CC reader CJC forwarded me this Youtube video of a slew of GM ads during a 1984 CBS broadcast of “Washington”. There’s also a few tv show promos and a Newsbreak. If you want to set the time machine back to 1984, and see GM touting its latest robots and hi-tech production methods to build the best GM cars ever, hit Play.
“Nobody sweats the details like GM”. I used to think “I’d be sweating too if I built the cars that they did.
If we’re being fair, GM built better cars in the 1980s than they did in the 1970s. The rest of the world just leapfrogged them, as did consumer expectations.
This is an interesting proposition to think about. Their cars were more competitive and appealing in the 70s, as in they had a better handle on the market. The only really bad car they built in the 70s was the Vega. True, their overall quality of materials and assembly wasn’t that good but the basic vehicles were less troublesome and/or more durable than what was coming from Ford and Chrysler.
In the 80s GM began getting out of touch with what the public wanted. It really started to lag in trucks vans/minivans and SUVs when Ford and Chrysler were taking leadership roles in those segments. The 80s was when Cadillac lost its leadership role in American luxury cars and when Chevrolet lost its role as “USA-1” (as those front license plates at all the car shows constantly remind us.) And its worst car was no longer its cheapest but its best – the Cadillac 4.1 V8 was a major disaster (on top of the minor disaster that the V8-6-4 had briefly been).
You’re absolutely right that GM screwed the pooch on the business end of things. But, as the Deadly Sins series reminds us, building a good car that’s the wrong car is as deadly as building a bad car.
I am absolutely confident the data would show us that, where hard metrics are concerned, GM of the 1980s built better cars than GM of the 1970s-better assembly quality, more reliable, longer-lasting, safer, fewer things gone wrong, fewer defects coming off the line. I would even assert that GM’s engineering foibles of that era were only remarkable because we find them remarkable, not because they were new or more egregious than some of their previous engineering foibles. Let’s remember that the entire first chapter of “Unsafe at Any Speed” is dedicated to the Corvair! And it’s not like the Vega or Monza were great cars. And everyone who was driving in that era has a story about that one car, regardless of maker, that used as much oil as it did gasoline.
You’re right-GM cars in the ’70s were more competitive and more appealing. But like I say, on hard metrics including build quality and things gone wrong, I’d wager my paycheck GM’s 1980s were better.
I’d assert that had GM paid more attention the market than to robots and who reported to whom through the 1980s, they would have retained their reputation and market leadership with cars made to the same standard as they were building to then. People can ignore or “forget” a problem with the thing if they overall really enjoyed it. But not much of GM in the 1980s had soul.
Several of the all-new designs GM introduced during the 1980s were quality disasters. The 1982 F-bodies, 1984 Corvette and 1986 E-bodies (Eldorado/Seville/Riviera/Toronado) were initially terrible.
Car and Driver performed long-term tests of a new Camaro, Corvette and Riviera, and the cars were literally falling apart within a few months.
I can believe that a 1983 Oldsmobile Delta 88 and 1982 Buick Regal were better built than their mid- and late-1970s counterparts, but that is because they were restyled versions of cars developed and introduced in the 1970s. The bugs had largely been worked out of them by that point.
Several of the brand-new cars introduced by GM in the 1980s were quality disasters.
Were quality “disasters” by the standards of the 1980s. Again, expectations had changed by then. We’ve seen so many articles here from the ’60s and ’70s where they literally had a section in which they talked about the defects of each car, because *having so many defects was just normal* back then. I would wager my paycheck that if we had the hard TGW numbers the ’82 F-Bodies would score out better than the ’72s, the ’84 ‘Vettes would score out better than the ’74 ‘Vettes, and the ’86 E-Bodies would score out better than the ’76s, because invariably they were better built than were the cars of the ’70s.
GM cars didn’t “go to s**t” in the 1980s. They improved at a rate way slower than the industry, which made them much less competitive. GM threw money at robots, while Ford brought in experts like William Demmings to help improve processes and change the company culture, and the Japanese continued to perfect the Kaizen methods.
I also read that sales of the full size B and C body cars (along with the G-body 2 doors) increased between 1982-84 as gasoline prices went down and the economy improved after the 1979-82 recession. By that time, GM worked the bugs out of those cars.
My parents had a 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88 Holiday sedan, followed by a 1976 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale hardtop sedan and a 1982 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale Brougham sedan.
Their 1988 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale Brougham sedan had far more troubles than those cars.
It was the same with our neighbor’s 1982 Pontiac Firebird as compared to their earlier GM cars.
Were the 8o’s really that cheesy?
All I could think of were the fake parody commercials in the movie “RoboCop” (made in 1987).
I used to think they were purposefully outlandish, but now I see they really weren’t too far off from reality.
Network TV still dominated, but cable was cutting edge. When mainstream advertising or shows tried to be “like MTV”, usually was cheesy.
Whoa, what I didn’t notice when I sent this in is that the newsbreak also announces a new joint venture between Toyota and GM… what we would later know as NUMMI.
I noticed that nobody sponsors entire TV programs anymore and was the 80s really that cheesy?
GM apparently spent 14 million dollars on this.
http://www.nytimes.com/1986/01/17/business/advertising-gm-offering-sequel-on-george-washington.html
One of the commenter’s noticed that someone who looks a lot like Tim Allen is at 2:39 in the video.
I’m 99% sure it is Tim Allen, who was a struggling actor then. But also from MI.
A few years ago I found a copy of Super Bowl XX (January 1986) someone has transferred to DVD from a home taping. Yes, all the advertising was that bad. It wasn’t just GM’s ad agency.
Not so sure they have gotten better.
^^ OK, that was awesome.
Love it!
Looking around the same channel, I like this one.
I bet that person who transferred it was a Bears fan. I know it wasn’t a Patriot fan!
Sole sponsorships were very rare in the usual run of ’80s TV, but when they did happen it was for this sort of network image burnishing Quality Television.
For anyone who bemoans the culture of today, I’ll kindly point them in the direction of this stuff. Yikes! Those jingles are like daggers into the base of my spine! What drugs did they have to be on to think that sounded good?
I think in general people look at the past through rose colored glasses — people naturally remember the stuff the was good or cool from the past, while the stuff that was bad or just forgettable fades from memory. They forget that the classic rock radio station gets to cherry pick only the good songs from the ’70s and ’80s and get the impression that all music was like that. Or that all cars from the ’60s were like the Mustang and GTO because those were the cars people saved.
What forgettable advertising! As I watched the Olds 98 Regency commercial (where it pulls up to the entrance of the exclusive club) the first thing that came to mind was the Lincoln commercial where the Cadillac, Buick and Olds owners were arguing over whose car was whose and the confident Town Car owner has no problem.
GM still seemed like the king in the 80s (at least in the midwest where I lived) and we didn’t realize until later how they spent the decade frittering away the legacy of leadership that had taken so many decades to build.
The same YouTube user also has a few more videos from this miniseries:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSJHdszWZfE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7-l52PgwyM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCGwlTdTtSI
We. Build. Excite. Ment. – Pontiac.
I remember those!
Was that Tim Allen in that Oldsmobile commercial at about 2m35s?
I’m sure 99%, since he was a budding actor.
“Before a car is built the builders go to school”
GED prep study!
“…because it takes training to compete with the worlds’ best.”
Admitting they weren’t the worlds’ best?
Yep. It’s amazing how often self-aware stuff like that slips into advertising.
Given that they weren’t the world’s best by 1985, I wonder how it would have gone over had they said something like “It takes training to stay the world’s best.”
One sad thing is many of those workers would get laid off in the next few years, from closing plants.
Those ads brought back memories, including the ones for the TV shows, some of which were among my favorites like “The Dukes of Hazzard” and “Simon and Simon”. The first Pontiac ad showing the full range was interesting – I noticed it listed the 1000 (wasn’t that the Chevette?) but I don’t recall seeing one in the ad – but that wouldn’t have fit the “We build Excitement” theme, would it? Then again, the Parisienne Caprice clone and Sunbird (didn’t know they made those with 6 headlights as well – I only remember the 6000 having the six headlights) weren’t the most exciting cars either. The GMC/Chevy truck ads with the S10 Blazer/Jimmy hark back to the days when small SUVs had some off-road capability, but running wild along the beach would create problems with environmentalists today. Interesting announcement of the GM/Toyota joint venture in the newsbreak; kind of ties in nicely with everything else. I guess in its own way the GM ads outline the different markets the cars catered to as well, but Cadillac and Buick were absent. I never saw that George Washington mini-series (another ’80s thing) – does anyone remember it in terms of who starred in it and was it any good?
Didn’t see a Phoenix in the ad either, unless I missed it. It was about to be axed anyway and the 1000 was the most blatant badge-engineered car in Pontiac’s lineup.
If you watch the We Build Excitement commercials from a few years later – which are cheesy but absolutely glorious! – they stopped trying to incorporate stodgy cars like the ailing Grand Prix and Safari in the ads. Because this ad is a bit strange, saying “Built with a feel for the road” while showing floaty Bonneville Gs and Parisiennes. They probably should have put a Phoenix SE in there…
Shows driver downshifting a manual with gusto…cuts to automatic- and column-shift-only Parisienne.
I’m surprised they showed the Pontiac 1000 (Chevette) logo but not the car itself. At least that was a small, light, RWD car you could toss around a bit.
I’m pretty sure George Washington was played by Barry Bostwick,. Better known for playing the NYC Mayor on “Spin City”. He was a mini series regular actor, in the era. Was that Christopher Plummer hawking the FWD Olds 98 Regency? He really needed the bench seat for all his female friends,
Barry Bostwick was also in “Rocky Horror..”
“A winner, that’s the reason why Cavalier outsells the top three leading imports.”
“No, that would be the Voluntary Restraint Agreement.”
“Oh, is that why Chevrolet says if you can *find* a better car, buy it?”
“That’s Chrysler, but basically yeah.”
The most successful product, long term, would be the Blazer/Jimmy, which led to SUV market of past 20 years. Also, the GMC brand.
But, as Paul has said, Japan’s Big 3 would build a “better Celebrity and Cavalier” eventually, even a “better Olds 98”.
Regarding “80’s quality nightmares”. My theory is that cars got more expensive to fix, with the new unproven tech.
Warranties were still 12,000 miles and when a new X or J body broke down at 13,000, was a huge chunk of cash to fix. Some blame FWD, but Toyota, Nissan and Honda had no “nightmares” with that. GM just kicked new stuff out the door, and let customers be the ‘beta testers’.
It was the switch to a front-wheel-drive layout, combined with Roger Smith’s infamous spending spree on automation (without any thought as to how it would really be effectively implemented).
One big factor people often overlook today – Smith’s infamous reorganization of GM in 1984. It grouped Chevrolet and Pontiac into one group, and Buick, Oldsmobile and Cadillac into another. Fisher Body was abolished, under the theory that the switch to unit-body construction eliminated the need for it.
But, as one GM employee put it, “Fisher Body was the organization within GM that possessed the knowledge of how to successfully build a car.”
The reorganization of the divisions into two large groups added even more chaos. The entire process was poorly implemented, and really hindered the launches of several vehicles, particularly the 1986 E-bodies. It also delayed the launch of the GM-10 cars, if I recall correctly.
O.M.G. I think I knew it at the time, but 1985 (these are all 1985 models) was truly the year GM descended into hell. It’s all there! The Chevette (still there), the barely mid-size FWD Ninety-Eight masquerading as a Division flagship with the RWD Delta 88 and Custom Cruiser still around, the “Cutlass Division” phenomena, the second gen Seville with God knows what God awful engine, platform proliferation, fragile drive trains, trucks taking over full-size car duties, the 6th year of half-baked “high tech”, the Impala Pariseanne, endless name changes (Sunbird, J-2000, Sunbird J-2000 soon to be Sunbird……….and so much more!!!!
Auuuuggghhh! Make it stop!