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Reliability IMO, doesn't automatically equate to quality. I've owned one VW and it was a great car, but I only had it for a year and a 1/2. Sold it due to my wife getting a company car and my '00 VW Jetta TDI ended up no longer being needed. That and at the time I was able to sell it for nearly what I paid for it new. I've owned unreliable vehicles that I've really enjoyed and perfectly reliable vehicles that I've despised.
That said, my wife has had several GM company cars that have been reliable overall, but IMO they are still complete pieces of crap. I wouldn't pay one dime of my own money for any of them.
I've had a GM product continuously in my drive way since 01 and every one has sucked for one reason or another. If one wants a cheap boring appliance to drive around, they are a dime a dozen at a GM dealership IMO.
Fair question. In 1985 when I bought the Jetta, VW hadn't really begun their string of lousy reliability. The public still remembered the reliable VW Bug. So that was the setting at that time. By the way, I did get 143K miles out of that car with no major repairs, so it worked out well for me. But I wouldn't buy a VW today.
For the '98 Audi, Audi was coming back from the poor (undeserved) publicity about the unintended acceleration of the Audi 5000 in the '80's. And the A4 had been rated very highly by many publications.
The other thing about the Audi that is generally true - if other features are so compelling, that can make up for possible reliability issues. If you need an 8 passenger vehicle and need to tow a boat, then perhaps a Suburban is a compelling vehicle even if it is not that refined, or if it is not that reliable (not saying this is true, just an example). Since I wanted a *really nice* smaller sedan that was sporty, the Audi was very compelling. It was more luxurious inside and more refined than almost all of the competition. And that sold the deal.
That's why Toyota has done so well. Most of us would agree that say, the Camry in the '90's was no great shakes. But it was well put together, it didn't rattle, and it was *exceptionally* reliable in those days. And that wasn't true of GM or Ford products in that class.
When it comes to vehicles, give most people a combination of interior quality + refinement + looks + reliability + lower cost. They can give up one, maybe two of those to a degree. But a vehicle that falls short in most of those categories is going to lose the decision. And that's why GM lost market share to so many others who did better. And they appear to be successfully improving, but it took a gas crisis and a bankruptcy to wake them up.
2010 Fleet COY:
1 in 3 Rentabu's to fleet duty
Rentabu
Maybe you can't, but I think there are folks here who can...and yes, all cars do make lemons, but the Big 3 were so dominant that their lemons were all over the place, and, when you are burned, esp more than once on an item as expensive as a car, it really isn't hard to try the alternative, like Honda over GM...if you are then happy with the import, it may take a lot to go back to the lemon that disgusted you in the beginning...30 years of junk is a lot of years...
No question. According the the data posted from automotive-fleet.com. Roughly the same number of Malibu's and Camry's are sold to rental fleets, the Impala is the true fleet queen as it has sells twice as many to rental fleets vs. Malibu and Camry. Nearly 60% of Impala's go to fleets. I'm surprised it's not higher considering how outclassed it is compared to just about anything else on the market.
And a DTS? Now that is a slightly nicer overpriced Buick!
GM was definitely better with bigger cars. But 35 years, 1972-2007:
Vega
Chevette
Citation
Fiero (early)
Cavalier
Cobalt
GM "minivans"
Quad 4 engine
Grand Prix (not reliability, but ever ride in one?)
Dexcool or whatever that coolant issue was
I could go on...
What was so bad about the Cobalt? I thought the coupe was pretty nice and was thinking about one when the price of fuel went psychotic two years ago.
Granted, the few Toyota's I've driven have never impressed me with driving dynamics, but their powertrains have impressed me with responsiveness and refinement.
I've compared my MIL's 05 Camry XLS v6 on many occasions to comparable domestic family sedan's from Ford and GM that my wife has had. 3.4, 3800, and Ford's 3.0 Duratec all sound like meat grinders compared to the 3.0v6 in the Camry. Plus it feels surprisingly quicker than the 3800 in my wife's GP and way smoother.
All I can add about my MIL's Camry is, though it's not my type of car, she has over 130k miles on it, nothing has broke, it's still vault tight ( she commutes into downtown Chicago everyday). My wife's 07 GP feels a bucket of cheap parts in comparison with 1/2 the miles. It's not holding up well at all. My 07 Expedition isn't much better. My previous Suburban was even the worst ownership experience of anything I've ever seen. Even when my wife had an 06 Ford 500, my MIL's Camry displayed build quality and refinement the Ford just didn't have.
I seriously want to like and drive domestic products, but EVERY one I get is substandard IMO.
My brother has a '10 Fusion Sport and I am surprised at how well I like it, that would be my pick if I was looking for a car in that category. My dad has an '09 Accord EX-L v6 that he has about 50k miles on. I think it's a nice car. Rear brake pads had to be replaced at 30k, so the brakes seem to be a weak spot, but it still is a very mechanically refined sedan for under $30k, not the quietest in terms of road noise. But I certainly understand why so many buy them.
I have to laugh...reliability is always mentioned as a negative for domestic brands, but when one points out negative reliability, and right up to this year, for some of the vaunted European brands out there, suddenly reliability isn't an issue...sheesh.
I have to laugh...reliability is always mentioned as a negative for domestic brands, but when one points out negative reliability, and right up to this year, for some of the vaunted European brands out there, suddenly reliability isn't an issue...sheesh. Nothing like rooting for the other team.
You may not have liked their styling, but their dent-resistant body panels, which seemed impervious to the paint issues everybody else had at the time, and their power sliding side door were exclusive to them at the time.
It is not only about reliability. It also includes refinement, interior quality, efficiency to name a few. OK, let's say for argument's sake that the Cavalier was very reliable. Compare how crude it was to the competition of the day.
I never remember those in a good light. But I don't have much experience with them. A coworker years back had a Pontiac Transport that lost a transmission under 50k miles, but that's all I really know. The design of the van probably did it in more than anything else.
As for the Odys, All I know is that everyone I run across that has one, loves them, several have replaced old Odyssey's for new ones. Same with Dodge. Their van's have had lots off issues over the years, but a well designed vehicle will be bought even though it may have an issue here or there.
My BIL has had two Honda Pilots and now has an Acura MDX. He drives a lot of miles per year and has never had an issue. My neighbor has a 5 year old MDX with well over 100k. No issues and he uses it to tow a 20' ski boat in the summers. Never a trans issue. My sister has an 08 Pilot, and no issues.
OTOH, I don't have enough fingers and toes to count all of the people I know personally thats had a trans and fuel pump die on a 1/2 ton GM vehicle, many have had several failures of both more than once and I experienced it first hand too. When you have the dealer tell you "We see this often" and they recommend an independent shop for a rebuild, you know there is a problem.
If I really like a particular vehicle, I can put up with problems. I've had a few issues with my Expedition. Sure, I'm disappointed, but I like it enough that I'd buy another (well at this point, that could change). It has traits and features I really like. That was not the case with my Suburban. Way to many reliability issues. Plus horrible interior fit-n-finish. By 50k miles, it was rattle trap which really drives me nuts. It got to the point to where I'd wonder what was going to fail or fall off today and that was on a 60k mile vehicle.
We're back to the "gravitas" that some politicians have as a way to try to make them seem better than they actually are. With cars, the subjective, undefineable "something" is "refinement." I think my leSabre has an exceedingly large amount of refinement. I love the way it sounds when it starts. I love the way it rides without bouncing all over the road. I love the way it is quiet without the tinny echo of road noise coming from the tires through unshielded wheel wells and floor pan and firewall. I love the way it holds the road with its large Michelin tires.
I even like the refinement of my Cobalt with its 215x65x16 tires. It has a calm, quiet feel while driving. It certainly isn't the Civic I was driving next to on I70 wit a poor child in the rear safety seat being abused by bouncing up and down in the rear seat as the rear wheels went over the pavement with the lack of refinement in the "feel of the road" the Civic was delivering as the mother drove along the roadway. I can only imagine the road noise.
I looked at the Accord for the previous year. Lack of refinement in the plastics in the passenger compartment. I was even relieved to get back into my 1998 leSabre with durable, subtle cloth seats to leave the dealership and regain a sense of refinement.
That "refinement" term, that's thrown out as the discriminator, is more just a statement that the person invoking it "likes" the car involved, right?
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
They were cross-shopping them with Corollas and Civics and, yes, they were more unreliable than those two, and noisier, more uncomfortable and more poorly built to boot.
When my wife and I were dating, she had a 1999 Cavalier sedan, and it was a noisy, rattling, uncomfortable beast (not helped by the fact that the air conditioning had died at 50,000 miles - a common problem with those cars).
I'm sure that all people put up with some problems if they love other aspects of their vehicle, but for most of us, a transmission failure that costs four figures to correct cools the love pretty quickly.
And I'm a Honda fan, having owned Civics and an Accord and gotten excellent service from each one of them. The transmission problem was corrected for 2004, but I'd still steer clear of the earlier versions.
I don't recall the GM "dustbuster" vans as having any specific problem area. I believe that the problem there was lax quality control and shoddy build quality, not to mention a nose design that made them somewhat impractical for daily use. But the chief competition during those years wasn't the Toyota or Honda entries; it was the Mopar minivans. If anything, I've heard more complaints about the final version of the GM minivans than I did about the dustbuster models.
This statement immediately tells me that you haven't made a long-distance drive in a Cobalt versus a recent Civic. Corolla I don't know, but I can compare a Cobalt to a Matrix.
I drive 300 miles each way with two other guys to work, every other week or so. I have a Cobalt. The one other guy has an '05 Civic and an '09 Matrix. Both are absolutely, positively noisier on the road than the Cobalt. There is no way an objective passenger would say otherwise...honestly. The third guy is a Ford guy and wouldn't give GM an inch, but even he brought it up to me, without my having mentioned it first. But of course, that isn't conventional wisdom.
You're right, it certainly is subjective. I had to drive my grandpa's '00 Park Ave from Florida to Ohio in 03. The words refinement and quality never once entered my mind (they wouldn't in a Civic either, unless compared to a Cavalier or Cobalt maybe). The words "cheap" and "I can't believe they charge this much for this car" did. Yes it was comfortable, and yes it had a smooth, soft ride. If soft ride is the only requirement for refinement, then yes it was exceptionally refined, but nothing about the interior materials looked or felt like they belonged in a premium vehicle.
link title
GM's consistently poor crash test scores... Their cars crumpled like they were made of cardboard... :lemon:
And nothings changed...
#1 #2 #3
I generally like how Honda 4cylinders love to rev, but I don't like how they don't have any torque at lower rpm. I don't think I'd want one with an auto. The only n/a 4 cylinder that somewhat impressed me was a Camry I was in a few years ago. It seemed to behave itself more than most. But that doesn't say a whole lot IMO.
Source:
Chevy Venture
I have driven a 2007 Chevy HHR (as a rental vehicle) and it was fairly quiet, but, otherwise, it was pretty much inferior to a comparable Honda in every way. It did, however, have air conditioning that worked well during August in Texas (no small feat).
The link shows the scores.
I dunno how those older "dustbusters" did, but I'd imagine not very well. FWIW, the old body-on-frame Astro/Safari and Aerostar did even worse. Dunno how the older Caravan and Voyagers did, but I think by the mid/late 90's they were okay.
By 2005, the Chevy Uplander actually did pretty good: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_c0QLdJ2P_4&feature=fvw When you figure this was just a revision of the 1997-2004 minivan, and not a ground-up design, I'm impressed at how much they improved its crash-worthiness.
Yes, I can say that from experience. Then soon after replacing the trans I got hit with a $1,200 a/c compressor failure on my Suburban. All by 60k miles.
I don't know what the options would be for a trans failure on an Oddy, but like any dealer, it can't be cheap. IIRC, the GM dealer wanted $3k for the trans in my Suburban, so they sent me to a local independent that rebuilt it for 1/2 that amount.
My son has a 2008 Cobalt and drove with him on a 400 mile trip (one-way). I found the car to be smooth and quiet. It had adequate power and averaged mid 30 mpg figures. Most of the time the engine sound was subdued. This car is much improved from his 2000 Cavalier (which blew a head gasket and wasn't worth fixing after 205K mostly trouble free miles from a car that cost $10500 new). The worst thing about that car was the jarring ride. The cobalt by contrast has a very good ride, in my opinion better than my cousin's 2009 Acura RDX which
as a passenger I found to be hard-riding and noisy. I was truly surprised at the vibration from the turbo 4 cyl. I wasn't very impressed with the interior either.
IMHO it looked cheap for a $40K vehicle
No emotion, no bashing...fact. C-11. FACT.
Regards,
OW
GM bashed itself. No emotion....just fact.
Regards,
OW
Au contraire...check out the over 1,600 posts online about Odyssey transmissions (and other issues) at edmunds.com. People are having transmission issues right up to current models.
That shows that the Malibu is a good car to purchase because the government and corporations purchase it as cost effective auto choice. I know a local Cincinnati company, which used to be related to a Cincinnati major sports team ownership, has a fleet of Malibus for their managers. They did have Impalas, but most of those are gone.
<Sonata has almost the full 29% going to rentals?
So the Hyundai Sonata is the rental fleet queen...?
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Peak Harbor Attack sparked Philadelphia Area Industrial Boom
My wife had an 01 Impala, impressive it was not. Engine cradle, ISS, issues, crude 3.4 v6 and hideously ugly interior. No wonder it's always been a fleet queen. What's weired is I always found that car to offer a lot of room. Back in 06 when my wife was looking for a replacement company car, she had the option of an Impala, 500, and GP. We looked at all three. It seemed to me the 06 refresh lost quite a a bit of rear seat room.
In the late 1970s, Cadillac was selling 300,000+ vehicles, Oldsmobile was selling 1,000,000 (!) vehicles, Buick was selling about 800,000 vehicles and Pontiac was selling another 700,000 vehicles (those are rough estimates).
Today Oldsmobile and Pontiac are gone, and Cadillac and Buick are mere shadows of themselves. Chevrolet survives as much on the sales of its trucks and SUVs as its passenger cars.