GM cars could have been completely bulletproof!!

[ad356]

i just have been thinking that GM cars could have been the most bulletproof thing on the road!! i cant help thinking that if they just did a few small things differently they could have stole the market right from toyota/honda very easily. good examples.. using dexcool, GM; its garbage. they claim service life of 100,000 miles which was and is a lie. im trying to flush the sludge out of my radiator on my 96 bonneville and i was just thinking none of my older cars have this crap build up in the radiator. my 1991 cavalier convertible 3.1 has a radiator that is clean as new the same thing with my 1987 bonneville. the newest car of the bunch has this nasty sludge in the radiator. maybe GM should have stuck with green, if it aint broke dont fix it. green worked for 50 years, there was nothing wrong with it. what else did they screw up over the years? going from an aluminum intake and plenuim to plastic junk. they also used those stupid plastic elbows, had they gone with aluminum they would have never been prone to failure. the GM 3400 has more power, better performance, and better milage then the engines it replaced; the old 2.8 and 3.1 multiport engines. in their infinite wisdom they decided to go with plastic intakes yet again that engine is prone to leaks just like the series II 3800. the 3400 could have been bulletproof, the old 60 degree v6's that it replaced were just about bulletproof.

the like to say that cars are built better then every before, in some ways they have improved; in other ways they have become much worse. it has become an industry wide move to plastic engine parts.. but plastic has not place being bolted to an engine. the only time plastics have been a good idea is radiators, plastic tanks are much less prone to leaking and if they do leak it will not be leaking into the engine internals

GM has great technology but they have done things over the years that cost them customers. they could have completely owned the US market had they not done some dumb things. the 3800 series II probably would have been the most bulletproof, longest lasting v6 anyone has ever built if they had just used aluminum parts instead of plastic junk

end of rant

[rustyroger]

Of course you could say the same about Ford or Chrysler in America, BMC in the UK, Renault or Peugeot in France, Fiat in Italy, or any Japanese car maker that hasn't wiped out all its domestic competition.

Or me (and anybody else), if I hadn't made some bad decisions and mistakes in my lifetime I would be stupendously rich. And there would be world peace, no more poverty and a cure for the common cold.

Roger.

[CMNTMXR57]

You do realize that many other manufacturers use GM's DexCool besides GM. They include European AND Asian manufacturers! It is a pretty standard fluid across the board and I would guess it can be used in about 75% of the cars on the road! The exceptions of course are ford and Chrysler, which use other forms of similar fluids (G-05). The key is, it is a no silicate fluid that extends water pump life and is interchangable with other brands of no silicate type fluids. Hence why it can be used in those vehicles.

I know of all the class action B.S. around it, claiming that it eats LIM gaskets and such, it ISN'T the fluid. It's other contamination and/or unwanted air intrusion in what is supposed to be a sealed system, usually in a certain group of engines, that is the cause of it.

Part of the issue is (And this is my personal opinion from doing time in a GM service department), it's extended drain fluid. As such, most people don't pay attention to it, or when they do, it's when a problem has already occurred. The older Ethylene Glycol had to be removed in much shorter intervals, and as such, problems were thwarted due to that short life of the fluid (in comparison to DexCool), and the flushing/purge process. If you left it in anywhere near as long as Dexcool, there would be a lot more problems with engines.

Comparing a couple of engines you had that use Ethylene Glycol, vs. what has happened with a Dexcool car isn't scientific basis to determine quality. Especially when the brands you mention (toyota), can use the same fluid (as it is a no silicate based formula)!

[Zeik75]

My 88 has been weeping coolant out the manifold since i started driving it and before because my parents never flushed the system. This hasn't caused a catastrophic failure yet either, I chose to ignore it until I notice signs of oil crossing into coolant or coolant to oil.

These fluids have certain parameters that they are meant to work under and if that isn's achieved bad things can happen. The power steering has never been changed and neither had the tranny fluid which is part of the reason both my tranny and rack and pinion are acting up/dying. Yes there have been some design errors or some foolish decisions but most of them probably have a reason behind them. The plastic is much cheaper and designed to last the usable life of the car, not forever like some of us wish. Honestly who buys a car now days to be a lifetime investment? Most people buy a car and keep it until it's paid off, then go buy another new car. Companies design the cars to be problem free for that time and not much longer because it becomes more expensive with each year longer. Sure older designs may be more bullet proof, but cost wasn't as much a factor as it is now days either.

Yes I wish some things were built a different way or they didn't skimp out, but if I step back and take a look at the big picture I can also see the reason behind it.

JMO on the subject.

[Dean]

I would argue that bloated corporate bureaucracy, marketing and cost-benefit judgements have been far more damaging to GM than things like Dex-Cool and plastic parts.

Sure, there have been problems with Dex-Cool, but from what I've read, CMNT's analysis is right - it is peripheral problems (unsealed system, mixing coolant types) that are the real culprit. I also used to hate plastics on cars, but in many cases - including what you mention, fluid tanks - its actually a better material. It's lighter, cheaper to manufacture, and less dangerous as shrapnel.

The problem is often in the execution. Plastics are OK but some things shouldn't be made of it - i.e. many of my plastic kitchen utensils should have been wood or metal. Some things on cars are made of plastic that is crap or it should mount differently (door cladding anyone? why can't I have my door trim bolted on rather than a grating snapping mechanism that sounds like plastic breaking?).

I think the biggest problems are budget / marketing / proprietary / competitive constraints. GM in particular still has a business model that is partially built on internal competition, which is a tremendous waste of resources. Firms like Mercedes Benz and Ford (post restructure) seem to be building on good designs rather than marketing competing models to the same markets.

[MattStrike]

It has everything to do with cost. Sure, customer wants have some impact, but at the end of the day do you want to pay $30k or $70k for a Bonneville? GM knew exactly what price they wanted to sell for, they knew what the market could handle, and they built accordingly. Plastic is cheap. But that doesn't mean it's a poor application for most parts. Even some of the best leather wrapped interiors are still plastic underneath. And the '94-'95 model year showed that a UIM could be made of ABS without issue. And for a measly $100 you can fix the biggest problem with the GM design, plowing through to 300k+ miles. Annoying to fix? Maybe. Did you buy the car for $30k or only $2k used?

[rustyroger]

Let's not confuse the Automakers with car enthusiasts.
Making cars, washing machines, or any consumer durable is a BUSINESS.
The purpose of a business is to make a return for its investors, so car makers do everything they can to keep costs down while making a car that will compete in the marketplace.
They have to make cars that will hold together for a reasonable time to keep faith with future buyers, but they don't care about making cars as well as they can be made in most cases.
Of course makers such as Rolls Royce, Ferrari or Bugatti make their products to much higher standards than mainstream cars, and pass the costs on to the fortunate few who can afford to enjoy their luxurious ride or blistering performance. But even these cars aren't built regardless of cost, if the makers don't make a profit they go out of business or are subsidised by other divisions, Ferrari/Fiat, Rolls Royce/Volkswagen for example. The cachet associated with the names may well help sales of their more mundane offerings.

Roger.

[Dean]

Of course makers such as Rolls Royce, Ferrari or Bugatti make their products to much higher standards than mainstream cars, and pass the costs on to the fortunate few who can afford to enjoy their luxurious ride or blistering performance. But even these cars aren't built regardless of cost, if the makers don't make a profit they go out of business or are subsidised by other divisions, Ferrari/Fiat, Rolls Royce/Volkswagen for example. The cachet associated with the names may well help sales of their more mundane offerings.

A lot of those vehicles have their own problems for the consumer, too. Often performance cars have pathetic interior quality, or the ride is rough (can I call my Bonneville a performance car now? ). Some makers experience unforeseen problems which don't get worked out because they made a model with a limited run and very little room / time for consumer testing. I would say that an established line of vehicles & engineering knowledge that is maintained and built upon is one of the most important elements to have a constantly improved design.

[rustyroger]

Of course makers such as Rolls Royce, Ferrari or Bugatti make their products to much higher standards than mainstream cars, and pass the costs on to the fortunate few who can afford to enjoy their luxurious ride or blistering performance. But even these cars aren't built regardless of cost, if the makers don't make a profit they go out of business or are subsidised by other divisions, Ferrari/Fiat, Rolls Royce/Volkswagen for example. The cachet associated with the names may well help sales of their more mundane offerings.

A lot of those vehicles have their own problems for the consumer, too. Often performance cars have pathetic interior quality, or the ride is rough (can I call my Bonneville a performance car now? ). Some makers experience unforeseen problems which don't get worked out because they made a model with a limited run and very little room / time for consumer testing. I would say that an established line of vehicles & engineering knowledge that is maintained and built upon is one of the most important elements to have a constantly improved design.

Someone who buys a Ferrari probably doesn't give a rats ass about interior quality, relishes its rough ride etc, a Rolls Royce buyer wouldn't have bought the car for its shattering acceleration or ability to pull lots of G forces round bends.
Working on established lines of stuff that works is fine, but eventually it gets out of date.
Model T Fords and VW beetles worked fine compared to their contemporaries, but who would buy such a car nowadays?.

Roger.

[swampthing]

Honestly gm should have revamped their engine choices much earlier. Talking about the 60° v6 family as being near bulletproof isn't realistic, they had problem after problem starting with the 2.8 onwards and honestly the 3.8 would have been a far better choice in terms of reliability. I wish gm hadn't sullied their reputation with such cars as the celebrity, the lumina, and others from the late 80s and 90s that made people hate gm

[CMNTMXR57]

The Celebrity's/6000's/Century's/Cutlass Ciera's of that gen were actually some of their most reliable vehicles...

Very few, other than for normal maintenance, came through service. The 60* engines, while not being as powerful as the 90* 3800's, were pretty solid, and a step up performance wise from anything in a comparable Japanese car at the time. Many of the 60* maladies are the same maladies that 3800's have had issues with. Bad wrist pins, LIM's and UIM's, and headgaskets were the common things I recall.

I'll be absolutely blunt here though, the reason GM didn't yank them, and replace them with the 3800 is because of labor costs. Cars like the Celebrity/6000/Century/Ciera didn't have a lot of real estate inside that engine compartment and any vehicle sold by GM has to meet certain criteria for serviceability. This works in conjunction with a post above about GM is in the business to push tin! Not to cater to performance enthusiasts as your bread and butter sales. As such, when they sell a product, they also put a reserve on the balance sheet to cover repairs on said vehicle they sold. This to you, is the warranty. By putting in a larger engine, that requires heavier duty running gear, both parts costs, and repair costs go up. That eats into profit margins, which on cars for GM, isn't a particularly large one. I think at one point during the 90's and the height of the SUV craze, every Lumina GM sold, GM actually lost money on them. Maybe broke even on them at the best. This was ok though, because for every Lumina sold, GM was selling 100 Tahoe's at inflated margins to cover.

At the end of the day, GM has to sell them cheap, to maintain competitiveness, because you're most likely cross-shopping said car with a ford, dodge, honda, or toyota. If your Celebrity is $9,999 and the ford dealership across the way has a Taurus for $9,995, most people go for the cheapest... This is a high volume, highly competitive sector. So adding higher dollar 3800 V6's and higher costs to service 3800 V6's, drives you out of the market because at the end of the day, the demo purchasing this vehicle isn't highly concerned with 140hp vs. 160hp. All they want is something that starts, runs, and lasted a chunk of mileage with low cost of ownership.

Sometimes I think people need to step back from a performance or enthusiast standpoint and look at things from a pure business perspective. You want to sell the most with the least amount of cost.

[swampthing]

Well maybe it is just my limited experience with the 60° family but from what I have seen they love to overheat which may have to do with how hot it gets down here. Plus on the fiero forum I see 2.8's with spun bearings quite regularly, I have yet to see a fiero with a blown iron duke though. Gm should have done a better job of addressing the blatant issues that their cost cutting caused. Like the vortec intake manifold, the 3.8 lim gaskets, 60° v6 head gasket issues etc..

it seems they got smarter finally but it may be too little too late. The ecotecs have all be pretty reliable as have the high feature v6 (3.2 3.6) the cosmetic quality has went up IMO, with the new impala being the best looking one in quite a while, and the verano and regal both being sexy as all get out. I really hope gm is finally getting the ball rolling toward being a major competitor again.

[CMNTMXR57]

Overheating was typically caused by headgaskets.

Again, you're comparing a small batch of engines, compared to the billions GM built and sold with them as engine choices. You throw enough poop at a wall, eventually something's gotta stick... You could argue, just looking at pure numbers, without looking at things as part of the big picture, that 3800's are a real pile of crap because of the number of them needing LIM repairs. Wheras my LC3 in my "V" is 100% perfect because it has 0 problems, right? Not so fast there! GM made/sold 5 billion 3800 V6's over several decades, chances are 1 or 2 along the way will have some problems pop up. On the other hand, GM made 3,000 LC3's over 3 years. See my point?

It boils down to simple risk exposure analysis;

1) It will cost me "X" to recall, redesign, retrofit, pay service techs to perform the repair on vehicles already sold with this engine, and then implement it into the production on those in process in order to completely eliminate the problem and never have it happen in mass again

or

2) It will cost me "X" to have a technician and dealership, cover under warranty, repairs on cars that come back to us to address this issue (which in and of itself is a statistical computation on risk).

My guess is option 2 was probably considerably less risk in the long run, because again, at the end of the day, GM is in business to stay in business and satisfy stockholders. So the cheapest option always wins.

[swampthing]

I understand that line of thought, unfortunately for gm that attitude also makes for poor customer relations. Your average consumer doesn't think that a relative few engines out of the millions had problems they automatically assume all GMs are junk and go buy a Toyota.

I did cell phone sales once for a job, one thing it taught me was that it was better to lose money (replacing a phone or something on your own dime) was better then making the customer have to make repeated trips to solve a problem, or make the customer have another failure because you tried the cheapest solution first.

Come to think of it, didn't that last part kind of happen to you with the minivan?

[CMNTMXR57]

Not necessarily.

Where bad relations comes in, is dealing with the dealers.

Sh*t happens. Cars break down and/or certain engines/models, etc, have nuances. No manufacturer is immune to it. Doesn't matter if it's GM or toyota. What matters is when that does happen, how is it dealt with. This is where GM has had issues over the years. Of course that wasn't the case with our dealership because we were perfect. :p

But do you think every iPhone Apple makes is perfect? Nope! Do you think every TV Sony makes is perfect? Nope. Do you think every wrench we sell here at Sears is perfect? Far from. The Dell computer I use, is the same as some 4,000 other people in this building uses, and I bet of those, there have been a few failures! This is why they come with warranties and or repair/return policies! Because the manufacturer realizes this.

Again, it's all a calculated risk they do. You sell a million of product "A". 3,000 of those get brought back by the customer for repair/replacement (repair for cars). That is a 0.3% return rate. The cost to return/repair 0.3% of product vs. 100% of product, is considerable. Guys like me sit in a nerdery with stastical tools, plop them in fancy Microshaft Excel spreadsheets and lay out Risks and Opportunities to management for all types of stuff like this. I'm sure their are some at GM that will even tell you their expected failure rate on any given engine. They build it into their overall cost of the product/product line and consider it a "cost of doing business".

[1tinindian]

The ecotecs have all be pretty reliable as have the high feature v6 (3.2 3.6) .

It's obvious that you haven't hung out at a GM dealer lately.

I can't even begin the count how many Ecotics and High Failure V6s we have had torn down due to one sort of engine failure or the other.
Examples: timing chains, water pumps, pistons (oil consumption) high pressure fuel pumps.
They may be new engines, but they still have their share of problems.
Thank God, or I'd be out of work!

Leon

[rustyroger]

Not necessarily.

Where bad relations comes in, is dealing with the dealers.

Sh*t happens. Cars break down and/or certain engines/models, etc, have nuances. No manufacturer is immune to it. Doesn't matter if it's GM or toyota. What matters is when that does happen, how is it dealt with. This is where GM has had issues over the years. Of course that wasn't the case with our dealership because we were perfect. :p

But do you think every iPhone Apple makes is perfect? Nope! Do you think every TV Sony makes is perfect? Nope. Do you think every wrench we sell here at Sears is perfect? Far from. The Dell computer I use, is the same as some 4,000 other people in this building uses, and I bet of those, there have been a few failures! This is why they come with warranties and or repair/return policies! Because the manufacturer realizes this.

Again, it's all a calculated risk they do. You sell a million of product "A". 3,000 of those get brought back by the customer for repair/replacement (repair for cars). That is a 0.3% return rate. The cost to return/repair 0.3% of product vs. 100% of product, is considerable. Guys like me sit in a nerdery with stastical tools, plop them in fancy Microshaft Excel spreadsheets and lay out Risks and Opportunities to management for all types of stuff like this. I'm sure their are some at GM that will even tell you their expected failure rate on any given engine. They build it into their overall cost of the product/product line and consider it a "cost of doing business".

You expanded my post wonderfully well. Thank you.
A while ago JD Power did a survey of the UK car market, unsurprisingly the Japanese makers came top for reliability and owner satisfaction. But Jaguar managed the tremendous feat of coming top in dealer service and satisfaction, despite their cars not being great for reliability and breakdowns. It makes sense that reliable cars mean the owners aren't exposed to the dealers too often, and owners of unreliable cars won't be in a good mood when that visit the dealer because their car has let them down.
On another level, truck makers and dealers have tremendous pressure to make reliable vehicles properly serviced when they come in for maintenance. My car broken down is an inconvenience for me, a broken down truck might be costing its owner thousands in late delivery penalties and disrupted schedules, never mind a reputation for prompt service going down the pan. So truck makers are really on the ball with manufacturing quality control and dealer backup and training, it's much more important in their world.
A friend of mine in Texas hill country runs a small fleet of light trucks bought from a local GM car dealer. however he has his maintenance done by a heavy truck shop because he can be sure the work will be done thoroughly and on time. In particular he hasn't lost use of his vehicles because some part isn't in stock (the dealer who supplied the trucks new has let him down in this way),The truck shop is acutely aware that time is money in the trucking world and make sure they have everything they need, and if they find an unexpected problem they will get whatever is needed in a hurry and keep him informed of how things are going.

Roger.

[CMNTMXR57]

Understannding that in such circumstances, downtime = money, the only thing I can do is get it fixed. That is why I was employed by them and had a reasonable amount of job security.

As I said, no manufacturer has assembled the perfect car. When I hear of honda and toyota ball swingers, rave about how there cars are better than "insert name of domestic brand here", I quip that the last Honda/Toyota dealership I went by had a pretty large service department too...

Point being, if they made perfect cars, they wouldn't need a service department, right?

[nos4blood70]

Our Bonneville has been more reliable than our GX.

[Boreas]

You make very good points in terms of cost/risk. However I cant help but wonder if a few extra dollars would have been worth investing in customer loyalty. I look at the coolant elbows, I look at the plastic intake and LIM gaskets, I look at the pig iron that makes up the body and I wonder wouldn't it have been worth it if those cars were still on the road today and basically rolled as free advertising for GM, when someone looks at it and goes "wow, that car is still driving? I know what next car im getting..."

Cut enough corners and eventually its not worth the loss of potential and future customers. And that's hard to reverse especially when people have a tendency to buy what their parents drove if they grew up knowing the cars they were in were reliable. People today still refer to the cars GM built in the 80's when explaining why they wont buy a new GM vehicle now.