My thoughts exactly.
Not only lousy build quality but lousy designs.
We rented a Buick Park Ave a few years ago to travel to D.C. It was one
of the most poor handling cars I'd driven. It was like driving my father
72 Oldsmobile 98. The thing was all over the road.
I recently rented a Chev Malibu after my car was hit. I couldn't believe
what a poor quality car it was. The car made noises and felt loose like
it had several hundred thousand miles on it. In fact, it had 28,000.
I've owned Japanese cars with 5 times the mileage that were superior
cars. It sat in my driveway. I refused to drive it. When I pointed to it
to a friend who travels regularly on business, he responded, "don't even
tell me about it, I have to rent that junk all the time".
GM is feeling the effects of refusing to design and build cars that the
market wants. It made huge beheamoths for years to satisfy their aging
customers, required that the customer pay for options that were standard
features on the competition's offerings, and still make some of the
weirdest looking things on the road. Most of the Pontiac line looks like
something designed for an animated cartoon series.
In reality GM needs only two divisions and maybe that it being
optimistic. GM needs nothing more than Chevrolet and Cadillac and one
could probably make an arguement that those two divisions could be
combined. Pontiac and Buick are dinosaurs and will probably go down in
time. Their products are redundant and offer nothing that Chevrolet
doesn't or can't offer. Saturn? Was that division ever necessary? Just
look at the demographics of the average Buick customer. I stay out of
their way; the majority of them are on their "last car".
While I like their trucks, I honestly can't think of a passenger car
produced by GM that holds any interest for me. And that assessment
includes both Cadillac, which might excel in the mechanics but look like
sh*t and Corvette, which despite their world-class handling and
technology, are just too damn big and too characteristic of the
gold-chain muscle-builder stereotype.
And oh yes, I have owned several new GM cars. A 74 Olds that continually
rusted through the paint from new and a 78 Buick that didn't rust but
the paint kept falling off and that was the least of it's problems.
I currently own a Chevrolet K1500 pickup and would buy another even
though I don't understand why they don't better engineer the plastic
parts that regularly crack and break. Simple things. Like the door handles.
jay fishbein
wallingford, ct
http://home.ix.netcom.com/~type79/
Wm. Severin Thompson wrote:
>The fact is, that GM is in the business of building cars... and the lousy
>cars they've built for 30 years have caught up to them.
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