I directly attribute GM’s business failures and recent bankruptcy to their poor quality. After all, we (and others like us) might still be customers if GM had handled our situation differently. It was clear to me that GM were cutting corners at the expense of quality.
I get a little angry when GM waves the American flag and uses the buy American mantra. Clearly they were only interested in making the sale with us and could care less about America or our satisfaction with their product.
More details, my sad stories with GM...
The Trans Am.
GM had an opportunity to save face but they chose not to do so. The Transam was in the garage numerous times under warranty and when the warranty expired, it was a battle to get them to cover the repairs. They weren't fixing the problems. Worst of all, my wife almost got into two accidents when the darned thing stalled out on her when crossing in front of oncoming traffic.
We finally gave up and traded it in. The car stalled out on us on the highway as we drove it up to the dealership to trade it in. And the rear end was making an expensive ominous clunking noise and there was some weird misalignment problem with the wheels, the lower panel decals were peeling, etc. etc. The car was completely stock and we didn't drive it hard. Simply put, it was an expensive lemon and it was obvious that GM were not going to make it right for us.
The Jimmy.
Actually, the Jimmy had around 80K miles when it started stalling and missing. We spent approx $2000 to get it running so that we could sell it and we finally gave up when the technician told us that we needed to grind the valves which would be another $1500. In perfect condition, the car was only worth $3500. We sold it to a friend for $500 who was able to trace the problem to the computer chip. Clearly, the GM tech didn't know what he was doing and our friend even suggested the same. If we had followed GM’s recommendation, we would have put another $1500 into the car and still wouldn't have been repaired.
Its push button 4WD had failed too. The electrical system had fried. A stupid design idea, IMO.
How did the President of GM respond when you contacted his office about your problems?
For every sad sack story there are plenty of success stories to cancel them out.
For instance: My Big 10 has over 500,000 miles on it and is still earning its way as a work truck. Starts, runs as it should, everything works. Have had it 26 years.
My C2500 diesel only has a quarter of a million miles, still gets 21 mpg pulling a 10,000 pound trailer down the highway.
And my Jimmy is over 180,000 miles. Just put another 120 miles on that one today in beep-and-creep traffic. Owned it for more than 20 years.
With the internet, anyone can discover each vehicle’s pattern failures and how to get them fixed.