GM leaving town

Although I am not a fan of my Avalon, it is far superior than any GM product I've driven for years. A few years ago a quality guru retired from Toyota and picked up by GM. His major recommendation was that the components in the cars should be engineered to last 100k miles instead of the warranty period as GM was currently practicing. I believe that explains 90% of the problem with GM car reliability right there.

I don't generally respond to such ridiculous posts but I must ask, do you dream this stuff or do you just make it up? There are literally millions of GM vehicles on the road, long out of warranty, with hundreds of thousands of miles on the clock still running fine. When I still owned my fleet service business we serviced thousands of police cars, with over 200 thousands miles on the clock, for years after GM stopped building police cars. Grow up.

mike

Union contracts signed years ago is GM's downfall.

Medicare will. Toyota doesn't offer their retirees medical coverage, afaik.

Most companies don't. Why should they? GM offered gold plated coverage b/c their union insisted on it.

Many companies don't offer pensions anymore either, although they do match 401K contributions in some manner.

Health care costs are breaking GM's back with their generous benifits and add over 1500 dollars to the average price of a car. It is all reaching critical mass now together with labor costs. Between health care costs and labor costs, it accounts for over 70% of the cost of building a vehicle at GM. It cannot go on forever.

Art,

You don't really believe this do you? GM does not design cars to just last the warranty period. I don't know exactly what periods GM uses when designing components, but I do know they routinely run prototypes past

250,000 miles during development. I suspect, but do not know, GM uses longer design life periods than the Japanese manufacturers. Toyotas in particular seem to disintegrate after about 10 years.

Ed

Look at 10 year old Toyotas vs. GM 10 year olds (if you can find any). Toyotas are almost as good as new, and it's reflected in their market value (and no it's not just complete delusion on the part of buyers).

GM's cars after 10 years are belching blue/black smoke and sound like a bucket of bolts. They are junk. YOu have to pay someone to tow it off your lot.

I guess my father's 87 Camry is a mirage.

Quite frankly, if the only thing wrong with a GM car was that it cost $1500 more than the equivalent import I would still buy it. Unfortunately they suck.

I haven't had a GM product for many years, but I had several in the past. There were certainly reliability problems with certain GM parts. One part I remember was their water pumps. They would usually fail by leaking by about 20,000 miles, yet the rebuilt auto shop replacements never failed me for the next 70,000 miles. Imagine that, the rebuilt parts were much better than the original equipment parts. GM's problem is just taking too low a bidder on parts or making them too cheap themselves. I've not had a water pump fail with any other car.

That's a silly unsupported statement.

No, more like an exception. In a typical week I drive 500 miles. I see a lot of cars. And I never see a generation 1 or generation 2 Camry. That doesn't mean they don't exist, but it does imply there are not many left in my area. The roads around my area are clogged with 0 to 6 year old Camry, and older ones were plentiful when new. They just seem to disappear after they hit 7 years old. My neighbor's Camry is one of the older ones I see and it is a pathetic looking vehicle for one that is less than 10 years old. My 14 year old F150 is in better shape. The Cressida we owned literally started falling apart when it was 6 years old. The paint looked like crap, the "black" trim turned silver, the interior plastic started warping and fading. At the time I thought it was an outstandingly bad car, but from what I see these days, it was a typical Toyota product - dull, over priced, well assembled, third rate design that doesn't hold up. Of the big three Japanese brands (Nissan, Honda, Toyota), I'd rate Toyotas best at initial build quality and worst at long term quality.

Ed

Hey I actually saw two generation 2 Camrys today - at the same time. One was dead on the side of the road in the process of being towed. The other was moving under it's own power with only a minor smoke screen behind it. Both looked like crap - dull and peeling paint and faded plastic trim. The plastic bumper finishing stuff on the mobile one was in the process of falling off. Oh what a feeling, but at least one was Moving Forward (but not for long from the looks of it).

Ed