No more GM for me? Maybe Toytoa

My 90 LeSabre has been the best car I have had. It has 176,000 miles. Wife seen a 98 LeSabre for sale and wants me to go look at it. I hate to give up a good thing.

I still have my '91 Regal, but I think the 2001 LeSabre is not up to the same quality. More features, more conveniences, but more problems. My concern is that a 2006 may have slipped a bit more rather than improved.

Maybe GM will come around but until then they must be punished. I still havnt totally forgiven them for my intake gasket failure. I would by another GM with Incentives and another couple of thousand knocked off, but will not pay full price.

I cant complain about my car being bad except that GM has known about and continued there defective design on the intake gasket for 15 years sticking

Edwin-how many miles on your 01 LeSabre? The 2000-2002 4T65E have problems with the pressure control solenoid. Apparently, GM started using Bosch pressure control solenoids in 2003 and the problematic ones were made by Delphi. Unfortunately, they are not interchangeable with the older transmission. I too am disappointed with GM since they were known to be one of the best automatic transmission manufacturers. My Impala has transmission problems with only 30K miles and that's with changing the transmission fluid and filter at 23K miles.

"Edwin Pawlowski" wrote in message news:mo3Vf.21698$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr30.news.prodigy.com...

This is the kind of thing that will really sour a car buyer. My local GM dealer treats me well. I keep 5 GM products running in my household, plus do some work for friends frequently. I buy a fair amount of genuine GM parts over their counter every year. I've never paid for a single diagnostic effort there. Granted - I've never had them do much more than run a scan for me - never brought a vehicle in that needed to go on a lift to be looked over. But... I do buy the parts from them almost *every* time the scan points to a part failure. I've been doing business there for twenty years now and I get shop floor pricing on my parts, so it's really quite competitive with the aftermarket most times. The point is that one hand washes the other and they're good enough to recognize that. A simple scan on their part results in parts sales to me. A good deal for me and profit for them, even at floor prices. They know they'll never see one of my cars in there, up on a lift. It doesn't matter. The profit on parts adds up to probably more than the profit on a new car sale and it's recurring revenue to them. Plus - I have purchased cars from them, both new and used. Maybe it's a smaller town mentality or something, but they get it. Every time I see someone post about having to pay a diagnostic fee for something like this - and we're not talking about a tech spending 1/2 day troubleshooting a car, it points out how valuable this is to me. And to the dealer. They'll see me back time and time again. Edwin's dealer is likely not to ever see him back.

Hey Edwin - have you tried to get your dealer to appeal to GM for goodwill repairs? I'm really not sure how this works in detail, but I know GM does have a goodwill program. I'd consider putting your history down and taking it to the dealer or to the zone rep. Can't hurt to try.

When I had to replace my '98 Regal (daughter - interstate highway - oblivious tow truck operator - guard rail - police report), I really wanted to go with a La Crosse, but could not bring myself to buy any car in its first model year. Even the best of intentions have a hard time passing muster in the first model year. Decided to have some fun with an '03 Gran Am GT in the meantime and give a few years for things to shake out. When it's time to buy again we'll see what the GM world looks like.

I'm not afraid to make my feelings known. When I get more serious in a couple of months, I'll talk to the dealer as they have sold me three other cars. I want them to be aware of why or why not I'm going elsewhere.

When they charged me the diagnostics, there was a 2% charge for waste disposal. What waste from plugging in a computer? I had some fun with that and they gave me a free oil change.

Had it not been for the transmission, I would be ordering a car in April. Now it is set back a few months. One dealer has already been eliminated. They had two chances to work with me and blew it. I was driving by the showroom and saw a new Lucerne. Salesman showed me the car and took my name so he could send me more information. Never did. I went on line from the Buick web site to see what was available and they had a car of interest (had one option I did not want, but that is negotiable) and I requested a quote. Never heard from them. Once I buy whatever I end up with, I'm mail the owner of the dealership of photo of myself standing next to the car and the reason it was not from them. Same with Plaza if I go elsewhere.

I've never considered buying "foreign" cars but the times are a changing. I have four Toyota forklift trucks at work. Very nice machines and have proven reliable.

In the running: Lucerne CXL (was a shoe in two months ago) The V-8 is not worth the extra $3k, IMO Avalon Limited (slight stretch on the $) Camry XLE (2007 is sharp looking)

Do you suppose...???

Sad, but too true.

It is your money spend it where you wish but if you think Toyotas do not break down on occasion as well, you are in for a rude awakening. When Toyotas break down they cost a lot more to repair. Toyota parts can cost three times as much as GM parts.

mike hunt

You need to 'forgive' the gasket manufactures, not GM. Numerous brands, domestic and foreign, had multiple gasket problems for several years after the government banned asbestos without allowing the gasket manufactures time to develop a suitable replacement material.

mike hunt

Of course I realize any machine will wear and break. so there will be no rude awakening What is important to know is the frequency and life expectancy.

You do post an interesting point about parts cost. Do you have any specific data? What is the cost of some of the common items such as water pump, alternator, exhaust system?

One of the things that ticked me off first is the heated seat. The heating element is broken. It should cost about $10, in reality would cost maybe $50 and some labor to install it. That sounds reasonable. What is unreasonable is the fact it cannot be replace. The entire seat bottom must be replaced for $575. Does that make sense to you? Maybe others are the same or even worse. If so, I'm interested in hearing about it. My beef is the way GM handled it because it was over 36k miles, but still well under the 36 months. If it was a moving part the run time would be a factor, but a seat?

As for the window that broke after about five uses, I'd not be upset if it was stuck in the up position. I never open the rear windows. It just floated down with nothing to support it. I removed the mechanism and have the glass propped in place with a couple of pieces of wood. Inelegant, but it works.

My five year old car has more problems than my 15 year old car of the same make. I don't know if this one will make six years at the rate of deterioration.

Me-thinks you exaggerate, wildly... again.

Not the Toyotas sometimes break part; they do, but rarely.

I sympathize with you. The defroster tab fell of the rear window of my 2000 Yukon XL. It could not be repaired. The rear window had to be replaced. GM wanted $850, virtually all for the part. To their credit, GM offered to pay half the cost (I was out of warranty in time, but far under 50,000 miles). I went with an aftermarket part which came with a lifetime warranty for $400 and GM would not contribute to that.

The tab should never have failed...and it was awfully expensive to fix.

Mike, still singing that tired old song? GM puts in the gaskets they want to, and they put shit ones in for far too long. Far longer than they had to. You must be an idiot to keep up your denial of logic.

Toytoa??

Who makes it?

LOL

Harryface

Even my brother's (gasp here) Toyota $-Runner had this problem. Toyota (eventually) paid for my brother's repair. It happened at around 50K.