GM Canada has a long tradition of Canada-only cars, and one of them was the Pontiac Wave, a badge-engineered Chevrolet Aveo, which in turn was a very thinly disguised Daewoo Kalos. My Korean friends had warned me to never buy a Daewoo product, but like an idiot, I refused to listen.
The Aveo was a Daewoo design spawned before their gargantuan 1999 bankruptcy. The Kalos was marketed as a new product from a new Daewoo, one that had much better styling and was finally engineered in house. Prior to this time, every Daewoo car was a joint venture of some sort or other, with heavy technical assistance from both GM and Suzuki. Even engines were imported for many years. Such technical tie-ups resulted in some truly horrid cars like the Prince, Espero and Tico.
While the cars had a terrible reputation for quality in Korea, it didn’t matter that much in the early 1990’s, since Koreans were car-starved and would buy pretty much anything available to purchase. When I arrived in Korea in late 1994, Korean car buyers were often waiting a year to get a car. This was because exports were seen as more important than the domestic market. Keeping cars in short supply kept the prices up, too. For example, my boss bought a Hyundai Marcia in 1995, a gussied up Sonata, and it retailed at W17,000,000, or $24,000 at the exchange rates of the day. Pretty dear for a car without leather.
I had seen the Kalos all over Korea, and the car, with a 1.2 litre engine, was popular when it was introduced in 2002. I drove a Kalos in Korea and it seemed like a decent, cheap little car. It had nice styling, the space usage was very good, and it had plenty of features to keep one happy. In 1999, GM bought out Daewoo Motor, and now the Kalos was theirs to sell all over the world. The car, while obviously cheap, seemed reasonably well assembled with materials that were quite good, considering the price.
Fast forward to late 2005: I was now working as a service adviser at a GM store. At this point, the writing was on the wall for GM and we all knew it. We had weekly meetings during which the zone rep harangued us to buy a car to keep our jobs alive. Since the sales people were making next to zippola, it was up to the service guys to do our bit.
The car business was not a place I wanted to be for long. At the time, I was working on a new business that required frequent trips to meet people at their home. I was driving a 1992 Eagle Summit beater, which just didn’t do. Since we hadn’t seen a lot of Wave/Aveo’s back for service, I assumed they were a pretty good car.
The deal was in fact excellent: a Pontiac Wave-5 Up-level, loaded with everything except a/c and sunroof. It was a five speed and I loved the features. For example, the keyless entry fob was integrated into the key, the first car to do this. The deal on the car was $1000 discount, $1000 off as an employee and 0.9% on a four year lease. The payment was $197 a month all in, with no down payment. I correctly saw that as a screaming deal for a car I would not have to wrench on for a few years, or so I thought! So, with faith that GM actually could build a good car, I signed on the dotted line for a four year lease. I reasoned that even if the car were a total disaster, I could just give it back when the lease was up.
The initial impression of the car was good. It was well assembled and had good quality stuff inside. Picking up the car was a family affair; my wife, kids and mom were all present. We got in our new car and I put it into gear. The first impression of the shifter was of a long stick stuck in a vat of pudding. I assumed this was normal. The car seemed under-powered, which I chalked up to the five people inside. Finally, whatever undercoating applied at the factory in Korea was all over the exhaust, which stank like hell!
The car had lots of features, like an MP3 capable radio, power windows, nice little touches like a sunglasses holder and the car looked good. The first major disappointment was fuel consumption: the first tank came in at 10.5L/100km, which is really not good for a 1.6 litre. I assumed that the motor was tight and kept filling up. It never did get better and on the highway, it struggled so badly to keep up a reasonable speed it never went above 9.0L/100km. I still wanted to like the car, and kept going with it. It also made a much better impression on clients. Since it was my first new car since 1990, I washed and polished it feverishly. It was, in my mind, a sign that I was back on track in the real world.
The first big test was in December 2006, when we planned a family trip to Disneyland, in Anaheim, California. It was a last minute kind of thing, so airfares were outrageous, so why not drive? From my house, all I have to do is make two turns and I am on Oak Street; follow for 2096 km and arrive at your destination. We bought a compact DVD player for our young children and off we went.
The car struggled to keep up with traffic that flowed at more than the speed limit, which was practically always. In sections of northern California, for example, the traffic was moving at close to 90 mph. It was in this area that the first major problem came up. While driving uphill on an exit ramp at about 4000 rpm, the car made a god-awful rattle. I instantly assumed a lifter and thought it an easy repair. When I got back, I took the car back to the dealer, for which I was, incidentally, not working anymore, glory be!
With shocking surprise, the car came back “NFF” or “no fault found.” The reason for this was simple: since the car was a lease, it didn’t count on CSI scores and if it wasn’t CSI, they didn’t care. My former work place saw the car as a money loser and gave me the shove-off. Talk about great service, eh? The next dealer was almost as bad. I got a tech to go for a drive with me and he heard it plain as day. Then I forced the service manager to listen. It was pretty hard to deny the symphony of knocking and the car went in and I was given a Buick Lacrosse as a loaner. Ironically, it was only marginally harder on fuel than the Wave!
A week went by and finally they called me; the car needed lifters. A new set of lifters were installed and the noise was still there. Instead of calling me, they backpedaled; finally, after another two weeks, they called me and told me it needed an engine. One of the cylinder bores was out of round and could not be further bored out. The closest short block was in Korea. I didn’t care that much since I was driving around their loaner car, getting free kms on it. The Buick 3.8 was pretty fun, too, but the suspension sucked in anything but sedate driving.
The engine replacement on my Wave took another six weeks. I later learned that the reason for the hold-up was the stealership did not want to pay the carrying costs on the engine before the warranty claim was paid out, which could be three months or more. This is the reason it took them ten weeks to replace an engine and why I had received not a single call. As per norm at a GM service department, the internal concerns of the people working there were far more important than the client getting his car back promptly. Needless to say, this experience rather soured my relationship with the dealer.
I could go on and on about my Wave, but suffice to say the car was a total POS. Poorly engineered, bad quality control and plain poor parts. The next major issue happened only a few months later; second gear in the transmission had failed at only 12,000 km (7,456 miles); this after the engine had failed at 9,000 (5,592 miles). The transmission replacement took five weeks. This time I was so mad I demanded a car that was at least as fuel efficient as the Wave, which really wasn’t asking much.
A few months later, the PCM failed in my lane. There were 10 cm on slushy snow on the ground and pushing the car to a parking place took five strong guys. On my way home (and two weeks later), the replacement PCM failed because the tech had damaged the wiring harness. I was making a left hand turn up a hill when it shorted and I was almost nailed by a five ton truck. I was scared to death, and after a mere eighteen months of Wave driving, I made up my mind the car had to go. I was not going to risk having the car out of warranty, especially since it had an engine job done by a tech who was fired soon after he did the work. Nor would GM add an extra year on the warranty until the lease was up. But really, the most galling thing about the Wave was the utter indifference the dealer showed to standing behind the product they sold. Neither dealer I went to gave a rat’s behind about their customers. Keeping the techs happy was the main order of the day; nobody wanted an engine job because they’d lose time on it, so finally they get the youngster to do it. This process takes, get this, ten weeks. That is completely inexcusable; can can any company run itself like this? Obviously not because GM was tits up not long after.
Fortunately, even at this time, there were still dyed-in-the-wool GM people in existence. I advertised the car for like six weeks and got no takers. It was a simple lease take-over and the payment was so low that I thought it would be easy to get rid of it. How wrong I was, try selling a manual transmission car in Vancouver. Anyway, a recently retired GM lover contacted me, fell in love with the car and took over the lease. I was free of the Explodo-Wave as I called it. I drove straight from the GM store to the Honda dealer and picked up a 2008 Honda Fit DX, my next COAL.
The Wave was emblematic of everything that was wrong with GM; bad product that should never have been in our market. Sure, were it cheap enough, it would have done well in markets like India, where it in fact did fine. However, the basic lack of decent engineering and quality control meant the cars were not reliable. The Consumer Reports ratings were awful after the first couple of years. GM should have developed their own small car and really tried to keep its customers away from Honda and Toyota dealers. When I finally dumped the Wave, I told anyone who would listen, “This car is the best advertisement Honda ever had.” I was completely correct, too, because my Honda Fit in three years never had a single warranty issue. Now GM is bringing in the Spark, also made in the Bupyong plant in Incheon, a place known for horrible labor-management relations. Anyone want to buy one and see how good it is?
Excellent, interesting article until the final two sentences. As yet another person burned by a bad GM car, you just can’t resist slagging a new model that hasn’t hit the market yet, can you?
At least have the courtesy to wait for the car to prove itself a POS before you start alluding to it being one.
Secondly, the Sonic is that car that replaced the Aveo (not the Spark). So far, it’s reputation has been excellent. The kind of cars that GM bashers try to predend don’t exist.
With all due respect, once someone has been badly burned by a specific vehicle manufacturer, it’s quite hard to buy anything from them again, regardless of how good the next product may end up being. Brand loyalty only goes so far when you’re laying out hard-earned cash. It’s why there are legions of Toyota and Honda devotees today.
FWIW, I have looked at the Aveo’s replacement, the Sonic. While it was a vast improvement compared to the Aveo, if it had been me who had just gotten rid of a lemon Aveo/G3/Wave, it would be very tough, indeed, to even consider buying a Sonic (or any GM product, for that matter), even if initial impressions and quality reports are overwhelmingly positive.
But then, GM traditionally hasn’t cared all that much about lost customers since their mission statement has always been based on the P.T. Barnum credo of “There’s a sucker born every minute”.
Trust and forgiveness are not one in the same. We can forgive GM their deadly sins, I own two GM products right now. But we should certainly not trust them!
@michaelfreeman,
Speaking of GM vehicles, was it you that had the 4×4 GM van with the blown piston? How’d you make out with that?
Skye, with all due respect, the Sonic, also a Korean design, is too new to make judgement of its reliability and quality. I might add the Sonic is 300lbs heavier than anything it competes against, which for me smacks of poor engineering and is a huge strike against it. The Spark is in fact a better comparison for a Wave/Aveo as they are in similar weight classes.
The real measure of how good a car is comes after the warranty expires. It was the same thing with the Aveos; when introduced, they were okay for the first year. The problems really started as warranties expired.
If you want to be a GM apologist, that is fine with me, but all my life, I have been hearing, “Well, the last GM car was bad but the new one is the bee’s knees,” only to find later that the new one was as bad as the old one.
The Korean designed Cruze has hardly been a paragon of reliability in its first couple of years.
But to each his own; I hope many people buy GM cars. I might get some of my tax dollars that were tossed at Government Motors. You know that $600,000,000 GM got from Harper to close plants in Canada and move them to Mexico. Way to go, Chevy!
What exactly is unreliable about the Cruze. I rarely see them cross out service drive for anything bad. There have been a few little recalls for small items, but in general the Cruze seems to be a pretty good little car. Heavy and underpowered, but not unreliable or poorly built.
Have a look at the Consumer’s Reports ratings. None too flattering and in my opinion, there is not a better rating agency.
There are so many automobile choices out there, why should someone roll the dice after being burned? GM doesn’t deserve any courtesy or the benefit of the doubt in peoples attitudes, because GM didn’t earn it.
I’m a Honda Fanboy. The reason being that Honda has never let me down. They’ve earned my trust. If somewhere down the road, I get screwed over by things obvious and correctable, I’ll most certainly start off believing that their next car is built the same way as the car that screwed me over.
I got screwed over by a Saab in the late 70’s. Real bad. The car was a POS out of the gate and the dealers were worse. I didn’t have any tears when they went toes up in December of last year.
The Sonic is also American built. I believe it’s assembled in Orion Township, Michigan.
I dont think its too presumptive to make a casual observation regarding build quality at a plant with a reputation. The Sonic is new. I hope it is a ray of sunshine for GM. However as a person that was a GM lover for years (and has had his heart ripped out multiple times) I am leary of GMs recent attempts at reclaiming the prestige of a company that once had the balls to produce the Olds F 85 or the 61 Buick Special.
I purchased a 2007 Pontiac wave one year ago, works fine…. when its not in the shop. I will never again buy GM. for starters, the stereo sucks. it has a headphone input for your mp3, but other than that it is weak and the wires are flimsy. The car door speaker stopped working in weeks. Then the brake drum FELL OFF! I was in Ontario at the time, drove there from Sask. air conditioner and heat also sucks, no air pressure, and very little heat is generated even after running for a half an hour. I live in Sask, no heat is not acceptable. the windows ice up more on the inside than the outside when its cold out and without heat i have to scrape the inside window, leaving a large amount of ice and snow all over the front dash-board of my car. Then there is the weird noises under the hood while the car warms up, a high-pitch whine that sounds like an electric chainsaw, takes a minute for the revs to lower and level out. Now, i am having troubles with my locking steering holding my ignition in the off position. it has happened before, all it took was a hard clockwise turn on the steering wheel while turning the key, but this time it didn’t work. I just want to sell this piece of @#$ and buy a car instead of an over-glorified go-cart that seems to be designed by monkeys!
Quite aside from the lack of inherent lack of quality of the car itself, after a dealer experience like this I would certainly never go back.
Looks like it’s as much a bad dealership experience as a bad car. When they treat customers like that, no wonder they keep coming back! Not.
Also, I have a hard time associating “loaded” with “no A/C”. Maybe because I live in a place with warm (nay, hot!) climate, but still… BTW how’s that trip to Southern California without A/C? Even if the car didn’t failed, I’m sure it’s a memorable (if suffocating) experience!
California isn’t so bad, once you get out of the central valley and the San Joaquin valley areas. LA isn’t bad, but once you get inland, it’s mighty warm though and Anaheim is closer to the coast than not IIRC.
Still and all, AC is a wonderful thing to have as I’ve always felt that if you travel and where YOU live doesn’t need AC all that often, other places may well require it more.
A case in point, Western Washington doesn’t really NEED AC much, even in the summers (but it sure is nice to have though) but get across the Cascades into say, Yakima, you’ll need it for sure as it’s hotter and dryer than here (arid climate).
MrWhopee, it was December so not bad at all. I made sure we were on the road early and finished up before it got too hot. I can only recall once it was hot enough to be uncomfortable.
On Canada’s Wet Coast, really, one can get along without a/c very easily. It rarely goes above 25’C here.
I’m of the opposite opinion about A/C need on the Left Coast – it is necessary, and useful, in the non-summer months of the year. It is used for dehumidification while on defrost to quickly clear the windows and keep them clear. The larger the interior volume of the vehicle, the more important this is.
Driving around Seattle when it’s raining and having the windows fog up on the inside is no fun. When the whole family is in the minivan, the middle-row side windows still partially fog even with the A/C compressor running.
Redmondjp,
Yup, around these parts you need it more than you think, not as much for cooling as for defrosting and even then, each and every time you put your car in defrost, chances are, it’ll be in AC mode anyway (for more modern cars of say, the past 20 years).
And this afternoon driving home from Bellevue via I-90 into Seattle, I had my AC on in my Mazda and it only hit the mid to upper 70’s at best.
Yes, I’m a native of these parts, grew up in Tacoma/University Place area but now make Seattle my home.
I’ve had my AC on most days this summer while on the freeway as it’s much preferable than the noise of the wind rushing into the car at freeway speeds. This way, I can listen to the music while I drive.
Wow, interesting article (including the last two sentences)! A coworker of mine bought an Aveo with around 11K on it. Nothing but electrical issues the dealer couldn’t/wouldn’t sort out. They never could get rid of the check engine light….and since he lives in an “emission county” in NC, he could not renew his license plate & therefore drove around with an expired tag until the Local Hyundai dealer have him two bits for it when he traded it for a new Accent.
The Accent is his first new car & it was the one of the only ways he could get anything for the POS Aveo. GM will have to “pull a Hyundai” before I’d ever recommend any of their products.
To get rid of a Check Engine light ion an Aveo requires the replacement of the PCM. Problem is the replacement part will also probably be bad. I saw several come from the factory with bad PCMs and Check Engine lights. The cars should never have been shipped like that, but they were.
Enjoyed the story, and can commiserate about the GM service experience.
Only thing my Prizm ever needed from the dealer was a seatbelt. Had to deal directly with a parts department that was out of a time warp. Larry, Darryl and Darryl talking amongst themselves for close to five minutes as I stood at the counter, the only customer there. I guess I could have spoke up, but I kind of wanted to see how long it would take. And they made their money on the install too, replacing a license plate light that wasn’t out for $25 without asking.
One minor point, Len: The big Korean conglomerate’s name is spelled “Daewoo.”
Fixed. Our warranty service is good.
The biggest problem with stealership parts departments is that they are a stand-alone entity that is entirely profit-driven, with very little accountability to the customer. Most of their sales is through the service department. If the wrong part is ordered and the customer is without their wheels for a longer-than-necessary period of time or has to return a second time, their feedback goes against the service department, not the parts department. In my arrogant opinion, every stealership needs to integrate their parts departments with their service departments. Also, having been employed as a technician by two different Chevrolet service depts. over a 6-month time period in 2008 (I have been a Honda tech for over 4 years now), I can attest that GM’s warranty labor times are an absolute joke. Oil changes pay more time than GM will pay in warranty diagnostic time, and repair times cover 50% of actual time at best. Throwing new parts at a problem is the only way not to lose your shirt when you’re trying to keep a roof over your head and food on your table.
I’ve always like the looks of these. Drove one not too long after they began to offer them here and well, it was OK, not bad, but not terribly great either, this being the actual Chevy Aveo.
The suspension was soft, the power marginal (even the Fiat 500 felt friskier on the go pedal than this thing) and in the end, wasn’t impressed.
Spotted a blue one, I think an 08 that actually had a manual, but was a total stripper, no AC, no power anything for sale last January when I had to go look for another car to replace my dying truck. Ended up with an ’03 Mazda Protege 5.
One thing though, while the integrated keyless entry fob on the key may have been a first for GM, I don’t think it was the first of its kind period as it seems VW has been integrating their keyless fobs onto their keys as switchblade keys since, oh, 2000-2001, maybe as early as ’99 and there may have been others introducing such around that same time from the more upscale models, such as Mercedes and Audi and BMW.
But as far as the run of the mill cars, probably mid oughts is when they became common. I know Mazda began to offer the switchblade keys in 2006, immobilizers and chipped keys in 2004 (utilizing the same, separate keyless fob I have and a larger head on the key itself). I know that to be true on the 3 but may have been done across the board though.
A great COAL post.
I spent two weeks back in April in Va. and Maryland and Budget gave me an Aveo. Had aluminum wheels and a copper color and drove it all over. Given the car’s crummy reputation, it wasn’t bad. Only complaint I had was the four speed automatic should been five speeds. Would I buy one? Only if it were for fire sake prices cash I’d use as a city commuter car
A great cautionary tale. I guess I can understand that even the best manufacturers will occasionally turn out a lemon, but these seemed to have more than their share. Why GM would have chosen to damage their brand with these is hard to fathom.
Even worse is setting up a system that practically guarantees dealer indifference. When dealers don’t get paid or otherwise compensated for taking care of warranty work well, this takes a bad customer experience and turns it into a disaster. Maybe there was a time that GM could have afforded to tell an occasional customer to take a hike, but by the mid 2000s, that time was long gone.
I still see some of these running around in my area. Every once in awhile I have wondered why I didn’t save thousands of dollars by buying one of these instead of my 07 Honda Fit Sport. I will second-guess myself no longer.
Warranty lengths are an interesting topic to me. In the 1950s, a 3 month/3,000 mile warranty was the norm. And the car would be considered used up at 80K. Now, a 3 yr/36K seems the norm. Basic components like an engine so commonly last (or should) for 200K, there would seem to be very little cost associated with a long (100k?) warranty so long as the stuff is designed properly. Hyundai/Kia are selling a lot of cars because of this.
I bought a Fit right after the Wave an in the three years I had it, the car was flawless. It was worth the extra money. However, the Fit was not available when I bought the Wave.
“Why GM would have chosen to damage their brand with these is hard to fathom.”
I can fathom: $, and lots of them. The Aveo was undoubtedly extremely cheap to produce, what with nary any modern engineering required.
I have no idea what Aveo sales contributed to GM’s bottom line but, as usual, that’s all that mattered in the short term (never mind how turned off any prospective future customers the Aveo’s issues might have caused).
This is the kind of story one might have expected to hear about a Renault Dauphine or such in the late fifties or sixties. But not in the current millennium. Pretty amazing.
When it comes to a horrid dealer experience, GM has many decades of experience.
Our local Pontiac dealer was stuck in that wonderful GM arm twisting of “if you want to order car X your going to have take so many G3s too.” At one point they had a back lot full of G3s that they couldn’t sell. They weren’t able to sell them until after Pontiac had been axed.
Reminds me of our new Hyundai Excel, but a hundred times worse!
Do you mean Hyundai Accent? I think they stopped making the Excel in 1994 and the replacement was the Accent so, theoretically, the Accent ‘is’ the current version of the old Excel.
The Aveo story reminded me a lot more of those first Hyundai Excels, built (if you can call it that) and sold for $4,995 in 1985…
I would hesitate to compare this POS to the original Hyundais. A friend of mine had one in the early ’90s, when it was already several years old, and he was very happy with it (and this was in Maryland, where the weather can be rough on a car – and he parked it outside). I recall it being a very primitive ride, but he seemed to have few to no mechanical worries with it. I suspect he was very lucky, as is a Wave/Aveo owner whose car has been less than a nightmare.
None of GM’s current models excite me, no matter how discounted a model is or the number of times they advertise a new gimmick. The Camaro redux did create some mild interest when it first appeared, but I soon began seeing them on other brand’s used car lots (as in within a year of the introduction) so I assume that build quality/driving dynamics/dealer service were typical GM and the interest went away. Why stick my balls in a trap for five years if I know the trap is there?
I’m not too happy with how Ford treated me on my last deal with them, and won’t consider FiatPar either. If only the Challenger was more reliable. That one and the Mustang are the only two ‘Merican cars I’d consider.
My sentiments exactly — coincidentally, the only two new vehicles that remotely interest me are also the Challenger & Mustang. Maybe if I’m alive in twenty years I’ll pick one of those up when they hit beater status (if any last that long).
“Why stick my balls in a trap for five years if I know the trap is there?”
Very well put. For the life of me, I cannot fathom why anyone would take a chance on a Daewoo Cruze or Sonic today. Even if you know nothing of either vehicle’s engineering background, isn’t it enough to know that it’s produced by GM?
I can’t comment on the car, as I’ve never had any experience with them. But I will comment on the dealership experience as I’ve had lots of experience there. This type of “experience” is exactly why GM and Chrysler ended up in bankruptcy. They are not the only ones guilty of it either. There are lots of reasons why things like this happen, but in the end “bad car+bad service=lost customer”. When I was a fledgling young pre-apprentice in the ’70s I worked part time at a GM dealer and this kind of thing was going on then.
In those days if you had a bad experience with your Oldsmobile your next car would probably be a Mercury. The dealer wasn’t too worried about that, they’d just sell your next Oldsmobile to the guy who was p#ssed off at Ford because his last Mercury was a dog. And so it went. Today though, this kind of thing means a net loss of one customer forever. Honda, Toyota et al aren’t perfect but they don’t alienate a huge chunk of thier customer base doing stupid things like this either.
Which brings me to what goes on behind the service desk. Len writes that the engine change and other work was performed by the least competent mechanic on staff because the best techs don’t want this type of work. The reason of course is that the flat rate for the job either comes up short of the time required to do the job or only just covers it. This denies the tech the ability to beat flat rate and get paid for more time than he actually puts in on the job. Straight time is the best he can hope for and he may actually end up putting in unpaid hours. This does not encourage good workmanship.
The same kind of reasoning applies to diagnostic time. The tech gets straight time only, along with a lot of pressure to hurry up and find the problem. Remember, if the tech beats flat rate so does the service department and they have a target to meet this month. Miss a few targets and there will be a new face behind that desk.
Some dealerships do in fact put thier best techs on the toughest jobs. If they do this but don’t find a way to compensate them for the lost time they end up with thier best tech making the least money for themselves and the shop. Then the dealership bean counter has the guy fired or else he quits in disgust. That’s where I come in. I’ve hired a number of excellent techs from dealerships under these types of circumstances. I win, the tech wins and the dealership customers lose.
What goes on in the service department is at least as important to keeping customers as the car itself.
You also do not mention that GM and Chrysler have different labour rates for warranty and retail jobs. The warranty job is 60% of what a retail job would pay. The engine swap on the Aveo was seventeen hours warranty time, but were it retail, it is thirty hours. I don’t know many techs who can re and re a short block in seventeen hours, including all the clean up and road testing, no way.
The Toyonda model is different; first, there is no differential for warranty and retail. Second, a tech can choose to go on straight time any time a hard to diagnose job comes in. No car is perfect but the Japanese makers realise that keeping customers happy and getting them back in their cars is the first priority, not Johnny’s 0.1 hours to unlock the door the car, 0.1 for sitting in it, 0.1 for starting it…..
There is an old saying in service departments:
“The sales department sells the first car and the service department all the rest.”
60%? Yikes. I knew there was a difference but I didn’t realize it was that much. I don’t know if the situation today is the same, but back in the day it was always a battle between the dealership and the zone rep when it came time to submit warranty claims to GM for payment. The dealership I worked at also damn near lost it’s franchise over some “questionable” warranty claims. The whole racket stinks in my opinion.
All in all, I’m glad I decided early on to go the heavy duty mechanic route and stay clear of dealerships.
Chrysler was the worst at least in the era where they were under Cerebus. They sat a hard cap on the amount a dealership could submit in a given period. If they submitted more warranty claims than that Chrysler would deny them access to the dealer only “re-marketing” sales. That practice did eventually end up with dealers suing Chrysler.
They also refused to keep the channels full with parts to make those warranty and non-warranty repairs. A friend’s AWD mini-van was down for near a year because the driveshaft had failed and Chrysler apparently didn’t want to order a batch made until the number of back orders met the minimum order quantity. We also had to wait weeks a number of times for Sprinter parts to be shipped from Germany.
I left Mopar just as Cerebus was taking over. The owners of my stealership (and, all in all, they were a relatively honest lot) saw the writing on the wall and shuttered the place. This was right after the disaster that was the the Caliber, the car that was supposed to quash the hordes of Civics and Corollas. If ever there was a car designed by a committee, it was the Caliber.
The Sprinter is a disaster; we haven’t tried one because of all the horror stories we have heard. We will stick to Fords, thanks, and I love those Twin I Beams! The new Nissan Van looks like a good commercial vehicle, though.
And of course this is a major reason the “Big Three” have seen their enormous market share, like 90%, dwindle over the years.
Having spent several years in Japan, if there is one thing the Japanese know, it is customer service. I just don’t get it; if a car has a problem, bloody well fix it if you ever want to sell another one. Detroit, and VW, just never understood this. Any time I took my Hondas to a dealerships, it was a very pleasant experience. They even still have free coffee!
Mind you, the only things I ever got done on any Honda I have owned is oil, brakes and tires….
My stepson is active military @ MacDill AFB near Tampa. The local Honda dealership there changes his oil free of charge if he shows up in uniform. Keep in mind this includes the oil & filter…everything.
BTW, his Honda is several years old & was bought used in NC.
Reminds me on why I got turned off the biz. Im a GM fan but the dealerships are so indifferent it’s sickening. In high school I did a Co-op at a GM dealer and to see grown men fighting like children was rather strange. I seen techs choking other techs, work orders being thrown back at tower and techs callously telling customers “just to buy a new car”. The warranty work was a real moral killer seeing guys work hours for a .2 hr pay on a rough idle was pretty dreadful. When things were slow the old guys would wax poetically on the 80’s gravy train. The advice I constantly got was “don’t get in the trade”.
When I go to a GM dealer the salespeople hardly poke their heads up to greet me but the Honda or Japanese dealer sale staff always say hello. GM’s arrogance has always been their “hustling” attitude and I felt that when I turned down the offer to work at the dealership. Heck the dealership I did Co-op at was gone before the bailout.
OMG these awful junk heaps were badged as Holden Barinas as a cheaper replacement for the European Corsa which was good little car, more GM customers chased away by a Korean Krap Kart.
Korean Krap Kart, funny Bryce.
In Canada, we were also blessed with the Lanos and Leganza. Also Krap Karts.
Its pretty hard to gain a sterling reputation building replicas of cast off junk and Holden stupidly replacing a great handling little car like the Corsa with something that drives like a bag of shit and expecting noone to notice takes the cake. What the Koreans know about suspension and Chassis tuning can be written on a postage stamp with a 6 inch paintbrush
Bryce, I hear you. I have had Hyundai rentals and they do not drive like Toyotas or Hondas, no way. Everything I drive from those two is damned good and lasts a long time with minimal upkeep. The all drive well and have good room. They have the Koreans beat to this day.
The ironic thing is that the sales went up 400% when the Daewoo badge on the hood was swapped for a Holden on – and on the first of the rebadged Holdens that was just about the only difference.
I had one as a rental in the UK, luckily only for a few days, and it was pretty poor, I’d rate it much lower than a Kia Rio or Hyundai Getz from the same 2007-09 era.
I had an Aveo for a few months…I was off work, medical; and the week before I was scheduled to return, my primary car, a Geo Metro…it’s front subframe folded like a cheap tent; completely destroyed by rust. It being 13 years old, I didn’t blame GM for THAT.
But I needed a car in a hurry. Small was the order of the day; I was in no mood for an expensive gas-guzzler that offered only alleged status. The Chevy dealer had an Aveo in stock…a stripper. No A/C. No nothing, except a radio.
I bought. I hated that car driving it off; I thought I’d learn to live with it.
I was wrong. I hated the manual transaxle. I hated the two-separate groups of idiot lights. I hated the road noise; I hated rowing it through gears where the throttle didn’t even CLOSE when you let up on it – like cars of the 1970s, with a hydraulic damper to keep from suddenly closing the butterfly and increasing NOx.
I thought fuel injection solved those problems; but not for the Dae-Woo-Woo.
I hated buying a tire for it…ran over something on the way to the stealer for routine service, and the tire went flat as he’s writing it up. Cheap little Hankook tire (nice name for a brand, hey?) and nothing else would fit.
And I hated buying gas for it; because I had to do so so MUCH. That thing got less than 30 mpg….INEXCUSABLE for a car that size.
When a Yaris came available at a local Toyota store, I bought. I bought so fast the salesman’s head was spinning. Good riddance….to Aveo; to Dae-Woo-Woo; to Hankook; to GM.
Wow, it wasn’t only me!
I shared similar feelings about my Korean Krap Kart (TM Bryce) but moderated myself a bit in my piece….
What’s really appallingly stupid was, it wasn’t my first time with GM…Garbage Motors.
In 1978 I bought a Shove-It (Chevette) that had many of the same issues as did LP. The No.3 Connecting Rod journal let go at 30,000 miles. Reverse bounced out of gear under high stress…the engine was rocking like a go-go dancer and the shift lever came in contact with something and knocked it out. A genuine strip…it still had reverse but you could hear it as the gears would go over the damaged mesh point.
A dealer whose disinterest was only exceeded by his incompetence. Why oh WHY did I even CONSIDER going back to Chevrolet? Probably because the Metro convinced me that at least the Asian Chevys were squared away. Not true, not true…
GM’s bankruptcy should have been heralded as a public service.
The Metro was a Suzuki design and, the Canadian ones anyway, were assembled in a dedicated plant in Ontario, now closed and jobs shipped away. Instead of making the low level car here, the import it from Korea. It makes economic sense, provided they could make a decent car. All the Daewoo stuff was utter junk. I would have real reservations accepting that the new Daewoo stuff was much better. The reliability ratings of the Cruze (a Daewoo design) are really nothing to write home about. I doubt the other ones will be much better.
Same family tree as the Barina, Rebadged Suzuki then Opel/Vauxhall Corsa both competent well mannered cars, to Daewoo KKK. They of Pontiac lemons fame. the Cruz has some Opel chassis design in its DNA but so did the Lemon and it got lost in translation
Yeah. CAMI Automotive, Ltd.
My Metros were all birthed there. Had a friend with a Suzuki Swift…same car, but with a four-cylinder engine. Made in Japan.
Both were good cars. Good design and good factory-floor management counts for more than what lingo the workers speak, or whether or not they’re in a violent, aggressive union or none at all…
Good article…except the reason why Daewoo was able to sell their cars for inflated prices in Korea may be because of that government’s restrictions (through various means) on imported cars.
That was for sure done for years and probably continues now. In the past, when I was in Korea, buying a foreign car meant an instant tax audit. When everyone cheats like hell, an audit is all about paying up in bribes. My former boss ended up in the hoosgow in 1996 when he bought a 750iL in Seoul. The tossed him in on, get this, Christmas Eve, knowing he was a big time bible thumper (albeit a rather crooked one). They were force to sell their most profitable division to get him out. The cash ($7 million!) went on bribes and the division went to a rival with a family connection to the tax office.
Really, few Koreans would bother with imports and why would they? There is a Hyundai store on every street corner, it attracts no attention and they are really not bad cars these days. My Korean friends will change their car out every three years or so. Only they really newly rich or gangsters in Korea will drive a foreign car. Doing so just attracts too much negative attention.
China, on the other hand….
foreign cars are no longer unusual especially in seoul. my father-in-law called excited because there was a good deal available at the chrysler dealer. should he get it? my wife translated my answer, “no way! if he wants to buy american, get a ford.” he ended up buying another hyundai.
years ago i got a ride from my wife’s uncle who had recently retired from a middle management job at daewoo. he was driving a manual transmission daewoo laguna, i think. i complimented the car. he looked at me like i was an idiot and said that he was shopping around for a golf.
An old coworker had an Aveo sedan. His reasoning for buying it was that, since it was a “Chevrolet,” it’d be cheaper and easier to service. It wasn’t. And it was always in the shop for something that required an impossibly hard to find and expensive part. The laughable gas mileage was just one more slap in the face.
He replaced it with the car everyone had told him to get the first time – a Corolla.
I always thought the name “Aveo” was one of the dumbest ever. Nobody knows how to pronounce it. Aah-vay-oh, Ai-vee-oh? What is it? Then again, “Chevrolet Sonic” might be even worse; It just screams “I’m not a real car.”
I am under orders from a friend of mine to never reveal to her husband that her “Chevy” Aveo is really a Made in Korea Daewoo. Prior to this, she was absolutely sure that she drove an American car, until I pointed out what the “K” means on her VIN.
It shouldn’t be that hard for them to figure out.
Right on the tag on the door sill, it says MANUFACTURED BY GM-DAEWOO ENGINEERING CORPORATION. Made in KOREA.
Every time they look to find the correct tire pressures…it’s staring them in the face.
I doubt she has ever looked at that label.
Must’ve dodged a bullet here. I Test drove an Aveo before settling on my current chariot (06 Saab 9-2X) I thought that the Aveo felt like a Toyota Tercel circa 1988 – now I realize I would have been so lucky!
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh the famous Saab-aru… 😛
Funny I had a coworker at my last job with an 06 aveo. He had always driven beaters before that car and decided since he was going to have a 70 mile round trip commute he wanted something reliable but not so expensive that he would care about the miles. He bought an auto Aveo leftover he did say the gas mileage sucked for what it was (around 29 mpg average I believe) but he never had a single issue with the car. Last time I saw him he was coming up on 80,000 miles and all he had done was a set of tires and front pads at 65k. He was surprised and planned to keep driving it until something major broke.
Just to put a positive word in for the American companies, My 2011 Mustang is almost 2 years old and has had no problems. I also have a 94 Chevy Caprice with 130k mi and in the 9 years I’ve had it, has had no significant problems. As for koreans, my wife still drives the 05 Hyundai Tuscon she bought new and it has gone over 70k mi with no significant problems. I guess I’ve been pretty lucky, but then most of my cars have been GM full or mid size cars bought well used and none of them had reliability issues.
Not all American stuff was bad, in fact the newer Ford stuff is comparable with anything out there (but they ain’t cheap). GM, as I have stated in my pieces before, does some things well and others horribly.
The Good:
-All rear-wheel drive sleds 1977-present, including big SUVs like the Tahoe.
-Their half ton truck is, in my opinion, the best domestic truck as it appears, at least to me, that GM has avoided the gargantuanism that affects the Fords and Dodges.
-Their full size FWD cars, the later ones were okay.
-Later A Bodies.
-Japanese joint venture stuff like with Toyota and Suzuji.
The Bad:
Everything else.
I’d agree with all that. I think the General rule is, the bigger the better when it comes to GM products. They really have done a terrible job with small cars over the years (though a few decent ones sneak out of the factories, as some of the posts testify). They seem to be trying harder lately with the Cruze and Sonic. Hopefully those will turn out well. They need to, as well as improved dealer experiences with customers, if GM wants to stay healthy in the future.
This really goes to the heart of the matter in GM’s attitude towards small cars. For the last half century, I don’t think GM execs could ever believe that even if someone were foolish enough to buy a small car, that they’d want to keep driving one as their lot in life improved. They could never fathom that when they’d finally had enough of their crap GM (or Ford or Chrysler) small car, they’d find another, better-built car of the same small size rather than move up to a much better, bigger (and more profitable) big GM car, fuel prices be damned.
So, they just didn’t care about the small car market. It’s really telling that a POS like the Aveo could be sold by GM dealers until just last year.
This is why I have a love/hate with GM. I have never personally been burned by a GM product, because I never buy new. I always buy really old. I go with their most proven (which tends to be the best of the best), years after the fact. Right know, the household is sporting a Buick trifecta. Wife drives a mint 93′ Park Avenue, I drive a 91′ Roadmaster for work/family trips, and the toy is an 87′ Grand National. I’m all grins, but I’ll still speak the truth about what I think about their offerings.
Wait, I lied. I did get burned by GM service once (the only time I’ve taken a vehicle in, actually). I had an s10 that I bought new in 98. It was a loss leader deal, and I believe I paid $6500 for it. Anyway, the lugnuts on the front kept coming loose. I guess the dealer got tired of me bitching about it, so they swapped from metric to sae or vice versa, in the next size down, and impacted them on. I didn’t find out about it until after I sold it to an uncle. He had a flat and couldn’t get them off.
#1 reason the Aveo was kicked out the door was CAFE MPG credits. More Aveos sold, more Tahoes, Camaros, and Silverados can be built.
GM’s long attitude was if you buy small, you deserve crap, and are expected to trade in for a big car or truck. Never thought people would actually buy other brands!
My wife had the “made in Canada” Pontiac firefly which the wave replaced, it had an anemic yet incredible 55mpg 1.0 litre engine. She bought it new and was her baby, I made sure it got all the service done on time, replaced the clutch and brakes at least once. Then at 110 000 kms the engine blew up. She paid $14000 for it new and got just over 100000 kms. My old ford van (on mystery miles) got 100000kms for $1100 and could have gone further had I wanted to pay for a new transmission. I would never buy a small car from GM, they make old VW’s look reliable….
Also sold as the Suzuki Swift+ from 2004 to 2010 in Canada (5door body only).