GM's treatment of this issue really sucks...
 

... and they're likely going to pay... a lot.

http://ericpetersautos.com/2014/03/2...sdeeds-old-gm/

gm's treatment of me hasn't been much better (it seems you need to possess an AARP card to get attention in the dealerships). i really kinda wish they had died before the bailout.. there's a reason they needed to be bailed out anyways..

that's why i don't buy gm anymore..

That era of GM was notably crap. Besides what they're known to be good at (trucks and sports cars besides the sky/solstice), everything else they made was complete crap. Has a GM econobox once, bought brand-new. After 12k miles, shit rolled downhill. Transmission wouldn't shift into park, spark plugs all but destroyed themselves, and the engine seals decided they weren't going to at about 24k miles. Absolute utter crap.

From the same era, I had a GMC light SUV (before they went unibody with them). The GMT360 platform was rock solid and built like a tank. Really shouldn't have ever killed them.

I can't really give them shit.

They make this.
http://image.motortrend.com/f/roadte...e-quarters.jpg

And they didn't have too make it.

They also make this too...
http://madisoncorvette.com/wp-conten...ray-306909.jpg

Which i also see one at least everyday of...

I am not defending GM but it amazes me how Toyota gets a bye on this forum:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/n...er-recall.html

Pay 1.2 Billion to avoid criminal charges for its "shameful" handling of recall issues. Now that is justice! LOL.

Just like Toyota GM's issue is getting way overblown. Like the fake articles so called linking 303 deaths to it? Yeah except that was the total number in accidents where airbags didn't deploy for unknown reasons.

Not saying they should get off free, but I'll wait until more facts get out for judgement.

Not staying today's GM is bad. They're trying hard, and damnit, their offerings today, besides what was left over from the crap era, are miles ahead of what they were a few years ago.

GM trimmed most of it's fat. This is the last bit of it lingering. It's like the massive improvements Kia and Hyundai made up and down their fleet of cars. Koreans are no longer crap, and GM vehicles are solid cars. Hopefully GM has ironed out it's habbit of bad electronics, especially in these days of, well, electronics everything.

was it ever proven that it was toyota's fault for the component failure?

the last i remember from that was that no one could verify that it was absolutely an issue with the toyota part instead of driver pedal confusion...

They "bribed" the DOJ to the tune of 1.2B USD to make it go away. They just paid many of the owners of early drive by wire model Toyotas a settlement amount. If there wasn't an issue would they have done that?

The GM allegations are still speculation too. Nothing yet definitively proven.

Again, I am not defending GM. I am just struck by the amount of "hate" of GM that seems to be so popular on import car forums while other car companies who have also had mass recalls and received government subsidies or were once partially owned by the government of their home country are so revered.

ah.. hush money.. i guess i kind of remember that..

there was a lot of bad press about it at the time, so i'm not entirely convinced that it was so much to mask an issue as it was to just get the issue out of the headlines..

comparatively, the gm issue has had something like 13 definitive deaths linked to the issue(or were some of those speculative as well?), where toyota had zero deaths, but a major PR fiasco.

at the time, i took the whole payoff thing as toyota saying "yes, yes, you're morons, but take some money and leave us alone"...

i wasn't aware of that. do you have any more information about it? i can't seem to find anything in a quick couple searches about when they were owned by their gov. or for how long..

personally speaking, i think the gm thing has hit very close to home-- both for this issue and for the time during which the gov bailed them out, and i think that plays a major part in the hostility towards gm over toyota during their recall..

You know, I've been trying to love this new Camaro. I really have, because the styling is well done for the new retro-American muscle look. Also, the ZL1 has 580 HP.

I'm not saying the interiors on the FR-S are anything to write home about. But what is this...

http://www.chevrolet.com/content/che...g_stage._3.jpg

Binoculars.

I don't personally have a lot of experience with GM products. On the other hand, my transmission mechanic father in law with 30 years of experience says a lot of bad things about them. I tend to believe him - particularly when he shows me examples. Such as a part that breaks in a particular GM tranny basically every time... and they haven't bother to change it for a decade or more.

Now, admittedly, most of what he sees would be cars 5+ years old. Hopefully, the late model stuff is better.

As far as picking on GM, I'm an equal opportunity picker (when the company deserves it). I just happened to come across that article linked from another article. No particular hate for GM - technically speaking, my soon to be sold 2006 Saab 9-3 is a GM product. Other than burning out a headlight every 3 months, we haven't had any problems with it from purchase in '09 to the present.

When GM owned Saab, GM tried it's darnedest to make it a badge-engineered brand to keep costs low. Some of their models *were* effectively badge-engineered. But the Saab engineers mucked around with some of the platforms and made them better, or Saab quality.

Sadly, that doesn't pay the bills if you still want to sell a car at a reasonable price. Either people won't buy your car because it's not "better" than other cars except in engineering quality, or the profit margin is not there.

The 9-3 shared the same platform as the Malibu and Pontiac G6. Those aren't necessarily bad cars. I know a few people with both and they're relatively reliable cars.

Actually I owned the year corolla that had the issues, they didn't do anything but cut the carpets back a little. There might have been some serious pedal stuff but damn that car took everything I put to it otherwise. He'll I could have drove that thing until I was an old man easily

I've owned successive corollas before my FRS. Including the period with the alleged issue with no problems. I never took it in for the issue. There was never any proof the issue existed and at least one hoax that I know of. Funny how this issue was brought to light at the height of GM bailout when Toyota was dominating the market. Coincidence/conspiracy? I dunno! All I know is I've owned Toyota all my adult life, I'm 57, and they have never let me down.



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I think there may be more deaths from Toyota's throttle pedal. including an ex-highway patrol officer and his family (4 in one go).

The *initial* NASA study found no prob with the throttle, but subsequently it was found that "tin whiskering" caused intermittent shorts that caused the problems. No idea why that hasn't become public knowledge. People still seem to think it's a "driver error" thing, but this is/was a VERY REAL problem.

I learned about this while working at MIT. Tin whiskering is a HUGE problem in the era of lead-free solder. Have to take steps to mitigate risk. We would often have to disassemble commercially available electronics we wanted to use and have the boards coated for sensitive instruments where very high reliability is required.

http://nepp.nasa.gov/whisker/referen...app-sensor.pdf

I take that back... I just remembered the window problem. Pretty sure this was an issue with the G6 as well.

The windows quit working - wouldn't go up and down and went off track. Went to fix them and discovered that they were using a metal cable with a nylon wheel/roller to move the window up and down.

Metal, being harder than nylon, ate through the nylon wheel and caused the problem. This occurred at about 80,000 miles.

Ridiculous design, IMO. But it's possible that other companies use a similar design and I just haven't had occasion to deal with it. Apparently not Honda, though, as I've owned a couple Hondas well past 100k and never had a window issue like that.

More info and commentary. Immunity and more problems caused by government intervention.

http://reason.com/archives/2014/03/2...ts-of-am/print

"The GM bailout, which ultimately cost U.S. taxpayers more than $10 billion, is the gift that keeps on giving to the auto giant. Unless courts overturn that immunity, many victims of GM's delayed response in recalling cars with faulty ignition switches will recover few damages."

"One reason for the lapse is GM's disarray at the time. But another is that the 2000 Transportation Recall Enhancement, Accountability and Documentation Act created a perverse incentive for automakers to refrain from fully airing safety concerns internally — the exact opposite of its purpose."

"A liability shield isn't unusual in bankruptcy cases, notes George Mason University's Todd Zywicki, but what is unusual is that GM and Chrysler, which also filed for bankruptcy protection, weren't required to put money in special trust funds for prospective victims.... Instead, the corporate giants can treat injured customers as shabbily as unsecured creditors."

"Car owners aren't the only ones hurt by the bailout deal. GM's competitors are being harmed, too.

For example, notes Center for Automotive Research's Sean McAlinden, the shield gives GM an unfair competitive advantage. GM saves close to $300 million in annual product-liability claims because it is on the hook for a fewer of them. And this is on top of the lower debt-service costs and special post-bankruptcy tax write-offs that GM received through the bailout that its competitors don't."

thanks! i really had no idea... so glad i stick to the leaded solder! forget RoHS compliance!!

i can only suspect that the media didn't publicize that info because it was too difficult to get average consumers to understand tin whiskering.. i didn't know pure tin did that...