The makers of gas-guzzling vehicles are taking a pounding. On the other hand, small cars are selling briskly.
Yeah, that's just a real shock. Buried in the NY Times story was this line:
"Automakers ignore the move to smaller vehicles at their own peril. G.M., for example, is playing catch-up by introducing a dozen new cars and crossovers in the next few model years."
All my adult life, GM has been doing nothing but trying to play catch-up to the Japanese car makers. Whether it is fuel economy or operability or quality of construction, GM has managed (at least since the demise of AMC) to have a working motto of: "You can't do much worse than to buy a car from GM." Well, you could, but you'd have to buy a Trabant or a Zaporozhets, and even those ComBloc pieces of shit lasted longer than a Chevy.
I have no sympathy for GM. They make shitty cars and they have made shitty cars for generations. "Chevy" is probably a verb in some languages for "take this piece of shit to the junkyard." The Japanese kept an eye to the future, GM only kept an eye to the quarterly profit reports. GM's troubles are of its own creation.
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Well, maybe their cars have sucked for a generation, but they did make good work trucks for quite some time. Problem is, GM's designers are 90 year old men with pants hiked up to their nipples and pocket protectors and plaid shirts (GM has been downsizing for literally *decades* now and hasn't had significant hiring in their design department since Reagan was President) and they wouldn't know how to build a vehicle to attract young people even if you spiked their Geritol with LSD. So the only thing they manage to do well is things where style doesn't count (much) -- work trucks -- and the rest... well. Their cars aimed at old men are great (the Cadillacs are technologically on par with the European automobiles but much more comfortable while still being fast and handling well for a big car, just what old men like to drive). Everything else... well. It's like asking blind people to design the color scheme for a mall. These elderly geeks haven't been young since LBJ was President, and they just can't do it, don't have their heart in it, and it shows.
In 1998, my In-Laws bought a used 1997 Chevy Malibu for $24,000. In 1999, I bought a used 1997 Toyota Corrola for $11,000.
In 2003, after years of troubles with that car, they got rid of it. When they drove their POS American-made Malibu down to the dealer to trade it in, there was:
* Smoke pouring out of the tailpipe.
* The radio had died.
* The air conditiong would only function on maximum or not at all.
* The list continues.
My wife and I followed them to the dealer in our 1997 Corolla. The only thing we'd ever done with the car was change the tires due to wear and tear and the usual oil/fluid changes.
On a crazy whim, my wife and I also decided to trade in our car that night. We bought a 2003 Toyota Rav 4 that has been amazing.
So let's talk dollars. Two cars, similar class, same year built, and one - mine - with about 30,000 more miles on it than the other. Both are traded in on the same night. What was the final tally on the trade-ins?
* For my 1997 Corrola: $2000, or 22% of the original purchase price.
* The Chevy Malibu: $400. Or 1.6% of the purchase price.
And while we're talking about "return on investment", that's not even taking into consideration the thousands of dollars my in-laws spent trying to keep that damn Malibu running. That's thousands of dollars we didn't spend because our car was actually built with some modicum of quality.
I will NEVER buy an American car. NEVER.
I have a 2006 Jeep Wrangler. Thing is, this car is so simple that I can fix it myself for the most part, other than a few things that need special tools (I can't do an engine rebuild on it, and I can't change out the pinion and ring gear bearings in the diffs on it, both require specialty tools or facilities I don't have... that's about it). It's built with overbuilt pig-iron stone-age technology, not with all the high-tech GM gimcrackery (5 cylinder aluminum engine in a pickup truck? GAH!). And it shows. The only thing that usually goes out on these things is the crankcase position sensor at around 100,000 miles, but that's easy to fix. Other than that... (shrug). It's stone age technology. If something breaks, you can pretty much fix it with a stone ax and flint arrowhead.
I sometimes just sit underneath it looking at each individual piece of the simple little bugger. There's nothing hidden. It's all right out there in your face, I can point to everything and tell you exactly what it is, what it does, and what its failure mode would be if it failed.
Unfortunately in 2007 Jeep changed the Wrangler to a modern high-tech design, and the new Wrangler has had leaky roofs, the engine has just quit from time to time in the worst places, the high tech vehicle stability system has sometimes decided you don't *really* need brakes, etc... which is the problem, I suppose. The 2006 Jeep Wrangler was the culmination of 60 years of Jeep design. Crap, you can even put the bumpers off of a 1975 Jeep CJ-5 onto the thing if you feel like it, and many of the axle parts between that CJ-5 and a 2006 Wrangler are 100% interchangable. Much parts commonality across the years, they just kept tweaking and refining it over the years to make it better. The 1996 Wrangler was basically a refined version of the original 1984 Wrangler that AMC had designed starting fifteen years before, with coil spring suspension replacing the buggy springs and a few refinements here and there like a better dashboard and moving the emergency brake to the center console rather than as a foot brake. The 2007 Jeep Wrangler was a "clean sheet" design. Not a single part in common with its predecessors. Thing is, Detroit is *lousy* at clean sheet designs. It always takes them at least ten years to get them right.
Which is why I'll be driving my 2006 Wrangler for at least another ten years...
- Badtux the American Car Drivin' Penguin
besides lousy with design and technology -- GM is lousy with negotiating contracts with unions
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