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Comments
Actually, there was one GM car that CR was impressed enough with that under the "disadvantages/problems" summary, they simply said "None significant enough to mention".
Alas, that wasn't in recent memory.
I haven't read a CR in awhile, but haven't they tended to be pretty favorable towards the current Malibu?
You're overlooking Ram. 1,000,000 Calvin stickers can't be wrong.
The Volt and Fiat 500 have flopped.
And while i prefer to own and drive Cadillacs, there is a wide swath of years that I stay away from and many current and past Cadillac models that i abhor.
But even those dark days of the mid -late 70s were better than TOYotas of the same time period. And I know from having used them a lot back then.
Lemko said it best however:
Reading CR for their opinion about domestic cars is like reading MacWorld magazine for their opinion about Microsoft
And it's true regardless of what you or andres would like to think.
I think we're both correct.
In the early days the VW Beetle was pretty much one of a kind. The Japanese in the late '60s and early '70's entered and refined the small, reliable car market.
In contrast, Caddy was a totally different market - large, soft luxury cars. Apples and oranges.
If you wanted a large luxury car in the '70's, then clearly Caddy was better than anything Japanese, because there *wasn't anything* in that category that was Japanese!
If you wanted a smaller, fuel efficient and reliable transportation car, then the Japanese cars were superior, because there really wasn't much of anything yet available from the D3 in that category. And when there was, those cars weren't superior to the Japanese offerings.
So, CADILLACmike, I guess you are not biased toward GM. GM brands when compared to say Honda, Acura, Lexus over the years are not even close in the ratings. GM brands, models got many full black circles. Honda, Acura, Lexus mostly full red circles.
18 yrs ago, the 3.8L OHV was a very dependable and decent performer, even if it was old school OHV.
It's the 4 Cyls that detroit seems to have a problem with making good ones. But I'm completely over 4 cylinder engines for the forseeable future.
Those used the 700R4 transmission, right? What transmission did that evolve into in later years? Was it the 4L60E or the 4L80E? The 4L60E can be troublesome, but I think the 4L80E was pretty sturdy.
I wouldn't mind having a '94-96 Caprice, RoadHazzard, or Fleetwood with the LT-1 engine.
I can't remember though...did they ever improve the interiors on the Caprice? Two years ago, when my Intrepid got totaled, I looked at a '91 Caprice that a local used car lot had, and positively hated the interior. Ended up with a 2000 Park Ave I bought from the local Cadillac dealer. The interior is a weak spot, but I can tolerate it. Much better than that Caprice was!
I respect your candor and you admission on never owning a GM. I think you are missing out, because GM has been steadily improving since the early 90s, and their quality both build and overall vehicle dependability has improved greatly over the past 20 years. Their 4 bangers are still not quite as good ad the imports, but they are narrowing the gap.
I mean Vega - yeah that was a real fine car... But it was nearly 40 years ago, when GM was struggling to reduce the size of its cars. Pinto was also a great car. Citation was not very good, but the Cavalier was a better car, we had a mid 80s that was supposed to be all black spots on CR, but it ran to 120,000 mi with not even a sensor going bad. We gave it to our neice when we decided to get a new car she ran it for a few years more. A friend in NY (not the city) had the same era and had nearly 300,00 mi on his. He was too cheap to buy a newer car, and didn't need to.
But do you remember the hondas and TOYotas that rusted out in 2 years? Growing up in New England I do, the whole bottom of the car would rust away in a year. and the interiors, would fall apart. Been in the cars, drove them, family & friends owned them, none of them are still on the road, while i see plenty of late 60s early 70s Cadillacs still running.
My friend with his rusted out honda - that eventually degenerated into needing a 30MPH push start to bbecause the engine was too sludged up to start, joked that the hondas were made from recycled sheet metal with 1% rust, and that 1% started to work from day 1... :P
I'll pretty much avoid any 1981 thru 1986 Cadillac with a 39 1/2 foot pole, especially any V-8-6-4s, HT4100s, and Diesels.
And let's not mention that it's logical to hold grudges against WW II countries because there might be still a few people alive who were involved.
It hasn't been just the past 2-3 years, it's been a steady (at times slow) improvement for the past 20 years.
And yes the greatest generation of which my mom's side of the family was part of (RIP all of them) have long memories. Who was that news person, Russel something, he died suddenly in late summer 2008. He was interviewed only a month or so before his death, and was talking about his dad (I think he wrote a book). He had just bought his dad a new car, and said "dad, why don't you let me buy you a lexus or mercedes?" to which his dad replied: "Aw Russ, we beat those guys in the war, I'd prefer a nice
American car". so Russ bought his dad a Ford LTD CV. Can't remember his last name at present.
"We don't just make luxury cars, we make Cadillacs!"
I think it was a a CTS ad. That car has taken off, but i still prefer the STS.
Honda ended up with 3 times the mileage as Suburban when these were sold by us to private parties. Interior and seats of Honda were excellent at 14 years, but Suburban was showing wear on seats, dashboard cracked, various parts falling off in interior through the years.
On exterior, Honda had no rust, paint was shiny at 14 years. Suburban had lots of rust on rear quarters, lower parts of doors, bottom of rear tailgate. Long before 14 years, paint on Suburban hood and roof failed completely. Roof started to rust out. Had to hand sand it carefully, mask vehicle and spray new paint on the top.
Except for the 1992 LeSabre, Every one of my long term GM cars was panned in CR / CU and none of them failed me. Even some of my shorter term cars (less than 100,000 mi that I put on them) were much better than the panning they got in CU. The major exception was that Fiero, and even that car didn't leave me stranded.
I remember mid 90s Cavaliers getting blasted for unpainted plastic bumpers when the same issued praised tercels that had even worse bumpers that disintegrated over the years. That's what really set me off.
Remember those metal ended black plastic unpainted bumpers on TOYotas that would basically disintegrate in a few years and crumble into nothingness??? I do.
I'm sure you are now going to tell us that the honda was driven daily in the snow while the suburban was in the garage all winter...
And you don't know what type of use (and when) they got before you bought them.
BTW, the tranny on it bit the shed around the 55k mark and after replacing that, not too long after they spun it out in a snowstorm Christmas morning which totalled it out. Good riddance. :lemon:
But i didn't start hating GM for that.
I also didn't like when the heater control valve on the same car had its rubber diaphragham (can't spell that word) fail and it sucked coolant into the climate control system, and while i never liked that design, it STILL prevented the car from freezing you out on a sub zero morning.
Again i didn't end up hating GM. saw too many imports crumbling around me. Fixed the HCV cleaned up the CC and ran the car for several more years.
I don't buy it. Sounds like a very far-fetched conspiracy theory that somehow CR/CU advertisements were directed toward a biased subscriber base.
Impossible, and non-sense!
Why, even you, with your pro-domestic RAH RAH bias, could become a CR subscriber/member! They'd welcome you with open arms in fact.
I'm sure you are now going to tell us that the honda was driven daily in the snow while the suburban was in the garage all winter...
Well, yes I am. Honda had 247K when we got rid of it and Suburban was in the low 80's. The Suburban was a gas hog compared to the Honda. The Honda was my wife's daily driver, including every workday in the winter. My daily driver was another car, not the Suburban. Suburban was our UTILITY vehicle used maybe 1, 2 times per week, always in the garage.
Different people of that generation felt differently about German and Japanese cars. Both my parents served in WWII. By 1972 my mom was driving a Corolla. Dad came around to buying a Datsun for mom and an old Mercedes for me but he always drove American. Last 20 years of his life it was DeVilles and a Buick.
My '95 Neon didn't have one competent part in it.
All the engineers engineered with faulty logic and parts.
All the assemblyman assembled with faulty skills and craftsmenship.
Is it any wonder that I doubt America has the ABILITY to make a decent car AT ANY cost, let alone a competitive one?
KUDOS to Audi again, for saying that the VOLT was a car for idiots.
Agreed. But GM is not in a vacuum. They need to improve FASTER than their competition, something that they're not yet doing.
NO way can that be true. A company that's been improving steadily for 20 years can not all of a sudden go out of business and go bankrupt!
I call that a 20 year steady decline!
I liked them both!
Tell you what, get both of them (in their '70's mint condition...) and loan me one of your Caddy's to drive around with them.... I could get into the Caddy experience! :shades:
I'm sure the 'Burb did worse because it didn't get enough exercise like the Honda.
After 5 years or 100,000 miles, whichever comes first, GM will be paid by the owner as follows:
100% of purchase price agreed to if no warranty visits or problems are recorded.
95% of purchase price if 1 warranty visit or problem was required to be fixed.
85% of purchase price for 2 fixes.
75% for 3 fixes.
60% for 4 fixes (separate trips to the dealer).
50% for 5 corrections.
FREE for 6 or more.
I'm in!
My take - Carly Simon is the better musician, but Rondstadt has the stronger voice. Like them both, but will go with Gracie Slick!
Brings up the "What really changed from Old GM?" questions. Same with the bloated inventory. Same with the advancements from competition when GM is a few years behind.
Regards,
OW
He loved that car the best until the 2001 BPA.
Regards,
OW
Obviously not like this one, which looks more like the ones I see:
Well those idiots voted their cars number one in customer satisfaction.
Who's the idiot?
He would much rather you buy an overly complicated and overpriced Eurotrash Audi so that you can enrich his company while buying his overpriced replacement parts.
The information comes from car repair facilities. I looked briefly at some of the GM models that do poorly in CR and find they do much better in the Identifix ratings. Also many of the repairs are relatively inexpensive in comparison to the foreign makes. (They give the actual cost of each repair for the problem vehicles)
I noticed that transmission replacements on domestics can be half the cost of foreign makes. On an anecdotal note, my SIL just had the transmission replaced in her 2001 Jeep GC at a cost of $1500 (220k mi.) I see Honda transmissions going for more that double that.
I like "No Secrets", but I like "Playing Possum" better...and the cover should probably have a plain brown wrapper around it!
How dare he profer the preposterous suggestion that he is a satisfied GM owner and his cars have been likeable and reliable.
I just don't understand how any manufacturer could assemble a product with such a profound lack of oversight and quality control.
I can't imagine a better way to send the message that you still aren't ready for prime time in the process of making reliable, competitive world-class vehicles.