Impala article in NY Times

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Well, this thread really went all over the place. Still don't feel I understand where the $800 diff comes from...as far as cams go, there is still a cam down in the block on a push rod engine, so don't think that accounts for it.
 
Is the $800 difference on the pushrod vs DOHC engine really a statement about parts cost (which i find hard to believe) or maybe it is about the impact on wholesale cost (eg to the dealer) or MSRP (to the customer).

I remember reading an article about the development of the new Mustang where they discussed all sorts of tough decisions on cost to keep the price within target. Apparently the cost saving of keeping the solid rear axle was $400, but that moving to a real differential and suspension would have to increase the price of the car by considerably more to cover more complex assembly and markup on both the parts and labour.

At some point they have to weigh all of this with analyses of what people are willing to pay for what features. Ford is a perhaps a more rational example than GM. There may be a sense that the core element of the Mustang demographic either likes the solid axle or doesn't care. (Beats me, I am a european handling guy not a an American muscle dragster.) I do think the current Mustang design is a really good car, one of the best recent Detroit offerings, and a real bargoon to boot. I could easily see myself picking one up used in a few years. But if they can sell an extra 10,000 new units by keeping the cost down and most of their buyers don't care then I guess they decided right.

Besides, the loyal domestic buyers may like retro stuff as part of the whole idiom. The other day i saw an aftermarket throttle body that was designed to look like some 1960s carb. Maybe there are enough folks out there who are as suspicious about modern engine design as I am about bench seats in enormous boats that wallow around like couches on wheels.

A few General points on the GM and US manuufacturer issues:

1. We really have to rethink what is "domestic" and "foreign". What is more "domestic" a GM car assembled in Mexico where 35% of the parts were made in Korea, or a Toyota assembled in Ohio using more than 65% parts made in the US. I have two "Japanese" cars. A Mazda made in Japan and an Acura made about an hour's drive from my home.

2. I remember in the early 1980s when GM was bleeding about 1% a year in domestic market share. They viewed this as a temporary abberration and were befuddled by and resented customers for wanting to buy better cars. The sense of entitlement of GM dwarfs anything else in the industry.

3. Someone else quoted statistics indicating GM's average profit per vehicle was less than half of Honda's. Their real problem is that they have been losing $2000 per Cavalier while making $4000 per Tahoe. They have kept doing this for years because they believe that the loss of market share is an aberration. They either have to stop subsidizing to retain market share or make better small cars. Improve your losers or concentrate on your core business.

4. If you are going to make cuts, make smart cuts for the health of the business. The plant closings and job cuts announced seem not to relate directly to productivity or success. Efficient plants building popular vehicles have been targetted too. I expect that the decisions have some accounting basis, but they do not really have a business basis.

5. The whole pension thing is a huge mess. Its not just GM. The overall effect of that rolling across indistries (airline, auto, what next?) could be disasterous. Forget the Social Security trust fund in 2045. Worry about the US Govt obligations to pick up the tab for all of these pension stealing weasels.

6. Who cares about gimmicks, even cool gimmicks, on crappy cars. OnStar is a neat idea. But would I want any of the GM cars it comes on? Make a better car. Same thing with Saturn. Great idea to clean slate the entire car business. Change the retail model. Embrace new technologies like plastic side panels and new manufacturing methods from Japan. Then make underwhelming cars that are poor performers, pig ugly and not overly reliable or fuel efficient?????

My father exclusively bought Chrysler and GM products for years, but after getting burned on the Dodge Aspen, Chevy Citation and Plymouth Sundance in succession and with Honda opening plants here, the notion that he had to drive crappy cars to protect his neighbours' jobs holds no water. He is now on his second Acura in a row. This one was built 200 miles from his home.
 
''1. We really have to rethink what is "domestic" and "foreign". What is more "domestic" a GM car assembled in Mexico where 35% of the parts were made in Korea, or a Toyota assembled in Ohio using more than 65% parts made in the US. I have two "Japanese" cars. A Mazda made in Japan and an Acura made about an hour's drive from my home.''

Bong, bong, bong, bong! Deceptive statement.

GM's average domestic content is 85%. The best foreign company is Honda at 49%. Of course there was the 6' statistician that drowned in a stream averaging 3' deep. It does vary from model to model. Perhaps we need percentages on the label like fiber content of clothing.
 
Hi

The major problem GM had 20 years ago and still suffers from now, is viewing all engineering decisions through an accountant's cost trimming eyes.

Lets take two common examples, although certainly there are countless others from the last 25 years.

1. Olds 350 diesel. (1978 - 1985)
2. 3800 Series II V6. (1995-2005)

First...the diesel.

GM failed to understand that compression in a diesel is such that headbolts/head gaskets must be of prime importance in designing the powerplant.

However, it took GM 5 years of consumer problems and class action lawsuits to finally come up with a headbolt design coupled with a gasket that effectively halted the problem.

But..after 5 years of denials, and repairs done with parts that were identical to parts that failed first time around, GM and the engine's reputaion was damaged beyond repair for many customers.

The original 350 diesel block, code named the "D" block had weak casting and was subject to cracking.
Time to GM's addressing this issue..3 years. The engines debuted in 1978 and this block issue remained until 1981 with the introduction of the 350 "DX" block on all cars with the 350N.

Who remembers the under engineered TH200-200C-200r4 trannys ? At the time, I worked in a used car dealership. We often swapped out a 200 series transmission for a TH350C which often bolted up..and was infinitely more durable.

About the beloved Series II, prior to the engine's update in 1995, UIM failures were scarce for the older Series I 3800.

But with the upgrade in power, the engine saw it's UIM swapped to a plastic composite material which had a very hot EGR chimmney running between cooling ports to the throttle body.

In short order, reports of warping, external and ruinous internal coolant leaks started popping up.

After denial, a redesign of the OEM composite and a little later, a slight redesign of the LIM occurred about 1999.

However, the failures continued.

About 2000-2001, GM did a recall which consisited of new bolts for the UIM and coolant tabs. But as anyone that has seen these UIM's EGR tube "rot" out due to heat will tell you, coolant tabs would have little affect.

Finally, after much owner suffering, in 2004 GM updated the 3800 Series II into the Series III which now had electronic "drive-by-wire" throttle body, and a not publicly mentioned "aluminum" UIM which now effectively stopped the EGR heat in its tracks.

Time to repair the issue.. almost a decade.

I have retro fitted a 2004 aluminum UIM onto my Series II 3800. All I can say is why does it take GM years and countless customers to fianlly fix things? Also, why do they continue to design things like the composite UIM in the first place?

This was not a high tech fix...yet it took a decade.
 
lhjt1
Your points are right on. I grew up when foreign cars were extrememly rare, and drove American new and used up until about 10 years ago after having been burned one too many times.

Everything in our driveway is foreign now. Perhaps sadly stating the obvious state of affairs with the domestic manufacturers and their 'cheap sh!t is good enough' approach to product quality and customer service.
 
OK, so why don't all the anti-American mfg. people mention the good things about domestic cars? Like C/V driveshafts that rarely ever give problems, durable FWD GM transmissions (Japanese cars frequently have auto tranny probs), no timing belts to replace, bodies made of better steel that last longer in the rust belt, etc. Instead you focus on a minor problem (intake manifold) that costs about the same to repair as a timing belt/water pump job on an import.
 
I think the truth is much more complicated than that. For many years foreign cars were MUCH better made than domestics, but of course you had holdouts that refused to understand that.

Now, the situation is changing, and domestics are making a comparably much better car. I'm convinced that domestic quality is good enough now that things like parts prices, dealer service and the like may make them a better deal for most people than Honda/Toyota. Again, most people will not recognize this immediately. It takes decades for public opinion to swing fully on an issue like this, with some people being quicker to percieve the "truth" of the matter and the bulk taking much longer (with laggards and holdouts in the rear and a handful of crackpots that will never get the message, no matter what the message is, ever.)

So for a long time Detroit benefited from perception lagging reality, and in the '80's and even '90's lots of people bought American when they'd have bought elsewhere if they really knew what they were doing. Now Detroit has to pay the piper, as the perception gap will keep people buying Honda/Toyota for a long time regardless of how good American cars get.

FWIW Honda/Toyota still make demonstrably better cars for reliability, although the gap is closing.

Another thing, separate from reliability perceptions or fact, is just the desirability of different cars, and in that regard the imports are still far ahead in most areas. People just don't WANT most of the products sitting on big-three lots.

- Glenn
 
I think there is some truth to most of these posts but I also think it is a bit more complicated than the simplistic pro-domestic or pro-imports. Another big factor is fun to drive, particularly with regards to manual transmissions. As far as the loss of $2000 on the Cav and gain of $4000 on the Tahoe, I think the spread is much wider. Many of the SUVs are reported to mean profits more like 10k.
lght - interesting points. How about the Quad 4? I never did understand what happened there. Lots of hype about what a great design, and what care was taken in manufacture of it, but in practice everyone complained about the buzzy vibs and I don't know when it went out of production.
Another thing that keeps happening is they keep making all models a little bit bigger every year, and then you don't have any small cars. GM & Ford ignored the small imports until market share grew, then came out with Corvair & Falcon, or was Pinto first. Then they grew every year, and a few years later when imports dominated the ignored small car market, they came out with a new small car. I think the Maverick was about the size of the orig Falcon. It is a cyclical thing.... now people are complaining about no small trucks..... Seems manfrs don't know what to do at model change time except to make it a little bigger.....
 
You guys are WAY too harsh on poor old GM.

I think that new Impala is a heck of a good looking Taurus.
 
"I think that new Impala is a heck of a good looking Taurus."

Really?!?!

I was thinking Accord.


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Hi

The so-called foreign cars have issues, but I do believe that on whole, the customer has a better "experience" from the dealer/manufacturer than the typical picnic served to a domestic when denial is the order of the day.
 
Two things. I believe the new Impala hit the market before the mid-term update on the Accord came out, so at least as to the butt styling, the Impala came first.

Second, Norseman makes a great point. I have to admit it was a rude shock to find the the platform-specific ATF (Nissan "Matic-J" fluid) for my G35 costs $12 per quart!!! And it's 10-12 qts for a flush. It's pretty bad when a trans flush (incl the labor, of course) costs more than an alternator replacement on a GM car.
 
As followup on arithmetic

John K: You make a lot of good points, and I should have been clearer that the "Losing $2k on a cavalier and making $4K on a Tahoe" statement was not meant as a attempt at accounting accuracy. My recollection is that the -$2K per cavalier was ballpark accurate but I would not try to defend that number. The profit on an SUV is a more slippery number. I have read values of even more than $10K per unit, but I believe those were based on full price. By the time you get around to the discounts, rebates, financing subsidies and more recently Employee price programs for all I would bet the number drops. I would concede that there are many SUVs making more than $4K profit, but the exact numbers were not really the point. The point was if you try and dominate in every market segment by heavily discounting the cavalier, you had better have a real plan to recapture market share long term through better product, or just concede the market space. My employer just sold of a money losing Division that existed in a low margin business that we owned 20 years ago but is a distraction now. We sold it to people for whom it is their core business and retained a roughly 20% in the new comnbined company, along with a bunch of partnership agreements. We can now concentrate on our core business while they what they do best. If they succeed, then we get 20% of their entire success.
 
A lot of valid points above.

The points made about how reputation last longer than supported by fact is dead on. The defensive view of Domestics as solid and imports as cheap lasted at least 10 years longer than reality would show. The reverse perception that imports are good and domestics suck might have been very very very true 15 years ago, but it is not today. Look at Volkswagen. They have gone from being interesting and cheap cars to good but overpriced cars to not at all reliable but slightly less overpriced cars. This is true even at the high end. Look at the quality problems of Mercedes Benz in the last 5 -10 years. Look at the entry level Cadillac as an actually good car that is not wildly overpriced.

However the truest statement about quality is this. "It has never been harder to buy a total piece of crap than it is today." I find it really interesting getting out there and driving rentals, as I get to drive cars that in a million years I would never buy. The Dodge Neon, the Cavalier, the ubiquitous Grand Am, the Buick something or other, even the late lamented Cadillac Sedan Deville. Every couple of years I get stuck with the rental of "the worst car built today". You can fill in the names. But driving a Hyundai Accent or a Pontiac Sunfire really is an eye opener. "This is the worst car made??? Not bad."

I am not sure how it turned into a pure domestics vs imports dispute. I don't really have a preference except that European and Japanese cars are more likely to match my preferences. My first test of a car is: Corner hard. How much body roll? Acceptable answers are
A) very very little and
B) None.

Obviously if you care most about third row seating then maybe the domestics offer you more. Different strokes.
 
I suspect that the domestics probably are better than they were 20 or 30 years ago. But when people as old as me were "forced" to buy German or Japanese cars due to the high (relative) cost of fuel and maintenance, we made a funny discovery; small imported cars were not only economical to operate, they were fun to drive. So, we put 200,000 miles on them in 10 - 15 years and wehn it came time to buy another vehicle we thought to ourselves, "why go back to Ford or GM or Chrysler with all the irritations they provided us, when for less money we could get a brand new German or Japanese car again?" And much to our delight, the new ones were even better than the old one we had just traded or sold. Plus, we found that they actually had a pretty good resale value.
Fast foward to 2005. Why would I want to take a chance that the new Ford or GM or Chrysler for $30,000. MIGHT be equal to a new Honda or Toyota or Hyundai? I can't afford the risk. I'll stay with the cars that for the past 45 years have continually been less expensive to operate, more fun to drive, and retain more residual value than any domestic vehicle I could hope to buy (except for the Corvette, long may it reign).
Glen
 
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