MEMORY LANE

All this bailout talk has me nostalgic as hell about the American car. No, this isn't going to be a handjob essay about the glorious 1960s muscle cars or the Model T. Instead let's discuss amazing moments in the same way that Battlefield: Earth is amazing. I strongly encourage you to share your own American car experiences, as mine are dominated by GM. I grew up in a GM family so I have little direct experience with how shitty Ford and Chrysler products are. My favorite from personal experience is the $32,000 Bonneville that needed a new tranny at 8,000 miles and then another at about 30,000…..no, the Grand Prix that needed a new starter motor every 90 days was better.

GM vehicles had a great way of making you feel right at home the moment you got into a new one. This is largely because their interiors were updated once in 1960, once more in 1981, and then never again. Rest assured the same upholstery, Delco electronics, etc that adorned our 1987 Buick Skylark were found in the 1992 Grand Prix, the 1995 Grand Am, and so on. The corporate "parts bin" philosophy made sure that whether you bought a $10,000 econo-box or an "upscale" $55,000 Cadillac you were essentially getting the same product between the Roger Smith years and ~2002. Then, as is still largely true now, GM's only market is among people who have never tried driving a non-GM car. As one reviewer put it, the Cadillac STS is undoubtedly the finest luxury car you will ever drive so long as you have only driven Cadillacs and never been in a Lexus, Mercedes, Audi, or BMW. True, GM products have been getting a little better of (too little, too) late. But it's hard to escape the feeling at any price point that you are in a rental car, a path-of-least-resistance on four wheels and substandard Firestones.

Here are my personal favorite moments:

1. The Carter-era Oldsmobile diesel passenger car experiment. GM pitched this as a brilliant response to the Arab Oil Embargo.
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Unfortunately they were too goddamn cheap to design an actual diesel engine so they just (poorly, improperly) modified a 350 V8. These vehicles have the distinction of being so fucking bad that American consumers recoiled in horror at the mere mention of diesel powertrains in anything but trucks for 30 years. That would be like Subway releasing a menu item so bad that Americans stopped eating sandwiches for decades.

2. The Cimarron. Roger Smith glues some fake wood veneer on a Chevy Cavalier and doubles the price. Almost single-handedly killed Cadillac. OK, it had a lot of help from the contemporaneous V8-6-4, the overwhelming majority of which literally melted before hitting 60,000 miles.

3. The Dustbuster Minivans. Here is a 1990-1996 Pontiac Trans Sport. Here is a Dustbuster. In its typically brilliant manner, GM sold three versions of this exact same vehicle (the Trans Sport, the Olds Silhouette, and the Chevy Lumina MPV). But we can do better than three, right?

4. The six-headed SUV monster. Having allegedly renounced its earlier sinful ways, just a few years ago GM was simultaneously selling six versions of the same vehicle: Chevy Trailblazer / GMC Envoy / Buick Rainier / Oldsmobile Bravada / Isuzu Ascender / Saab 9-7x. All identical except for badges and a few clip-on plastic exterior panels. Just think of the redundant marketing costs.
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Apparently they live in fear of buyers who would look at the Trailblazer and think "Gee, I'd buy that if only it had a Buick badge on it…"

Good times. Good times. Yours? I have to imagine that I missed a wealth of American automotive crapulence on account of my age – I have no direct experience with pre-Carter cars. Surely some of you do.

Oh. And in fairness, one of the GM cars that went through my family – the Oldsmobile Aurora – was pretty damn solid. So GM did the logical thing and immediately stopped producing it.

15 thoughts on “MEMORY LANE”

  • My dad is a stubborn cuss, so despite living his whole life in the Detroit area he never developed any "brand loyalty". As a result, he's owned cars from Ford, Chrysler, GM, Honda, and Toyota – so far.

    After 50+ years of driving and at least 10 cars, he insists that by far the worst car he ever owned was the Cadillac he just traded in. He complained about the clumsy handling, phony-luxury interior, and terrible mileage, but especially about the CONSTANT need for pricy maintenance. As he puts it: "This just doesn't make sense. The Cadillac is supposed to be the Cadillac of automobiles!"

    One of my best friends works for a supplier to one of the Big Three. Their big project? The big exciting innovation that this American car legend is counting on to revive their brand? Customizable colored interior lights.

    Now, I would think that the American car companies would be screaming to all their vendors: "Drop everything and work on fuel efficiency!" But, no. They're still living in the land of chrome, fins, faux-wood-grain interiors, and other silly come-ons.

  • I'm going to disagree with you about the 6-headed SUV monster. I think it's bloody brilliant to be able to convince suckers to spend four times as much money to purchase a vehicle when the only real difference between the lowest priced version and the highest priced versions are cosmetic because they're all coming off the same assembly line.

    The other companies do it, too, you know. Look at Ford — Lincoln Aviator, Mercury Mountaineer, Ford Explorer, and Mazda Navaho. Same vehicle, way different prices based on name plate.

    My personal worst experience with a vehicle was a thoroughly used 79 Plymouth Volare station wagon given to us by my father. The S.O. likes to say that he hadn't realized just how much his father-in-law disliked him until he gave us that car.

  • I think the Cimarron started off as a Chevy Citation, there was also a Pontiac, Buick and Olds version. How about the H2 Hummer?? It's a Suburban only instead of a body they put the shipping crate on it. There are also cross-company examples. The Toyota Corrolla, Chevy Nova and the Geo Prism were the same car. I have owned cars and pickups from all of the Big 3 and a couple of foreign brands. Some only needed normal upkeep and others were lemons.

  • I apologize that a few comments on this thread got eaten.

    I have to agree with Misterben, GM just can't help themselves. No matter how much they say they "get it" now, they're forever trying to win buyers and save money with proverbial Tail Fins.

    Remember the commercials a few years ago where their big innovation was heated windshield washer fluid? First of all, what the fuck. Second of all, what did that cost them? A 99 cent heater coil?

    Having been in a couple of late-model Caddies I have to say that the CTS is a terrific car. It competes on even footing with anything on the market. But the STS – holy shit. I am glad that the people who buy it only drive GM cars for their entire lives, because if they realized how badly they got ripped off they might have strokes. Tacky glued-on interior "luxury", oil tanker handling, and the same cheap electronics you get on a Pontiac. The best way to describe the big Caddies is as bloated, obscenely expensive Pontiacs.

  • 1988 Pontiac Grand Am. Had to have the computer replaced – count em – four times. The car would for now apparent reason completely shut off whilst moving 60+ miles per hour on the highway.

    Also, when I started dating my husband back in 1988 he had one of those Oldsmobile Cutlass Supremes with a diesel engine. It had to be warmed up for like 20 minutes every day and ran loud and hard. I hated that car!

    Now I have a Hyundai. Love it.

  • My first truck in 1996 was a 1989 2nd generation Ford Ranger truck. I only owned it for 2 years before heading off to college and we went through two transmissions in that time. I did love though that the back windows could slide out of the frames even when locked, so you could always crawl in the back. (Horrible for theft risk, but great for my absent minded self that always locked my keys inside). My next car was a 1998 Pontiac Sebring convertible, which I loved, despite the fact that everytime it rained the back seat floor boards inexplicable flooded. I eventually had to let it go due to repair costs.
    My favorite big three car though was our 2003 Pontiac Vibe (keep in mind it was essentially a Toyota Matrix with a GM label). The car was roomy, ran well, and actually got very good gas mileage (nothing like the 40 mpg our Echo gets but we regularly got 35 mpg). The strange thing though is that in 2006 we traded it in on a 2005 Pontiac Vibe because we wanted to stay under warranty and we hated the 2005 version. Somehow in the two years of production that had managed to strip out everything we really loved about the first one, including the pocket on the back of the front passenger seat for the road atlas, what possible reason did they have for taking this out?
    Finally as an aside, I will admit that my parents were one of the 12 people that bought the Chevy SSR. My Dad justified this thinly veiled attempt at remaining "cool" when they could not longer ride Harleys as an investment. He truly thought, and still insists, the car will double in value in the next 20 years.

  • The death of Oldsmobile was one of the more boneheaded decisions made by General Motors. Sure, it was a little redundant, but why do you scrap the one line that has the reputation of being well-priced and lasts forever? I would have scrapped the Buick line if I had to pick. And Pontiac.

    My parents still have a 1993 Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser station wagon in the driveway with around 300K miles on it. Every 3 months, there will be some type of problem… Mom gets excited thinking she can finally get rid of the darn thing, but then it only needs a $12 part, so it gets fixed. Brandon had a 14-year-old Oldsmobile that he drove until the wheel fell off. About 160K miles.

    If they still made the Oldsmobile, I'd probably be driving one of those. I'm in a Dodge because foreign cars don't seem to be made for people over 6 feet tall. I should have taken pictures of Brandon's attempts to fit in the front seat of a Kia.

  • I've had 2 cars. Both of which sucked/suck to varying degrees:

    1) My high school car – 1998 Dodge Avenger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Dodge-Avenger-coupe.jpg) – this car taught me a quick lesson. Cars are a royal pain in the ass. I spent 2 of my high school years trapped in a work-auto repair circle. I would drive to work (because I couldn't walk there), make money, fix my car, something would break, go back to work, make money, fix my car, repeat. I had starter issues, break problems, electronic issues, the fucking buttons for my windows FELL into the door panel…I REPEAT…FELL when I shut the door one day. I could go on for days, but just the thought of how much money I ended up spending on that damn car is frustrating. I will never get a Dodge again.

    2. My college/post-college car – 1997 Ford Contour (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Contour). This car was not nearly as painful as the Avenger, but I have had my fair share of issues with it. First of all, I lose a signal light approximately every 2-3 weeks, which seems stupid…but when its been doing it for about 3-4 years you get a little annoyed (to the point of hitting your signal, hearing fast clicks and saying to your car "fuck you, why do you hate me?!"). Other than that, I dealt with a missing piece to my front breaks and it took 2 mechanics to find out "gee, why are his brakes grinding?". And other typical fun things such as having my car turn off in the middle of driving down west third because my heat was on "medium". The real humor was the fact that I did not have power steering after it shut off. If anyone has had this happen to them, they understand that instant worry and struggle you go through to get your face on the side of the road or out of traffic. You also appreciate power steering that much more. I don't think i've said more 4 letter words in any context (well besides on Nov. 3, 2004).

    Anyways, I hate cars.

  • GM hasn't been all bad in terms of quality, when you know you are paying not for style but for substance: the most egregious failures are the big expensive pseudo-luxury cars. Two examples of good inexpensive rides, from personal experience:

    1) Chevy Aveo: Great economy car. If anybody needs a cheap ride during the financial crisis and nascent recession, go for it. 2) Also another solid cheap ride was the mid-to-late 90's Ford Escort. Those things still run forever.

    But as for terrible facepalms, why hasn't anyone mentioned the terrible contributions that Detroit has added to exterior styling design? Two instances in particular spring to mind:

    1) Purple paint from the late 90's, especially on the Dodge Neon. Have you ever seen one with a paint job that is not peeling off?

    2) Last but certainly not least: FAUX WOOD PANELING!!!! Seriously, how did those cars even sell? "All right guys, let's go for the impression that we are both rustic AND cheap."

  • In 1998 I became eligible for a company car. I was told that I had to buy an American car because (you might want to sit down for this) They hold their value better. And I was working for a bank at the time. I flatly refused to drive a Sable or a Taurus, so I settled on the new Oldsmobile Cutlass. It was the single biggest piece of shit imaginable.

    The entire electrical system would just conk out for no reason. I had to replace the starter repeatedly. While driving, the AC would just turn off and stop working for a while (a problem I was never able to recreate for the fucktards trying to fix the problem). The only saving grace in the whole ordeal was that, as a company car, I didn't have to pay a nickle for the repairs. We actually got to the point that the dealership would just send an invoice to the bank directly, I didn't even have to front the money and submit an expense report.

    When I was getting my MBA, a professor made some remarks about the US automobile industry that I found enlightening. After WW2, we were the only major industrialized nation left with any significant manufacturing capacity. The automobile industry in particular couldn't make cars fast enough to supply the global demand. So there wasn't a particular attention to detail and quality; just get the shit out the door. This still has lingering impact on the corporate culture today. He also mentioned a wage freeze at some point (this detail escapes me) which forced the managers to make concessions with the unions around benefits that, as we know, have become unsustainable. I haven't verified, but I've heard, that when a GM plant closes, shuts down, no more work is done, they still have to pay the employees at 80% wages for a specified period of time. I imagine that management made this ridiculous decisions because (like the financial industry today) they wrongly believed that nothing would ever change. Demand for their cars would never wane!

    As the Germans and the Japanese rebuilt their manufacturing capabilities, the had no choice but to focus on quality and cost efficiency in order to compete. It created a cycle of improvement and pride in the final product that allowed the much smaller foreign manufacturers to dominate the US automobile market.

    And I agree with every comment Ed has made on the whole bailout clusterfuck.

  • Michael, the electronics always seemed to be the weak link in an already weak vehicle back when my dad was buying Pontiacs exclusively. Nothing ever worked, the ignitions needed constant replacing, and the dashboard would regularly short out on our Grand Am. Speakers too. It also needed a new alternator or three.

    My guess is that sometime in the early Roger Smith era they started sourcing the electronic components (chips, wiring, capacitors, etc) from some third-world shit hole and "assembling" them in the US at Delco plants rather than actually making the stuff here.

    And yes, the fact that we were the only industrialized country that wasn't in rubble in 1946 is the sole reason for our three decades of post-War prosperity.

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