reasonable performance and good reliability. SUVs and minivans provided a profit margin that allowed the fools at the top to avoid the pain of this mistake for nearly 15 years.
The error with the Saturn line was not necessarily the initial cars, they were good enough for the consumers who buy cars at that price point. No, the problem was GM’s failure to update the car at three years and completely redesign it at five years. Honda and Toyota do this like clockwork. GM and Ford do not, to thier detriment. They seem to be learning now, but the ‘new’ Focus is not new. The new Civic that came out at the same time was all new. To be competitive you must invest in R&D. The big three just never were willing to do that.
Ronnie Schreiber:
If I am not mistaken Rick Wagoner was hired and mentored by none other than Roger Smith in the New York Finance Office.
When Rick was promoted, he readily admitted that he wasn’t a “car guy”
Corvair
Vega
X-cars
8-6-4 diesels
Quad 4 engines that blew headgaskets (Achieva/Grand Am/Skylark).
3.1 liter V-6 with leaking intake manifold gasket.
3.8 liter V-6 with cracked PLASTIC intake manifold.
The Fieros that caught fire.
I don’t agree with;
Pontiac Aztek- It was ugly but that didn’t prevent people from buying other GM cars. Owners love them
Chevette- sold and did well for the most part. people still like them
Hummer H2- no one knows this is GM so it didn’t affect GM
Saturn- see Hummer H2 and the S-series sold in fairly large numbers for such a new car.
The X-cars, Vega and Olds diesels are good choices
Killing the RWD coupes in 1988 for the FWD models hurt I think.
My dad had a brown Chevette. It was purchased new the same year I was born, 1977. By the time I was five, the interior had deteriorated so quickly that there were blankets wrapping the seats to keep the shredded upholstery together. My best friend and next door neighbor John, whose father owned the local Ford dealership, incidentally, pretty much summed it up when he asked my dad from the back seat if the Chevette was “a hundred years old.” Ouch. Things didn’t get much better for us when that Chevette was joined in the driveway that year by a brand-new Pontiac 6000. Mechanically it made the Chevette look like a Honda when after only 9 months the Pontiac’s power steering pump would scream like a scalded cat during any parking-lot maneuvers, embarrassing my mom quite a bit, I recall. Everyone staring at us while it shrieked its way into a parking spot at 1 mph.
25 years later, two nights ago in Manhattan, I was driving east down Houston Street when, all of a sudden, before us was an actual, real life Pontiac Aztec. My girlfriend pointed it out to me by saying, “what… the Hell… is that?” Immediately I recalled my father telling me once that he seriously considered buying one.
I guess you could say that my father was, for many years, a true Detroit loyalist. It was “made in America” all the way for our family. This singular sentiment allowed GM and Ford to sell him cars for decades that were half-baked, badge-engineered, depreciation-heavy piles of shit. My father may have been idealistic, but not stupid. Today his garage houses a Subaru Outback and an ’08 Camry Hybrid. Good luck, GM!
Too bad GM waited until ‘65 to correct this design flaw.
While the shortcomings of swing axles are now well known, I’m not sure that you can call a component that was used by a number of other contemporary manufacturers a design flaw. The best solution? No, but you you can say the same about drum brakes, which were standard equipment on most cars for a decade or more after disk brakes were introduced. While drum brakes won’t cause your car to spin out or roll like swing axles, they do fade and don’t stop as well as disks.
Swing axles were a standard engineering solution in the late 50s and early 60s. They were used on VWs, Triumphs (including the early Spitfires), Porsches and Mercedeses. Like I said, GM went to a true IRS years before VW.
One irony is that in the early 60s, GM was pretty innovative, certainly for American companies. The Corvair wasn’t a typical US compact car. Pontiac made an overhead cam inline 6 and there was the Tempest with the rear transaxle (and swing axles) and flexible drive shaft.
It’s possible that the negative publicity generated by Nader regarding the Corvair made GM more risk adverse and more conservative in their engineering.
Wow, I’m surprised that no one mentioned the disaster that was the HT4100. That engine did more damage for Cadillac than the V8-6-4 could ever dream of. Whoever thought that an aluminum block would work well with iron heads I hope was fired.
I had a ’85 Fleetwood Brougham with a HT4100. I believe it was slower to 60 than a non-turbo diesel W123.
To be competitive you must invest in R&D. The big three just never were willing to do that.
GM & Ford spend about $15 billion/yr on R&D. We can debate if they’re spending it well or not, but you can’t say they aren’t investing in R&D. GM & Ford are in the top 10 global companies in terms of R&D. Interesting, Apple spends a much smaller percentage of revenue on R&D than any of the major car companies and some financial analysts have questioned the wisdom of spending a lot on R&D. I guess spending wisely is more important than spending a lot.
For me it was when my 2 year old x car burst into flames. Vowed to never buy a GM again and haven’t. The 4-6-8 Seville was no winner either.
Someone at TTAC needs to track down a Saturn person and get some facts about how GM killed it slowly. Find out about the abs, cruise control and seat belt improvements that the Saturn people developed but could not employ until the rest of GM caught up.
Then Saturn had to jack up the costs to what the rest of GM wanted to charge.
It is also an interesting story about the Saturn body panels that were virtually indestructable and how GM severely limited Saturn’s ability to advertise such because “heavy metal GM” could see no advantage to fenders that could bounce back from a boot kick with no damage.
Everything that came out of the GM10 program, for starters.
Aaaaaaaaaaack, someone had to bring up (a pun!)the Chevy Beretta/Corsica. I used to work in pharmaceutical sales, and one of my rivals worked at a company that sold dermatological products. They didn’t have to carry big sample packs, so the company downsized the sales reps cars…to the Beretta/Corsica. The pharma company threatened to never lease GMs again unless they took them all back. The sales people were spending too much time f**king around getting their cars repaired.
They missed the entire GM minivan lineup from the dustbusters through the last Chevy Ventures. Not a single reliable and competitive one in the bunch.
I’m in agreement with those that think that the Chevette and early Saturns do not belong on the list.
Despite all the odds against it – the Chevette was a pretty reliable car. It was just very, well, plain.
The Saturns were also remarkably reliable. My brother had one that went well over 200K before he sold it (and it still ran). I knew of others that had similar experiences.
Otherwise – excellent list and right on. Especially the diesel 5.7 – those never went beyond 50K miles without self destructing and the X-cars which had no redeeming characteristics whatsoever.
I’d like to add a few to the list:
The Buick 231 V6. This was a V8 with two cylinders cut off. Unbalanced by design. If you looked at the distributor you could even see the gaps where the two missing spark plug wires would have been.
The ’78 – ’79 Monte Carlo. Overstyled and unreliable. The fake chrome bumper trim falls off on the way home from the dealer. It was a miracle if you could get more than 60K miles from one of these – especially if you had the misfortune under the hood of the above mentioned Buick V6.
Any light blue or silver GM car of the 70s and early 80s. The hood and trunk won’t be blue/silver for very long.
-C
I think PM did a good job of picking the 10 most disappointing GM cars. The point then becomes, why? How could a car maker that thought of itself as an exemplary marketing institution keep coming up with so many duds? It’s not as if they didn’t have the engineering talent. Their list of automotive firsts is second to none. It seems to go deeper than that; ie poor management and seemingly non-existent accountability.
I’d look back further than ’71 (Vega) or even ’60 (Corvair) to the air suspension disaster of 1958 through 1960. You would have thought that one of the largest manufacturers of (successful) air-sprung busses could have tapped the in-house talent there to solve the leaking air-spring problem. Especially as they were affecting their most prestigious (and most profitable) halo senior cars, Cadillac, Buick and Olds.
But no. Bye-bye 50% market share.
The Buick 231 V6. This was a V8 with two cylinders cut off. Unbalanced by design. If you looked at the distributor you could even see the gaps where the two missing spark plug wires would have been.
…especially if you had the misfortune under the hood of the above mentioned Buick V6.
I’m pretty sure you’re thinking of the Chevrolet 229 V6. Honestly it could be both, but that Buick V6 was a great engine.
OK, so we’ve established GM has foisted on the public a whole bunch of engineering disasters.
We also know GM spends billions and billions on research and development. And has a mammoth facility for testing–“proving”–their creations.
So WHY have such fiascoes happened so many times? Incompetent engineers? Incompetent managers who set goals for low cost or production date that can only be met by half-assed ideas? Apathy throughout the design and production cycle (“who cares?”)? Inability to learn from past mistakes?
I’ve said before it’s easier to learn what goes on inside the CIA than the D3’s decision-making processes. But engineering disasters don’t just happen; they were caused. Anyone know why it’s been so common at giant GM? Michael Karesh, did you hear about these blunders when you were studying the company?
The error with the Saturn line was not necessarily the initial cars, they were good enough for the consumers who buy cars at that price point. No, the problem was GM’s failure to update the car at three years and completely redesign it at five years.
Absolutely wrong re failure to update. The ’94 and ’95 (years 4 and 5) sold extremely well. The problem was that the updating turned a cool-looking car into a dud that you couldn’t tell from a Hyundai, a Tercel, or an Oldsmobile,a nd turned a sporty car into something that drove like donkey dung.
@jackc10: would you get it touch with me at motorlegends@aol.com? I’d love to hear more about the way GM treated Saturn.
Let me think of all the great GM cars my family owned:
1. 1980 Chevy Impala, I remember fondly pushing the dead 3 ton behemoth at the young age of 6 with my mom through a busy intersection. It liked to just die at random times, but it’s favorite was when she was trying to make a left hand turn.
2. The 1985 Cadillac Cimmaron that as a kid I remember the radio disintegrating in my hand and I lived in fear that I destroyed my father’s first Cadillac! Little did i know it was Chevy engineering.
3. My grandfather’s Mint Green Caprice Classic, I don’t have many memories of it b/c well it really never ran. I do remember the upholstery was crunchy to the touch.
4. My first car a 1983 Cadillac Eldorado! I loved that car, it was a pile of junk, but I loved that car. My complaint, the backseat was way too small!!
5. 1998 Chevy 1500 Silverado, I was moving cross country, 1st new truck I ever owned. It died 200 miles from my destination, transmission blew! This is the truth it blew at 35,900 (ish) miles and at midnight my three year warranty would have been up! The fun times of getting stuck in a po-dunk town in the middle of Oregon waiting for over a week b/c they cannot find a transmission for one of the “best” selling trucks! I guess everyone else needed them too!
6. The 2005 Monte Carlo I rented for a week while in California. The sun visor fell off resulting in me driving west into the setting sun for 3 hours.
**I will make one note every single one of the GM cars I’ve owned that had something power, at one time or the other it died. Power window’s died during a monsoon/dust storm. Power seats dies after I let my 6′ 5″ friend drive, I’m 5′ 10″. Power stearing, in the Cimmaron, dies during a trip to Cali almost resulting in us dying in the freeway!
Ahh, the memories. After my Silverado transmission blew up, I vowed never would I buy a GM built vehicle again. Although, I do swear by this, there is nothing like driving cross-country in either a Cadillac or a fully decked out Suburban w/King of The Road blaring on the radio. So when I see those ad’s for a fully decked out Suburban, I get an urge…but I squash it like a bug! The Outback and Civic will not share space with such breads as a GM!
5.
I concur with the many other commenters who disagree with the inclusion of 1991-1995 Saturns on PM’s list. It was a bit crude compared to the import competition, but it was light, cheap, fun-to-drive for the price [under $10K], and nearly indestructible. I can personally vouch for the ’92 SL1’s ability to stand up to regular abuse involving four or five 18-to-24-year-olds and multiple half-kegs of beer.
Don’t forget that tens of thousands of people were willing to travel to Spring Hill for a “Homecoming” in the mid-90’s. Understanding exactly how GM squandered that enormous reservoir of goodwill would probably go a long way toward explaining their current predicament.
@Schreiber:
“While the shortcomings of swing axles are now well known, I’m not sure that you can call a component that was used by a number of other contemporary manufacturers a design flaw. The best solution? No, but you you can say the same about drum brakes, which were standard equipment on most cars for a decade or more after disk brakes were introduced. While drum brakes won’t cause your car to spin out or roll like swing axles, they do fade and don’t stop as well as disks.
Swing axles were a standard engineering solution in the late 50s and early 60s. They were used on VWs, Triumphs (including the early Spitfires), Porsches and Mercedeses. Like I said, GM went to a true IRS years before VW.”
This seems a bit disingenuous as an explanation if you lived through that era as a car enthusiast like I did. The Corvair was weird from the start, what with recommended 15/26 psi F/R tire pressures. It was well known that the average joe would put in 26 all round, at which point the car was actively dangerous. I mean, who reads the owner’s manual? There were handling articles in the magazines trying out different tire pressures. Car Life had a good one. The whole topic of the swing axle Corvair was extensively debated well before Nader came along in ’65 as a Johnny-come-lately on the scene. Hell, the ’64 had a compensator bar on the swing axle to stop full swing axle droop, just like the aftermarket ones already available for several years, and what GM already had put on the Corvair Monza for a couple of years. Cynical marketing or what?
The Mercedes had a compensator linkage from the start, the Spitfire was a handful but had about 10 degrees of preloaded negative camber to compensate, so those boys knew it was a nasty cheap design, but both were front-engined, and not weird like the Corvair. Driven all three of those cars, and the Corvair stands out as wacked. The VWs and Porsches did not have a great big flat six hung out back (with a claimed 80 hp, ha, ha. With a Powerglide 2 speed tranny, the Corvair was barely quicker than the Beetle, and in a wind, you’d want to stop the car and wait for the bad weather to be over. Any way you look at it, the car was an absolute dog. Let’s not get revisionist here. It was worse than anything else out there for the first four model years. When Nader blew the whistle, none of us were surprised, other than at his balls for making things SO public.
Detroit held back disc brakes for years (after the rest of the world adopted them) even on otherwise good designs (’66 Toronado). We used to say that it was because they didn’t think of them first — it was those damn Brits at Girling. Volvos had disc brakes on the 122S from the early 60s.
Later on, Detroit held on to pushrods, just ‘coz everyone else was changing to OHC, and you didn’t need ’em anyway. They knew. Pontiac DID bring out the OHC 6 for the ’66 Tempest, which distinguished itself by overheating if you flogged it as Car and Driver related. That was the end of OHCs at GM for decades! Well, the rustbucket Chevette had one. Again as C/D put it, the Chevette was the only third world car made in the USA (Georgia, I believe). It was an utter turd, but tough, if locomotion even after the A pillars had rusted through on the INSIDE of the car is a virtue.
The 1961 Tempest with the rope drive to a rear swing axle was another joke. How long did that last? 2 model years at best. The Olds F85 with the world-beating 2 speed (!) Jetaway tranny and the aluminum V8 was another wonder of the age. Especially with the turbo and water injection. Reliabilty measured in days. Sure GM innovated, but underdeveloped, got burned, and returned to making the usual dross except for the Toronado.
The Buick 231 V6 was a hack job on their small iron-block V8 for the intermediate Special, so had a weird firing sequence. 90 degrees between some power strokes, 150 between others. It loped at idle like an out of breath distance runner, until the two plane crank was developed, at which point it became a tough old bird. Even so, much better than the disastrous aluminum V8 it replaced which GM managed to flog to Rover for further decades of unfaithful service.
Enough of slagging GM. My vote for most cynical piece of crap car foisted on the car-buying public has to be the 1969 Ford Maverick. Delivered with factory-fresh rust to a Ford dealer near you, it was a cheap version of the 1960 Falcon, only 10 years after. The ultimate piece-of-shit Maverick came with a rust through lifetime measured in months, as in 8, two winters worth. The Pinto wasn’t much better rust wise at about 3 winters before the doors rusted through, but at least that was as long as the Vega took if its engine lasted that long.
Yup, looking back on it, I’d have to say GM cars were crap. They were, however, less crappy than most of the others. And then in the early 70s, Toyota and Datsun hit hard. The 240 Z was a rusty sweetie, the 510 a great little car in ’69 what with OHC and full IRS and disc brakes.
The beginning of the end for the General. yeah look at that baby shit-brown 510 over there, their people would say. IRS, OHC, disc brakes. We tried all that and it doesn’t work. Time to get back to making road-hugging overweight dinosaurs like the 1971 Chevrolet. Yup right to this day, the only car the General makes properly is the separate frame, front engine, rear drive vehicle honed after decades of effort into a not bad conveyance. 2009 Silverado, anyone?
@wmba
GM has been doing IRS, disc brakes on four corners and fuel injection for a very long time on the Corvette. Full body on frame was reserved for trucks even by the 70’s, and front discs were on option on most GM cars (if not all) by the 70’s as well. GM always did full/mid size RWD cars right, with a few missteps here and there.
I am not going to make any excuses for the OHV V8, it can defend itself. Same with the Chevy straight six, which Pontiac took and stuck the cam in the head in the 60’s by the way. The V8’s and i6’s that GM was fond of at the time didn’t lend themselves well to being OHC (too big and/or too expensive) and 4 cylinder engines were either too small for the cars Americans were buying or too big to run smoothly. Until the 70’s OHV 4 Cylinders were also very common outside of premium European cars, it was optional on the Datsuns. There was no such thing as a “Premium” small American car at the time so high content 4 bangers just didn’t exist.
All small cars (even the godlike Civic) were unsafe rust buckets filled with electrical gremlins during the 70’s. People bought them because they had to, not because they wanted to.
The one thing Japan got right from the start was that their engines did not die.. ever. The rest of the car might fall apart, but right up until that car gets crushed the engine will continue to function correctly. If the Vega was kept the same but GM threw every last dollar and cent they had into making a reliable motor for it people might have remembered it differently.
That damn Toyota 2T-C would keep going in defiance of all the other important crap breaking on the car.
I’d agree that Saturn didn’t really damage GM, except perhaps from sapping focus from improving Chevrolet et al. Which of course they weren’t going to do anyway.
Saturn is an embarrassment, though, because it showed that GM build and run a decent business model but actively chose to euthanize it in favour of “business as usual”. The sheer potential of Saturn, since pissed away, is amazing.
People (justifiably) rip Roger Smith for a lot of things, but Saturn showed that he at least had a clue about what was wrong at GM though he hadn’t the leadership ability (and perhaps too much ego) to fix it. He was effectively forced to create a proof-of-concept because de-barnacling existing divisions wasn’t possible. And you know, he was right: Saturn brought new, extremely loyal customers and showed GM could build competitive, low-margin product. If Smith and his successors could have infected more of GM with Saturn, rather than the opposite, who knows where it would be today?
I’m pretty sure you’re thinking of the Chevrolet 229 V6. Honestly it could be both, but that Buick V6 was a great engine.
I distinctly recall replacing the rear main seal that blew out on my brother’s ’78 Monte Carlo ~46K miles with beforementioned Buick 231 V6. Car ran like crap from day one. The engine was popular and problems were definitely not restricted to this one particular ’78 Monte Carlo.
To be fair – the engine was re-engineered from its early sliced off V8 hacko origins (including the unbalanced firing sequence and timing) before emerging as the Buick 3800. I wonder if GM renamed it from the “231” to the 3800 to bury the bodies. The 3800, I believe, enjoyed a better reputation.
1998 Chevy 1500 Silverado, I was moving cross country, 1st new truck I ever owned. It died 200 miles from my destination, transmission blew! This is the truth it blew at 35,900 (ish) miles and at midnight my three year warranty would have been up! The fun times of getting stuck in a po-dunk town in the middle of Oregon waiting for over a week b/c they cannot find a transmission for one of the “best” selling trucks! I guess everyone else needed them too!
THANK YOU! I thought I was the only one!
I purchased a brand new 1997 Silverado in December of ’96. Everything that could break on it did.
I made the mistake of picking it up from the dealer at night. The next morning, in the light, I noticed that one of the small body panels (behind the front bumper) wasn’t even painted – it was still dull gray. Things went swiftly downhill from there.
First it was “simple things” like the alternator, wipers (they stopping working while I was on a busy freeway in a very heavy downpour – I thought I was a goner), the fuel gauge sender (requires – by design – replacement of the whole fuel tank to fix), fuel injectors, and, well, the list keeps going… Every few months it was something.
Meanwhile – my wife’s Honda at 118K just kept going without complaint.
Then, at about 72K the engine coordinated an impressive head gasket and rear main seal blowout combo. This is on a truck that had an easy suburbia life. The hardest thing it had to do was haul a few sheets of plywood from Home Depot.
I can’t imagine what things would have been like if it had to actually tow something or be on a farm.
I fell in love with GM products during the muscle car days in high school – now after a lifetime of GM products, this truck finally convinced me I was done with them.
-C
PdxCat “1980 Chevy Impala, I remember fondly pushing the dead 3 ton behemoth”
Me too! Except my parents was a 78. Pity we didn’t know each other, we could have had the world’s slowest, but only Froot Loops powered, heads-up race ever.
The 1961 Tempest with the rope drive to a rear swing axle was another joke. How long did that last?
Funny, a co-worker and his dad restored one of these for the sake of nostalgia. That rope drive was one of the whackiest things I’d ever seen. Coupled with the ‘hay-bailer’ 4, it was something to behold.
The concept of Saturn was good, and the first round of cars was, well, good enough to get things going for them. Most non-enthusiast owners were happy with them, and the frugal minded liked the touches that implied long life, such as spin on trans filters and plastic body panels. They loved the red dots in Consumers, too. No, Saturn failed because the General starved it of innovation and new products. Happy owners never had a new, bigger true Saturn to move up to. So, here was a group of satisfied owners that wanted to perform a “Civic to Accord” move, but there was no “Accord” to go to. Again, a perfect opportunity completely lost, yet again. I just don’t understand how this could have been allowed to happen. The more I dwell on this the more I feel that the best solution is to kill the beast, if it is not dead already.
1978 Olds Delta 88 was the worst new car I ever owned. A true POS. As someone else said, the entire GM10 fiasco. The minivans – I owned one, reliable but poor steering/handling, just no fun to drive, with an interior which would have embarrassed Lada. Corvair was ok, Vega was not. The Chevette sucked – I owned one of those too.
The 1980’s Camry was 20 years ahead of GM. GM has now caught up, but it may be too late.
Rope drive was a clever idea. Pushrods are ok too, it is purely a tradeoff. Pushrods like used on a Harley, are a more compact engine design – lighter weight, lower cg. Overhead cam has more precise valve actuation. Either can be made to work well.
The first brand-new car my dad ever owned was a 1980 Datsun 210 Hatchback. The first cold Iowa winter every plastic part on the car broke. The hatch wouldn’t stay open unless you held it. The car went 0-60 in a month if ever…and when the car needed a new engine part (can’t remember now what it was) the car sat for 3 weeks while the part was ordered. “That’s what happens when you buy a foreign car…” the friendly Datsun dealer helpfully pointed out.
Based on the logic offered up here, I’m sure all Nissans built today suffer from all the same problems. I’ll never own one! I hope everyone can learn from Dad’s experience…ALL NISSAN’S EVER BUILT ARE TERRIBLE AND ALWAYS WILL BE!!
MichaelJ:
You forgot a few:
– That the Executives of Nissan need to be subject to Mengle-like experiments
– That Nissan employees need to slowly starve in poverty
All this to please justice minded TTAC readers.
rmwill:
LOL
No, I’m sure if I could find that old car, in whatever moldering rust-flaked-shape it might be in, if I took it to a Nissan dealership today, Carlos Ghosn would be there to give me a neck massage and soothe my worries by rebuilding the car and making it perfect once again. For free, even though it’s 28 years out of warranty, because that’s the way service works when you buy from a Japanese automaker.
Later on, Detroit held on to pushrods, just ‘coz everyone else was changing to OHC, and you didn’t need ‘em anyway.
wmba,
I wasn’t trying to be disingenuous, just pointing out that the 1st gen Corvair wasn’t the only car with swing axles. Different manufacturers tried different workarounds, like the ones you mentioned, to avoid swing axles inherent problems. GM went with oddball tire pressures. It’d be interesting to hear what kind of back and forth went on between the Corvair engineers and the bean counters.
I suppose that the “rope drive” Tempest and the V8-6-4 are examples of a good idea that needed better development or more advanced technology than was available at the time. After all, there are plenty of cars with rear transaxles & torque tubes, and cylinder deactivation today.
BTW, you might enjoy looking at Jay Eitel’s “Jaguair” V12 Corvair. He’s using the Tempest torque tube and [modified] transaxle, so my guess is that as weird as the “rope drive” is, it can handle some power and torque.
As for pushrods, I still own a (disassembled) Lotus w/ a Twin Cam so in general I favor high rpm high output engines. That being said, the LS9 is a pushrod engine and seems to get along pretty well without overhead cams. If I’m not mistaken, wasn’t the Ilmor/Mercedes indy engine a pushrod design?
As you alluded to, a lot has to do with development. Much as I like DOHC engines, IRS and 4 wheel disks, if well implemented, pushrods, live axles, and even drum brakes can perform well.
Regarding I mean, who reads the owner’s manual?
I guess, being a RTFM kind of guy, I have little sympathy for folks who won’t, or even bother to look at the sticker on the door jamb (though I can’t recall if those stickers were there back in the 60s, I didn’t get my driver’s license till 1971). I don’t have scorn for “uneducated” autoworkers who make $60K, but I don’t much respect folks who can’t set the clock on their car radio.
As for the Datsun 510, a fine car, no doubt, though most of the early Japanese cars were not exactly, as you point out with the 240Z, rust free. I remember my brother trying to shore up the front end of his disintegrating 77 or 78 Accord with some angle iron and welding and there just wasn’t enough left that wasn’t iron oxide alloy to weld to.
IRS, OHC, disc brakes. We tried all that and it doesn’t work. Time to get back to making road-hugging overweight dinosaurs like the 1971 Chevrolet.
I think we agree that GM became conservative and risk adverse following the Corvair and other experiments in the early 60s. Drop me an email please.
rokem@netzero.net
Until the 70’s OHV 4 Cylinders were also very common outside of premium European cars,
The Lotus Twin Cam was basically an OHV Ford Kent block with a DOHC head designed by Harry Mundy with some work by Duckworth and Costin of later Cosworth fame. The original cam in the block was retained as a jackshaft to run the oil pump and I think the distribolator drive.
I suppose the Vega aluminum block is another example of an innovation that didn’t get developed properly. I think it was Porsche who managed to get the alloy and nickasil coatings to work and prevent cylinder wear and attendant oil consumption.
The 3800, I believe, enjoyed a better reputation.
I think it also has a split journal crankshaft to turn the 90 degree V8 block into a 60 degree V6.
Ronnie… I believe that nikasil became truly popularized by the japanese cycle makers.