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I sold our next door neighbors a Millennia once and thank God they bought a warranty with it because it
was nothing but constant trouble and it was the non Miller version.
Same thing with MPV vans. Just trouble!
Apparently, Mazda didn't get the memo, because some years later, I bought a used '89 Gran Fury ex copcar, and it had tilt AND an airbag. I forget what years the second-gen 929 was sold, but I'm sure my Gran Fury pre-dated it. IIRC, mine had a 10/88 build date.
He said that people would follow the transport trucks into the store. They would yell, " I'll take that one!"
People would pick a color, put down a deposit and wait six weeks.
He said it was fun back in those days. He retired early because it was no longer fun for him.
A lady I was seeing in the late '80s (likely should have married her actually) bought an '85 Prelude new from them. As you might recall those were red-hot in the market when they first came out and stayed that way for a few years. She got that same treatment. The only choice she had was transmission. Color was whatever they got in. Hers was metallic gray. Car was nice enough, but the stories she told me about how they dealt with her during service made me never want to do business with them. Strangely, she didn't mind paying $600 every time she brought it in for for an oil change for some "preventative" service/parts replacement. She kept the car until they told her it was too rusted underneath to be safe. I wasn't seeing her by then and always wondered if they made that story up just to get a car in trade.
2017 Cadillac ATS Performance Premium 3.6
2020 Acura RDX tech SH-AWD, 2023 Maverick hybrid Lariat luxury package.
My first car was an 82 Honda Accord (bought in 95). It had about 2 inches of rust eaten away from the front fenders, each tire was different size and make, and when I lifted it on the jack to change the wheels the jack went through the floor so I had to prop it on the suspension.
The exhaust broke off while I was driving downtown with a few friends (it overheated at the same time), the fuel filler neck was so rusty that half the gas I put in would leak out right away (I changed that myself), and the dashboard was moldy because the previous owner replaced the windshield and sealed it poorly with tar like substance.
But it was my first car and I loved it. Paid $350 for it, learned to drive stick on the way home in it, and sold it for same money I paid for it about 6 month later.
2016 Audi A7 3.0T S Line, 2021 Subaru WRX
http://seattle.craigslist.org/est/cto/4911532208.html
A Saabaru! Imagine trying to find body parts or a rear glass for it!
So, I guess the Saab stores had to stock Impreza mechanical parts for these.
I can't imagine many were ever sold.
'11 GMC Sierra 1500; '08 Charger R/T Daytona; '67 Coronet R/T; '13 Fiat 500c; '20 S90 T6; '22 MB Sprinter 2500 4x4 diesel; '97 Suzuki R Wagon; '96 Opel Astra; '08 Maser QP; '11 Mini Cooper S
Oddly though, I tended to prefer the Saab versions to the other cars they were based on. The styling just seemed more pleasant, somehow. And, the interiors usually seemed to be of a higher caliber.
Even though it was still running well, I figured it was time for something else. I could have fixed it up, only to have the transmission crap out a couple months later, and then I'd have a car worth nothing. Well, maybe $300...that's the salvage value the insurance company assigned to it, if I had wanted to hang onto it.
We spent tens of thousands of dollars to try and keep those vehicles running.
I know this, I'd have refused to pay sticker price yet one dollar over it, on any car. To me, that tells you what kind of dealer it is.
I remember seeing a "+$2,000" sub-sticker on the first new '84 Corvette I saw, and I thought it was total B.S. If the manufacturer thinks you can make a profit at sticker, why add more? I know, I know....because people will pay it.
Miatas were selling for 2-3000 over MSRP when they came out in 1990 and people lined up.
Even PT Cruisers were selling for over MSRP when they were first introduced.
Imagine THAT!
Several years later my friend was lobbying his Dad to buy a new Lark. He said his Dad said, "I spent enough time as a 'missionary'". LOL
Just to be clear though...I'm not saying any of this anecdotal evidence changes the history of the car biz. Japan Inc swept over the market and I freely admit that GM was a shell of its former self even before bankruptcy. But I also agree with uplander, that if Detroit iron from that era was so bad as the stories told about them now, then why are there still more 80s domestics on the road now than imports? I'm even convinced that the Tempo/Topaz twins will eventually outlive every CamCord ever built during that same time! Domestic trucks have outlived the BTTF imports in the same way. Remember Marty's ride? Not many of those left...
Also 80s domestics were very cheap to buy used, generally easy to work on, and very cheap to fix. Just as an example, you couldn't buy rebuilt Japanese carburetors and they were a devil to work on. And let's face it, when a Buick hit a Corolla, who do you think won?
Can't complain about the miled up '09 Grand Caravan though. Yet.
Some part of what one sees on the road has to with original sales, not just poor rustproofing - they sold a lot more F-series, Silverados, and D100 (or whatever) in 1984 than Marty McFly Toyotas.
On the project car theme, brown never looked better
And I might add that by the mid-to-late-eighties, I'm thinking that big Chevys weren't all-that-much 'best sellers' anymore. And this was a long way from Detroit.
The domestics fared poorly with smaller cars mainly because they had intermediate and full-sized cars down to an art. And they were able to produce them economically, and pass the savings on to the customer. For instance, a 1976 Accord stickered at something like $3995. In the GM ranks, that would get you a Nova Concours V-8 sedan, which was the same price. A V-8 Camaro started at $3927. Even an Impala 4-door sedan started at $4927, and included a standard 350 V-8, automatic, power steering, power brakes. You couldn't even get a fully automatic transmission on an Accord until 1980.
If the Japanese had tried to compete head-to-head with something like, say, a 1980 Caprice, you can rest assured it would have been an utter failure. It would cost about twice as much. Its a/c and automatic transmission would fail in record time. And it would rust so bad that it would make a '57 Plymouth look like the epitome of excellence. KnowWhatIMeanVern?
Also, having been a young man at the time, I remember one big problem the domestics had---it wasn't durability, or power, or even price---it was that they just couldn't run right. The Japanese and Europeans took a ground-up approach to emissions but American engineers tried to bolt new things onto old things. It simply didn't work well.
My '82 Cutlass Supreme, OTOH, would usually make it out of the driveway, but then it would pick a more dangerous time to stall...when I had to pull out and merge onto the major 4-lane road just up the street!
Funny enough I've seen some hard core enthusiasts rebadge their Saturn Astras with Opel badges too. I almost never see any of these on the road nowadays.
My mom had an early 2000's Saab 9-3. It had high mileage and big accident history when it came on trade for cheap at my dealership I worked at back in 2010. Cosmetically and mechanically it was good. My parents bought it for $2000 (wholesale as-is) which was a good deal as I helped them sell it privately few years later for about $5000. I drove it a few times and it was ok, nothing spectacular. Plastics felt cheap, and the dash controls had typical confusing Saab quirkiness to them.
The one thing that they had issues with was getting a second key and fob for it as it was at the time Saab shut its operations. The fob had to be sourced at some parts supplier that still had some fobs left over but it took weeks and wasn't cheap.
My mom enjoyed it for what it was, as she felt she was driving a "upscale" brand car for the price of an economy beater.
2016 Audi A7 3.0T S Line, 2021 Subaru WRX
I bought a new '86 Pontiac Grand Am with the Tech-4 (aka Iron Duke) and 5 speed manual. It had fuel injection, but it was very agricultural otherwise. Nevertheless, I got 188,000 miles out of it before it blew the head gasket. I was debating whether to have the head gasket repaired, but a hit and run when it was parked caused enough body damage that I junked it. It was very low maintenance, and somehow wasn't plagued by the reliability problems that D3 cars of that era were known for.
Of course, "sometimes" those little caps would disappear.
But, it wasn't long before big cars were selling in droves again. GM started work on downsizing their big cars, but it took an act of congress to force them to do it. When the government started talk of CAFE standards, GM's corporate average economy was the worst of the Big Three. It wasn't that their cars got worse economy, on average, than Ford or Mopar, but rather a much larger portion of GM's sales went to larger models, so they were staring at the biggest fines, once these standards went into effect and started tightening.
If there had been no oil embargo or government intervention, who knows how big cars might have gotten? I've heard that GM was thinking about a new range of engines in the 8-10 liter range, but that got shelved once fuel economy became a concern.
Demand for big cars was curtailed again once the second oil crisis hit, but still, they showed amazing resilience. In 1982 for example, either C&D or Motortrend tested a V-8 Caprice. That timeframe was about as bad as it got, as the economy bottomed out. Yet the typical Caprice, they found, was selling around sticker if not above, yet the newly-introduced Celebrity, which was supposed to be sort of a "family car of the future", and more economical, needed incentives to move on the lot, and was actually outsold that year by the Malibu...the car it was supposed to replace!
There was also a couple years in the early 80's that Oldsmobile was the #2 auto brand, beating out Ford. And one year, maybe 1983, even Buick passed Ford to become #3! And Buick and Olds were selling mainly on the strength of larger cars...not cheap compacts.
I'm sure that eventually, the auto makers would have had to get their act together...after all, you can only make a car so ponderous and thirsty, before consumers rebel. But then again, maybe not. After all, what's the #1 selling vehicle in the US today? And what's #2? Hint: It ain't an Accord or Camry, and in some configurations, it's longer than any car from the 70's ever got.
The '83 probably was the best rendition so far, though, of the downsized Caprice. At least, with the 305/4-speed automatic. It was a good blend of power and economy, and by that time GM was getting the kinks out of its computer/emission controls, as well as the 4-speed automatic. I don't know if this is true or not, but I heard that a few years later, GM started using the beefier truck 4-speed automatic in the 305 Caprice (and Parisienne) while the Buicks and Oldsmobiles with the 307 got the more fragile THM200-R4.
A '77-79 with the 350 would still be quicker, but with just a 3-speed automatic, fuel economy would suffer a bit. And the 305 in those years was just a 2-bbl, with 145 hp in '77-78, and only 130 for '79. There was a 4-bbl with 160 hp introduced for '79, but it wasn't offered in the big cars...just the intermediates. I don't think I've ever seen a test of an Impala/Caprice with the 267, but I'm sure it had to be a dog.