QOTD: Which Manufacturer Has Most Lost Its Way?

Mark Stevenson
by Mark Stevenson

If someone mentions the name Buick, a certain image is conjured: comfortable, plush, American motoring just on the blue-collar side of luxury. Buicks used to be the working man’s Cadillac, an association doctors leveraged when making house calls. After all, showing up in a Cadillac would really show the patient how much you were about to screw them upon leaving the bill on the nightstand.

But, in more recent times, Buick has become more of a Chevrolet+. Taut suspensions, journo brown interiors and lukewarm engine choices. Oh, and there’s the Encore, a cute ute powered by one of the roughest, smallest engines you can buy in North America. What gives?

Before people start thinking I’m on a General Motors focused tirade, there are a number of other marques out there as well that have seemingly “lost their way.”

Honda, for instance, used to be a technical powerhouse of gung-ho engineers turning efficiency into fun. Instead, we are given the CR-Z to chew on for years instead of a properly fun hatchback to act as the spiritual successor to the CRX.

Suzuki was another company that lost its appeal with customers as they chased larger and larger models. Sure, the Grand Vitara wasn’t a bad truck and the driving dynamics embodied by the Kizashi were fairly spot on. But, when the Samurai and Sidekick died, Suzuki abandoned the segment they were best known for: rough, tumble, pure off-roaders that were dead simple to own and operate.

Which manufacturer do you think has most lost its way?

Mark Stevenson
Mark Stevenson

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  • Chaparral Chaparral on May 22, 2015

    BMW. This week I drove a 535i M-Sport back to back with a Cadillac CTS V6DI. When I got out of the BMW, I thought I'd been driving a Chinese knockoff. No subtlety to the power (big, on-off turbocharging system), no feel in the steering, significantly (5+%) slower through the corners at the start of tire squeal, and sloppy, floaty body control. Why would you buy this instead of a V8 Charger? In contrast, I'd argue that the connected, hard-cornering Cadillac is just getting back to its roots. Take a look at the Car and Driver luxury car test from 1965 on Curbside Classic. They called the Caddy agile, responsive, and precise, and said it was a set of export shocks away from first-rate road manners by any standard.

  • VolandoBajo VolandoBajo on May 22, 2015

    I just wrote a lengthy discussion of why FoMoCo lost its way only because it killed Mercury and kept Lincoln, and then when I went to post it, I ended up on the subscriptions managment page, and when I returned to this article, everything I had written was gone. I hate the commenting/comments management tools on this site. If it weren't for the fact that upward of fifty per cent of the posters, and a similar percentage of authors, show lots of signs of intelligence and insight, I would just pack it in and go look elsewhere for my online automotive fix.

  • Domestic Hearse Domestic Hearse on May 26, 2015

    Pontiac. You hardly see any new ones any more.

  • Joeaverage Joeaverage on May 29, 2015

    One sign (to me) that the automakers want to steer the customers to what the automakers wants the customer to buy is by selling small cars but not small wagons that they already sell in other parts of the world. Its as if some brands don't want you to experience the utility of a car b/c they'd rather have you spend more and buy an SUV that costs the factory about the same to build as the wagon/car. They KNOW that a portion of the population would be happy with a quality mid-sized or compact car in wagon format but instead of making that choice available - the car maker forces the customer to choose between a sedan or an SUV. How expensive is it to build a wagon along side a sedan on the assembly line with the design work is already done to supply European markets with a wagon?

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    • SpeedRacerrrrr SpeedRacerrrrr on Jun 20, 2015

      @S2k Chris Because the cost of doing business is so much higher now than decades ago, most manufacturers can no longer afford to make niche products. A car either has to be a mass-market product to appeal to the widest audience (think most cars built these days), or it is designed for a small market but must be very very expensive (think Pagani, Ascari, Donkervoort). In effect government regulations have destroyed anything in between. So, are we all happy now? Or do you all want to destroy even the mass-market high performance cars in the name of global warming?

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