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Classic Cars 50 Worst Cars of All Time
298 messages, Last post on May 11, 2009 at 1:53 PM
You are in the Classic Cars Forum. Your Host is mr_shiftright
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Well, by its final year, or by ~1975, they had fixed the rust and the engine overheating problems, so by then the Vega was less bad than before. If the '71-'73 or '74 had been equal to the '75-'77, the Vega wouldn't have been the poster child of what was wrong with GM. I'm not suggesting that the '75-'77 Vegas were good cars, but they were acceptable for their time and their market niche. The Pontiac Astre, which was a rebadged Vega with the Iron Duke 4 in place of the Vega's aluminum engine, was somewhat better than the Vega, because of its engine. The bad news is that the Iron Duke, especially in those days, was really agricultural, in terms of NVH.
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Replying to: hpmctorque (Dec 04, 2008 6:43 am) As far as the question above about whether it was arrogance or incompetence, I don't think we can measure GM's arrogance or incompetence properly today without the perspective of the early '70s. That was a brief moment in time of great prosperity that is rarely experienced in any country. It was the time of the "Great Society," when jobs went wanting, employers couldn't hire enough grads. The thought was that things were becoming disposable, easy for the average person to just replace. I think I read something to that effect by Ed Cole at the time. Unfortunately, Ed actually produced such a displosable product, the Vega.
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There's certainly a lot of truth in what you said, jj2me, but I'd say that what you described was more true from '66-mid '73 than after. In Fall '73 we had the oil embargo, which precipitated the worst post-WWII recession until the current one, possibly. The same can be said of the stock market. Except for brief recoveries, the '69-'74 market, and especially much of '73 and most of '74, was pretty aweful. Only time will tell whether the current recession will be comparable to the '73-'74 one, not quite as bad, or worse. The financial markets are suggesting that this one will be worse than the earlier '70s one. The residential real estate market is certainly much worse than any preceding one since the '30s. But to your point, yes, most car buyers purchased new cars with the idea that they'd keep them for two-four years in the '70s. The notion of driving a car beyond 100,000 was unusual back then. A few people tried to coax 100,000 miles out of their cars, but not much more. Even the "good" cars only lasted two-three times as long as a Vega. |
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Replying to: jj2me (Dec 04, 2008 7:28 am) I think it's not just whether a car is bad or not, but rather the public humiliation it endures, that sticks in our mind. I think the Chevette was a worse car than the Vega, but the Vega was touted as being the "import fighter to push the foreign car off our beaches" or some such nonsense. The Chevette was just carelessly thrown into the mix with no fanfare. It died quietly off stage in other words.
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Replying to: Mr_Shiftright (Dec 04, 2008 8:09 am) Didn't VW at least take that into consideration when designing the Bug? Basically making the engine a disposable part? Every 60,000 miles, just take out the three bolts, let it drop, and throw another in?
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Replying to: andre1969 (Dec 04, 2008 8:18 am) 60K if you were lucky. And going up a long mountain pass on a hot day---you were dead meat. We used to call Route 80 going to Winnemucca Nevada as "The VW Bermuda Triangle". |
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Replying to: Mr_Shiftright (Dec 04, 2008 8:31 am) The previous generations of 50's and 60's GM cars had been beautiful and reliable. So, going into the 70's we had expectations of GM to give us good, even great cars. Everybody who bought a VW knew exactly what he was getting into. Small, noisy, cold, breaks a lot but you could fix it for $100. The Japanese were giving you much the same but not so cold, or quite so noisy, and with nicer interiors. But again - you knew when you bought it. Nobody was expecting GM levels of comfort or quality from them. And the fact is, almost nobody really wanted to be reduced to buying those cars . We all still wanted our Pontiac LeMans or Buicks that went with the good life of the 60's. However, we understood that the economy was tanking and gas was outrageous. Somehow, we all expected GM to give us a small car that was as good as a miniature '67 Chevelle. Reliable (comparatively) fast, quiet.... Life was going to go on as before, albeit on a smaller scale. So, when the Vega came out, we had expectations. And, looking at the car, it looked like those expectations had been well met. Good looking, specially designed engine.... cool! America was going to be just fine, and nobody had to suffer driving a Beetle with cold feet and the radio blasting to hear it over the engine - unless he really wanted to, and most people didn't. Instead millions of us bought Vegas. And we all felt betrayed. (See Lemko's grandma story above). She fits this example perfectly, I think. The Vega was the first time that Lucy/GM pulled the football away. Broken promises, broken dreams. The Chevette, at least, made it obvious what you were getting into. It was a cockroach of a car, but you knew that when you looked at it, and although awful cars, at least they were cockroach-tough. I think they were the start of the saying that "GM cars run bad longer than most cars run at all".  P.S. - Just for the record, since I'm probably viewed as a GM basher here, Acura did pretty much the same thing to me with Integras. I had an 86, and 88, a 93, and then a 97. The 97 was the frog-eyed roundy generation. I hated that car, mostly because the previous two generations had been so good. Acura cheaped out on me. Dumped it after a year. Still won't go in an Acura dealership, even though the new Acuras seem like great cars. But.... I had expectations of what an Acura should be based on the previous cars, and that one let me down. Fool me once....
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Replying to: lokki (Dec 04, 2008 9:22 am) The 510 won both the 1970 and 1971 Trans-Am Series in the 2.5 class. 
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Your comments are right on target, lokki. That's pretty much what happened in many, many cases. As for the 510, it may have been one of the best cars ever made...unless you lived in Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Boston, or any of the major Canadian cities with the exception of Vancouver. In those cities the 510s weren't good cars. I owned one in Chicago, and regretted buying it. My experience would probably have been better if I had lived in California. Where we lived our previous cars, a Valiant, a 4-speed Mustang V8 and a full size Chevy, delivered a far better ownership experience than the Datsun 510. It's possible we were the exception, but I don't think so because other owners with whom I spoke had a similar experience. The things that prompted me to buy a 510 were the fact that, at the time, it was the only front engine car in its class with an OHC engine and independent rear suspension. These were great features for an economy car. Were the 510s that were raced usually modified? I'm thinking that maybe the 510 responded to modifications better than competing cars.
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Replying to: hpmctorque (Dec 04, 2008 2:39 pm) Road & Track's "Top 100 cars of the Century" (01/2000 issue) Any 60s car is a rust-bucket.
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