GM's Junk Heap
Over its history General Motors has made its share of bad products. Some were poorly built, some were badly executed, others suffered from lousy timing. Here’s a look at some of GM’s biggest misses over the years.
Chevrolet Corvair
Brought out in the early 1960s, the Corvair was designed to compete against sporty European cars that were making inroads with American drivers. Its innovative rear-engined design was supposed to give it sporty handling.
In early versions, though, the Corvair's rear suspension design seemed unsuited to the job. The car had dangerously dicey handling in turns.
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Consumer advocate Ralph Nader featured the Corvair in part of his famous book "Unsafe at Any Speed." which pilloried the U.S. auto industry for emphasizing design over safety.
GM ultimately improved the Corvair's suspension design, which was a good move. What wasn't so good: hiring private investigators to dig up dirt on Nader. Nader noticed the stalkers, of course, forcing executives to publicly apologize and making GM look all the worse.
Chevrolet Vega
In the early 1970s, following the shock of the Arab oil embargo, American automakers needed to show they could compete against Asia's popular compact cars.
The Chevrolet Vega may not have consumed a lot of gasoline, but it earned a bad reputation for burning through motor oil. The Vega's light-weight aluminum engine was the culprit.
Besides that it also had a reputation for being badly built. It was probably a bad sign when, eight miles into a test run on GM's proving track, a Vega literally fell apart, according to John DeLorean recalling his days a GM executive in his book 'On a Clear Day you can see General Motors.'
Along with cars like the Ford Pinto, the Vega helped cement the idea that Detroit just didn't know how to build a good small car.
Cadillac Cimarron
The most important part of any luxury brand is its image and one bad model can ruin it. In the early 1980s, Cadillac joined other luxury brands in trying to attract more entry-level buyers with a smaller, more fuel-efficient car.
Instead of coming out with a truly new product, GM added the Cadillac crest to what was, in all important respects, a Chevrolet Cavalier. It also added thousands to the price tag.
In all, it was neither a good Cadillac nor a good value. Even GM executives will readily admit today that this was a really bad idea.
Cadillac did manage to bounce back from this mistake and has returned to respectability as America's only true luxury brand. The underlying good news here is that if GM can pull Cadillac back on its feet, this company itself may be able to bounce back.
EV1
It's been said that "No good deed goes unpunished" and the EV1 is a prime example.
GM introduced the EV1 in 1996 as a production version of a 1991 concept car called the Impact. It sold mostly in California, where state regulations at that time required manufacturers to offer a certain number of zero-emission vehicles.
Unlike electric vehicles offered by other automakers, the EV1 was not a retrofitted version of a gas- powered model. It was designed, from the wheels up, to be an electric car. Only two parts were carried over from any existing GM vehicle: The radio and the door handles, said GM engineer John Berisa.
Despite high hopes, the EV1 ended up being a money-loser for GM. The battery packs alone cost about $35,000 each to produce.
Customers leased EV1's on a three-year basis. In 2003, after California changed rules that required the vehicles, GM took the leased vehicles back and stopped the program, along with other car companies.
"The people who were leasing those cars for $350 a month were getting a killer deal," he said. "They just didn't know it."
GM's decision to end the EV1 later made the company infamous as the villain of the documentary, "Who killed the electric car?"
Other car companies had also stopped selling their electric cars but because GM struck a chord with its product, it was stuck with the "killer" distinction.
Pontiac Aztek
On certain rare occasions a car company can produce a model that many people find unattractive and yet, somehow, it ends up finding a large market.
For some reason, it just didn't work for the Aztek. Introduced in 2001, it's still regarded as simply a hideous odd-ball. Those who own them do love them for their undeniable utility but most car shoppers avoided the Aztek. Over its five-year production run, just 115,000 were sold.
After this, Pontiac returned to a safer design scheme that made the cars largely indistinguishable from one another but for the size. A pavement scorching Pontiac GTO looked very much like a tame Pontiac G6. Lack of any real brand identity, aside from vague aspirations to "performance", choked off the brand's value. GM announced recently it was killing off the Pontiac brand.
Saturn L-Series
It's not that the Saturn sedan was such a bad car, it just wasn't terribly interesting, attractive or exciting.
In that, it was a perfect example of what had become of the Saturn brand 20 years after it was founded in the early 1980s.
GM founded Saturn in the hopes that "A different kind of car company" would bring foreign-car fans to GM. And, in that respect, it actually worked. Most Saturn buyers had never bought any GM car before. In fact, many owners didn't even realize they had a GM product in their driveway.
Owners were attracted by Saturn's friendly no-haggle vehicle pricing policy. The brand also earned a reputation for fuel economy and dependability, despite the fact that its cars were actually about as dependable and efficient as similar cars from other GM divisions.
For years, GM didn't seem to know what to do with Saturn and the brand languished with cars like this one, lacking inspiration and appeal.
Finally, GM decided to make Saturns just as it made other GM models - basing them on the same underlying engineering as its other cars - but making the designs more eye-catching. By 2008, the change-over was complete and Saturn had all new cars. Then the economy tanked, marketing money dried up and with Saturn sales not budging, GM decided to sell of the brand.
Hummer H2
Shortly after "Operation Desert Shield," also known as "the first Iraq war," GM bought the rights to the Hummer name from A.M. General, the company that made military Humvee used to carry American troops.
First, Hummer sold the vehicle that became known as the H1. This was a sprawling off-roader that barely fit within a single traffic lane. That was followed by the H2, a still-hulking full-size SUV that was at least better suited to driving on real roads. Finally, in 2006, came the Hummer H3, a midsized SUV with a five-cylinder engine. Even with its smaller engine, the H3's fuel economy was still relatively poor.
Hummer has always been what's politely called a "polarizing" brand. In other words, you either love it or you hate it. And many people who love it especially love that everyone else hates it.
GM tried to clean up Hummer's image by touting its utility in disaster areas - these vehicles do have genuine off-road skills - but it's not a pitch that attracted real buyers.
As gas prices rose in 2008 and with America mired in an increasingly unpopular second Iraq war, the Hummer haters began to get the upper hand. Hummer sales dwindled to a mere pittance. Beyond that, GM could no longer afford Hummer's bad public image. Finally, Hummer became a victim of restructuring and GM is selling off the brand.
