The vehicles in the show room today are the only vehicles GM sells today. They are not selling what they sold ten or even five years ago. Those vehicles are as good or better than what any other manufacture has in their show rooms.. The fact is what GM is selling today can be driven home for far less than most imports that have the same equipment and are of similar size.
In the world of marketing GM will sell more of what they have to offer at their price than any other, period. If you think the price of what you can drive home, for what you can get in product, does not influence the number of vehicles you will sell and what you sold five years ago was the defining factor of what people will buy today, you have not watched Hyundai and Kia steal buyers by the thousands from Toyota and Honda in the US over the past five years.
Do you think that a bad thing? I you do how does your opinion square with the fact SAAB sells far more vehicle now that it is owned by GM than at any time in its history?
But the question was, why did GM fail to address long runs of parts and systems of known faulty quality?
They knowingly let this plenum issue rock on for close to 10 years without improving the breed. And it really didn't take a lot to 'fix' that shortcoming.
And as you well know, this is not the only instance of this sort of thing.
If problems like this had been engineering problems only, GM has the engineering skills to fix and stop them. If it is an attitude problem, then it needs to be addressed while credibility can still be saved. If it is that GM intentionally leaves a few Easter eggs for the dealership garages, it is quite another thing.
You premise that GM did nothing to fix past problems is not factual, just your opinion. I'll not dispute your opinion, you are entitled to that, but differing facts speaks for themselves.
The irony of all this is that GM , like Ford, has been a manufacturer since the
1900's. Based in this country, one of the leaders in auto design and building, and in 30 shorts years a foreign maker has come in, established dealers, established plants, and is taking their business away. What went wrong? How could this happen? As an mechanical engineer for the last 20 years I've seen in companies I've worked at how this has happened. Spoiled brats, who elevated themselves to positions of decision making in companies, and who were raised on video game reset buttons, never learned the ramifications of decisions. And they have the punkish, nasty, little arrogant attitudes to go along with it. They want whatever they want, NOW! Sitting in engineering meetings they as leaders trump their solutions over anyone else's. As kids they have never learned how to take fix the mower when it broke, fix the dryer or washer, let alone fix a car. That is what American business has today as it's leaders. This is a startling contrast to when I started as an engineer learning from the experienced guys in the department, after a college degree, and after working in a machine shop. The guys I started working with were from the WW2 , Korean war, early Vietnam war, generation. Their preoccupation was with doing the job right the first time and doing it to the best of their ability. They didn't have the attitude of, "well maybe if we market it this way or that way we can sell this much more". No, they had an unselfish, "let's do it right attitude" with no escape by pressing some reset button.
For what it's worth that's why, not just auto makers, but all companies that make something that ships out the door are having big problems. It's the attitudes.
I loved the Old American cars up until the mid 70's. Lets face it American PEOPLE have always been overated as well as the history of the country with all the corruption and stealing anf hatred. Though many refuse to face the truth about that. Some just take it out on the car companies.
America has made some really good and affordable cars in large numbers.
But sometimes we do brag of our engineering and our quality when it is not warranted. (Even the British still boast of their engineering expertise.)
Management has sometimes lapsed into a mentality of producing something they believe to be 'good enough', rather than of exceptional quality.
Capitalism as practiced for years in the USA created jobs and wealth by strong competition. Strong competition, eventually, can lead to fear, greed, and corruption even at highly affluent management levels, not to mention in the band of 37,000,000 people who are defined to be living below the poverty level.
Attitudes have changed here over the decades, and some not for the good.
Seriously, I never had any problems with the car, and it was sold further to a company employee who drove it for a long time. (It did NOT have an automatic tranny. I avoid those whenever I can.)
What America do you live in? The vehicles that the domestics sell TODAY are as good or better than any import you can buy for around the same amount of money, period That is why the domestics sell MORE vehicles today than any import.
The proof is in the pudding as they say And the proof of what buyer think are the best vehicles is in the annual sales figures and the fact is more Americans buy more domestic brand vehicles than all of the twenty some import brands combined. The best selling import company is Toyota and they are a distant forth place, millions of vehicles behind number one and two GM and Ford ;)
Perhaps in your opinion but million of people from around the world, have and still are, literally dying to get to the USA. In what other county in the world are doing that? Every other county in the word is jumping head over tail to do business in the USA as well. Teh only problem we have today is too many American do not have the guts or the since to fight for and support their owe county
Yeah, and Budweiser is the best beer sold in the U.S. because it outsells everybody else.
Give it a rest, Mike. A lot of factors go into how many cars are sold (like incentives, proximity of dealer, number of dealers, etc.) and not just construction quality.
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