Do You Know Why?
2 The owner doesn't support my candidate.
3 FR won't "upgrade" to "Like" buttons and blinky crap.
4 Someone else will donate.
5 My friend was zotted.
6 I lost my job and have no income.
nice job....some say that GM’s decline began when they were caught sticking Chevy engines into Oldsmobiles without disclosing it..while at the same time continuing to market the “Rocket Olds “ engines..
i bought a vega as my first car. $3,500. and man did it rust out. the panels in the back went almost instantly, and one day i looked down and could see thru the floor.
“...including rusting so intense you could hear it on a quiet night..”
Ha! That is *so* true. My older sister had a Vega, and that thing rusted like it had metal-eating termites in the body.
The really funny thing is, every Vega I remember seeing always first started rusting just behind the driver’s side front fender on back to the driver’s door. It was eerie - I must have seen ten or fifteen Vegas on the road with the exact same rust pattern.
This is what you get when UAW Union thugs design GM cars and decide what cars should be produced.
That Oldsmobile Diesel engine was the first thing that I thought of.
No critique of GM stupidity is complete without the inclusion of the 1980s J-body: Chevrolet Cavalier, Pontiac 2000/Sunbird, Buick Skyhawk, Oldsmobile Firenza and Cadillas Cimmeron. It providede just what the market demanded: a Chevy Cavalier with leather seats badged as a Cadillac.
Just when GM developed some decent models, it dropped the line: Oldsmobile (Aurora, Allero and Intrigue), Saturn (View, Outlook and Aura) and Pointiac (G6 and G8).
Say what you will about the quality control issues, I continued to (and occasionally still do) see one on the road here and there. With minimal maintenance that car made it well over 200K miles before it gave up the ghost.
That’s also what you get when you listen to Motor Trend.
Chevrolet Vega - “Car of the Year”
Chevrolet Citation - “Car of the Year”
I owned a Vega as a college student, and bought a Citation (based on Motor Trend’s recommendation) right after getting married.
I canceled my Motor Trend subscription and have never read it since!
Yep, horrible cars. The proof is that you never see them on the road anymore, and that has been true for many years. They are the lost generation. When you do see one, it's like seeing a ghost.
Um, no.
That honking land beast didn't have the power to pull a sick whore off a toilet, even with the rare 455 engine that had single exhaust and catalytic converters like it was trying to breathe through a swizzle stick. That generation of GM pony cars were close to twice the weight of the first generation Camaro/Firebirds once you added up all the 'elegance' crap like Berlinetta packages with crushed velour living room furniture interiors and safety bumpers and smog control devices.
Guys trying to modify that version of the 455 for torque with aftermarket cams found out that the lifter valley casting tray was weak as a kitten and would often crack and let the whole valve train loose in an explosion of white oily smoke. Those blocks were not the last gasp smog-era 455 H.O. motors of fame.
Author needs to investigate what GM was offering about five years earlier, I think.
I remember when I was a kid my parents had one of those big Oldsmobile Diesels. To a little kid, I thought I was in a big limo (if I knew what Pimpin was then, I would have said it was Pimpin). I still remember the little ‘glow plug’ light on the dashboard and before you started the car, you had to turn the key until ‘glow plug’ lit up.
In 1972, my family got a '73 Pontiac Le Mans. When they first took it to a car wash, the trunk was flooded--at the factory, they forgot to put in the rubber seals under the trunk lid. The car continued to have problems until one day, I turned on the air conditioner and acrid smoke started coming through the vent. I got off the freeway and drove to a tractor manufacturing plant, where the fire developed in earnest. Employees at the plant put out the fire with a fire extinguisher, but the car was history.
I also got a 1972 Impala which had a design flaw--the metal under the rear window rusted, causing rain to leak into the trunk.
My final GM car was an '84 Buick, which I bought used. I was driving along, and it stopped cold. Turns out the timing chain--made from cheap plastic--had broken.
I'm now on my fourth Ford product, a 2000 Taurus, which was the best car I ever had, but it's nearing the end of its life. In the past, I've sworn I would never consider a "foreign" car, but I'm now considering a Hyundai, a Mazda, or a Honda.
Oh, I don’t know. I loved my little Chevette. Kept it running until my mechanic refused to work on it anymore.
If only we had high enough tariffs on foreign cars, we’d still be enjoying these high quality designs.
This thread is making me throw up a bit.
Me: New 1974 Vega. Traded in a flogged ‘69 Z/28 for it. (Not a 302). Kept it for 3 months, enlisted in the Army and sold it to my older brother then. Sucker!
Younger brother: 1977 T-top Trans Am. OK car (sitting on top drinking beer at 70 MPH). Big motor, 3 inch horsepower.
Sister-in-law: Chevette. Are you s******* me? Weighed three times as much as my Sportster with the same HP. Can you say anvil?
Fiancee/wife: Citation. (Alt name, Subpeona). Daddy says that’s what you get, honey. Manual tranny, as well. Good move, in retrospect. Kept the college jocks away ‘til I got there and rescued her.
4-6-8 Caddy? Gas to diesel motor? Sorry. No one in my realm stupid enough to fall for those.
Any 70’s and even most 1980 models trucks including the blazers had horrible rustpoofing, sometimes I swear a collusion was made to actually make them rust apart so the aftermarket parts were guaranteed of business for decades.
Biggest mistake is canceling the Hummer H2, I swear I will buy one some day soon and fit in a European high output diesel in it. And then make my own stainless steel and ABS body panels.