Another GM vs. Toyota article

[OUTRNNR]

Here is a pretty good article concerning GM's woes versus Toyota's success. Apparently GM has too much baggage...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11569587/site/newsweek/

 

[scott78945]

Good article. I unfortunately had first hand experience with GM's crappy cars. Our whole family was a GM family but not anymore.

Leased a 2000 Pontiac Grand Am GT and it was in the shop literally about every other month and sometimes just about every month. In the 2 1/2 years I leased it I went through 7 sets of brakes (at no cost to me of course), a cylinder replaced, heating control knobs replaced as they broke off in my hand, a flood in my back seat floor (still to this day unsure how that happened, apparently faulty weather stipping in the windows), new wiper arms as all the paint chipped off, A/C quite working, any many other little problems. Now I am a proud owner of my Runner and would never go back to a GM vehicle. Mother went from a leased Blazer to a Hyundai Santa Fe and also couldn't be better. Almost 3 years now for her and only 1 issue. Not bad in my book. I almost laugh when I see people driving GM vehicles as there are so many other options out there. But to each their own as I am sure not ALL GM's are crap.

 

[OUTRNNR]

Good article. I unfortunately had first hand experience with GM's crappy cars. Our whole family was a GM family but not anymore.

Leased a 2000 Pontiac Grand Am GT and it was in the shop literally about every other month and sometimes just about every month. In the 2 1/2 years I leased it I went through 7 sets of brakes (at no cost to me of course), a cylinder replaced, heating control knobs replaced as they broke off in my hand, a flood in my back seat floor (still to this day unsure how that happened, apparently faulty weather stipping in the windows), new wiper arms as all the paint chipped off, A/C quite working, any many other little problems. Now I am a proud owner of my Runner and would never go back to a GM vehicle. Mother went from a leased Blazer to a Hyundai Santa Fe and also couldn't be better. Almost 3 years now for her and only 1 issue. Not bad in my book. I almost laugh when I see people driving GM vehicles as there are so many other options out there. But to each their own as I am sure not ALL GM's are crap.

Crap, but getting better. Even though I own a 4Runner its still hard for me to root against the home team.

Until I bought the Runner, I was a tried and true GM guy. I even got into alcohol fueled arguments with my buddy who is a Ford guy. Good times. Anyway, my girlfriend has a 2000 Grand Am SE, which is a total piece. She wanted to buy a new car a couple months ago and her brother and I talked her out of it (because she is debt free and in school at the moment). Since then, she's spent about $500 on it; each purchase followed by the "I told you I need a new car" lecture.

My previous vehicle was a 99 Blazer LT. Nice car, ran great, but was very tempormental to long service intervals. Seems like it needed to be in the shop every other oil change. Then one day I noticed an oil leak in the driveway and the next time I had it in the shop it turned out to be the high pressure oil lines from the block through the filter through the front mounted cooler back to the block. The dealer told me 2 sets of lines needed to be replaced and quoted me $1300. After a closer inspection of the quote I realized that the lines themselves cost only $200, but $1100 for labor?!?!? As I would find out when doing it myself, replacing these leak prone lines would be quite the process which included dropping the front dif to snake some lines back to the oil pan. The whole process took me and a friend 12 combined hours to do. That's twelve hours. yeah, 12. Oh, and I should mention that it never got warmer than 35 degrees the day we did those. Although I did manage to get the job done for $150 plus a very nice steak dinner for my buddy and I. Makes you wonder why they would use these cheap-o lines to begin with? These are the questions GM needs to be asking themselves.

The fact of the matter is that GM has come a long way in the last 20 years, but the simple fact still remains that their best still isn't cutting it. Seems like everytime Detroit makes a breakthrough, the rest of the world immediately comes over the top with better quality products.

We'll see how far the new Tahoe/Suburban platform takes them. Looks promising so far...