You knew this would happen. Whenever things go wrong or come to an end we can’t help but look back and try to figure out why. To look for that one pivotal event that changed the course of events forever. So what did it for GM? When did it happen? After careful analysis I pinpoint their demise to the 3.8L V6 (a.k.a the 231) of the 1970s.
First, the runners up and why they didn’t make the final cut. The Corvair certainly garnered a lot of bad press for being “Unsafe At Any Speed.” For all of its bad points, including the gas fired heater, it just wasn’t that bad of a car. Furthermore, it was a niche vehicle and never sold in enough numbers to really cause any permanent damage to the then-mighty GM. Remember, in the 1960s GM was responsible for selling over 50% of the vehicles in the US. Many look back at the Corvair as nothing more than an experiment that didn’t work.
Fast forward to the early 1970s. GM introduces the Vega, its response to the fuel efficient imports, just in time for the oil embargo of 1973. To say the Chevy Vega was ill-conceived is an understatement. First, the GM hierarchy dismissed the warnings of their engineers that an aluminum engine block needs cast iron liners. Then they outsourced cheap Japanese steel that turned to aluminum foil after just a few winters. It was clearly a losing situation for GM as they got bogged down spending millions sidelining cars to replace engines and recalling others to replace fenders.
So why didn’t the Vega make the final cut? Truth be told it just wasn’t the meat of the market for GM then. Furthermore, the public was just starting to accept little cars that ran on four cylinders and many didn’t believe a four cylinder could be durable enough to hold up in the long run anyway.
Which brings us to our winner: the 3.8-liter V6. Or the 231, as it was more commonly known back then (it was more common to refer to engine size in cubic inches not liters). It quietly appeared on the scene then gained wide spread use in 1978. That year saw a major redux across the A-body line: Oldsmobile Cutlass, Pontiac Grand Prix and the Buick Regal. These were General Motors’ bread and butter products and they were wildly successful. And it is here that GM makes its final, fatal collision; the corporate Titanic hitting the metaphorical iceberg.
GM sent these cars out of the factory with a multitude of quality glitches of which 231 engine issues were no small part. The oil pump was poorly designed, causing the oil pressure to sink dangerously low. By the time the consumer figured out something untoward was happening, the engine was apt to have blown a bearing or, worse, seized up. Game over. If your 231 engine didn’t throw a bearing, there were transmission “issues.” Cracked springs in the suspension. Rear wheel cylinders that fell off of their backing plates. All of this pushed many in the public towards their GM repair shop, and then, imports. The rest, as they say, is history.
Looking back, GM should have jumped in and cleaned up this multifarious mechanical disaster with honor and swiftness. At the time, they had enough cash to make all their customers whole. It would have been an extremely expensive PR disaster, but pretending there wasn’t a problem sealed their fate with hundreds of thousands of former loyalists.
GM tried to run from the warranty claims. Worse, they continued producing the 231 well into the 1980s. In the years that followed, it was mostly more of the same. GM sent out V8s with soft camshafts, torque steering X-cars and Fieros a quart low on oil. As the quality issues stacked up, GM’s market share deteriorated.
In the 1990s, they had one last chance. Cash rich from the SUV craze, GM could have re-invested the profits into their cars to make them mechanically-bulletproof world-beaters. Sadly, they squandered on brands and products and deals they didn’t need. And so here we sit in 2009, trying to bail them out, trying to figure out how to turnaround a submerged leviathan.
The astute reader will have noticed that I’ve left out the Chevrolet Monte Carlo, the other model built off the A-body and a major player in 1978. The Monte Carlo also had a 3.8-liter V6. But that engine was derived from a Chevrolet design: it had 229 cubic inches, not 231. Those two cubic inches helped make the 229 much more sprightly. And durable. If GM had used the 229 in the rest of their divisions . . .
Imagine that: two measly cubic inches could have changed the course of GM forever. Then again, I doubt it. When a company can’t recognize, admit and correct its mistakes, it’s a rudderless ship bound to hit something, eventually.
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Good discussion point, but I can hardly make the connection as I see it today. For me the main issue with all three US auto makers is one that you touched on briefly. When they had the cash during the SUV boom, they squandered it away on buying other auto companies like Volvo, Jaguar, Land Rover, and Saab. Instead of investing in product, they went shopping. Imagine if they would have used that cash to obtain talent, tackle fuel economy, and invest in their manufacturing plants for flexibility.
This article is so true it makes me sad. I fondly remember 65 Nova’s with V8s that would roar beautifully. A ‘70 454 Malibu that a friend owned gave me shivers. I still think the original Sting Ray coupe (63 – 67) is the most beautiful car ever designed.
I have tried repeatedly over the past four decades (I have been driving for 39 years) to buy and enjoy North American cars. Had two Corvettes (loved them but they were more crappy than I wanted to admit at the time), a bunch of other stuff too. My worst cars of all time (out of 32 so far) are all but one North American and most are GM. My ‘82 Chevrolet Celebrity had brakes that failed unexpectedly. Not a good thing with a baby in the car going down a hill – fortunately we avoided a calamity or worse. The car was gone the next day. This was a known and documented problem that GM would not acknowledge at the time!
My mother had a mid 80s Buick 3.8 – while that engine was bulletproof, the car always had other issues that were annoying and hard to fix. She now drives a Toyota Corolla – never had a problem.
My last, a 2003 Montana had the infamous leaky intake manifold gasket that GM tried to avoid but got caught.
I have given up. I have four cars now, none are Big 3. I say let ‘em die!
Two cubic inches…and 60 degree banking, which self-cancelled vibrations and kept it from rattling itself to death internally like the unnatural 90 degree V-6 does. And there was an even smaller 192 CID (3.2 litre) V-6 available in the Grand Prix and Monte Carlo, too. GM was and is just plum ignorant not to have done this substitution. Have you heard their latest radio spot with the nice young lady talking about how good their cars are down the road and how good their quality is? Oh, my. So believable. Please go bankrupt.
carm,
Or they were bought by someone else, who squandered their cash for them (as Dumbler did to Chrysler).
They invested money (sort of) into what people were buying. While I do fault them for not taking a big-picture view of the automotive landscape, in the end, they were doing exactly what they needed to do to make money…build and sell the type of vehicle that Americans were willing to buy (big ol’ honkin’ SUVs). Market share was a slow, steady decline because of the very real quality gap between them and the Japanese. Because they were bent on producing the landbarges that we so loved until recently, the fatal flaw was that there was nothing in the product stream that was a proper competitor to the likes of the Accord and Camry.
It’s rather difficult to point to one point in time that permanently turned the tide for the worse. Rather, it was a continued (almost calculated) slide into mediocrity that did them in. Short-sighted financial gain during the SUV craze helped ease the pain, but blinded them to the eventual downfall that was to come.
Since the 3.8 became so bullet proof it would seem that your editotial should be about the cars, not the engine. Also wasn’t GM’s max mkt share 48% and that was only for a couple of years? Does anyone know?
Also, what about GM’s delay in their redesigned Regal, GP, Monte, Cutlass four doors (the two doors were introduced first)? Was this just ineptness on their part or was it due to Roger Smith’s mass company reorgs?
Charles Dagastino: “Worse, they continued producing the 231 well into the 1980s.”
I don’t think it was the engine itself but the fact that they kept putting it into cars after they knew it was trouble. Fast-forward 10 years and you’re looking at the same issue with Dexcool, gaskets and intake manifolds. Like the 231, once these problems were known, nothing was done.
If they had internally acknowledged the problem and done something about it by the third or fourth model year, they could have cut the number of alienated customers in half.
Maybe the 231 situation IS worse because they had a compatible engine ready right off the shelf.
They were building crap, they knew they were building crap and they kept, resolutely, building crap.
What did they think would happen?
Correct me if I’m wrong here.Both the Chev 3.8 and the Buick 3.8 are 90% not 60%.Having owned both of them,the Buick is a far superior engine IMHO.There is actually two Buick 3.8 the FWD model
is slightly different.
Properly mantained the 3800 will run for a long long time.
The 3.8 is ranked as one the top 10 Engines of the 20th Century by Ward’s. The iteration you are discussing used the same bore as Buick’s 350 so they could be machined on the same line. Same theory as the original V6 which dates back to 1962.
That particular version may have been bad, but don’t let unhinged hatred of GM lead to mis-characterizing all 3.8 as a leading reason for their current demise.
The tooling was purchased back from AMC who had inherited it from Kaiser/Jeep which had purchased the tooling when Buick abandoned the V6 for Chevy’s 250 C.I.D.
Chevy’s 2.8 from the X Cars was GM’s first 60 degree V6.
The Xs would have to be their nadir. They had millions of people wanting to downsize to them and screwed them. In the Citation’s 1st year there were 800,000 of them sold not counting the #s of the other X’s. Those cars burned an awful lot of people.And their follow up Js and As and Ns didn’t help.
No,these were just yet another reason for GM’s demise, not the point at which the entire thing imploded.
This is like “Which lost battle was the turning point in the lost war?”
I think locating tipping point in terms of product is a fine question, and an interesting challenge with countless possible right answers, one for each blatant failure, one for each person who will forevermore react negatively to idea of GM when pondering transport choices.
To get at root of the problem, look deeper, look at their attitude, their world view.
I read headlines, but don’t believe, that they recently turned around their mgt culture. I should buy that book. I can’t square this mgt. change with their PR which is clearly designed to appeal to people who do not look closely at them. Their public face is cellophane thin.
They were fat and happy when VW first showed up. They did not react with the appropriate alarm and failed to change. This is a tipping point, where their attitude, already wrong, caused them inarguable damage.
They could have zoomed far out in front, and stayed there, for quality and innovation, but seemed happy to treat their market share as an annuity. They should already have been far out in front, with quality and innovation.
They will say they were far out in front, offering public what they wanted. They offered restyles annually to make previous year cars undesirable, proving my point.
They have been spending their interest plus digging into their principle ever since.
Did anyone here got the Dexcool settlement money from GM? They were distributing earlier this year.
Why would anybody believe GM cream of the crap management is concerned with market share or customer satisfaction?
I had a 1992 Buick LeSabre with the 3.8L V6. With the 4T65 Trans, that was a bulletproof Powertrain. Also, wasn’t the 3.8L the basis for the Turbo Unit in the GN/GNX?
GM’s problem is launching half-developed garbage (disgraceful enough, considering the resources available to them). After the first million or so units, though, they usually iron out the bugs.
…many didn’t believe a four cylinder could be durable enough to hold up in the long run anyway.
That’s so true, I’d forgotten, but lots of my elders thought a four was only good for a second car, or entry level commuter. I do still remember the day when I was a kid working at a gas station, and more FWDs came through than RWDs. That was a real sea change.
Strangely, in its turbo form, the 231/Fireball/Dauntless/3.8 Buick V6 went on to become one of the most revered of GMs powerplants.
The only other V6 engine (I think) that went through that much evolutionary development is Ford’s 60º Cologne V6 finally ending up as a 4.0 SOHC. Its still used in the ‘Stang and Ranger.
I dont agree that the 231 had anything to do with the fall of GM.
Back then GM had plenty of cash. I think you need to look closer to the present to figure out why they’ve burned through so much cash since 2004.
I’m not entirely convinced by the quality arguement because of the fact of all those people who bought domestic SUV’s in the 90’s, if the product was right the quality problems were not large enought to keep the buyers away.
My nominees: Grand Am / Alero, Grand Prix, gen1 malibu. gen1 CTS, Cavelier.
All these cars have a common thread of crappy precieved quality (interior fits, overwrought styling) that made them far less valuable to the consumer than more sophisticated (but often more expensive) Japanes / German competition. GM only became serious about improving these factors once they realized they couldn’t compete with the Koreans (and soon the Chinese) on price.
Even looking at the trucks they were so dominant in you could see they were starting to worry about competition, thats why the interiors on 40k SUV’s no longer look alarmingly similar to the interiors on 18k work trucks.
I think some of you are missing the point. This isn’t about the multitude of things GM did wrong. This is about the pivotal point. The opinion of the writer here is that this engine and the surrounding issues are what really establish the moment.
Now there were many points when they could have changed things, in theory. The SUV craze did not stop them from investing money in R/D on cars. It should have. They didn’t have to go buy other brands and then lose interest. But that is all beside the point. This moment is where GM showed how systemic the problems had become.
I don’t think that it was one engine or one car that started the downturn, I think it was an attitude that developed then that started the decline.
The attitude was “let the customer fix it”. GM did not make good with the customer when they made mistakes.
(Sadly today that attitude is at it’s zenith – broke, they are squeezing dealers on warranty, pissing off their remaining customers. I know, I am a 2005 Saturn Vue Red Line owner with a corroding hood and hatch – so called railway dust.)
Paris-dakar: “After the first million or so units, though, they usually iron out the bugs.” That’s a hilarious statement, and sadly true.
I’ve had great luck with both the 2.8L (240k miles and it still ran great when the car wore out) and 3.8L GM V6s, but they were made after the first million.
“In the 1990s, they had one last chance. Cash rich from the SUV craze, GM could have re-invested the profits into their cars to make them mechanically-bulletproof world-beaters. Sadly, they squandered on brands and products and deals they didn’t need. And so here we sit in 2009, trying to bail them out, trying to figure out how to turnaround a submerged leviathan.”
I was a teenager in the 1990’s. It was a glorious, amazing decade – even for GM. It seemed like everybody was making money and culture was in the midst of what seemed like a renaissance (this is before the horror of the Aughts really got going). During this time, GM made TONS OF MONEY off the SUV thing.
This is absolutely where GM could have changed everything. Tons of money, available technology and a strong, willing workforce. Instead, they completely wasted all of it on pointless **** that didn’t make ANY MONEY in the long run. That, is pretty much that.
So what did it for GM? When did it happen?
In my eyes the pivotal point was the replacement of the very popular RWD G body cars (Cutlass, Monte Carlo, Regal) with the GM10 cars, which had none of the ‘plushness’ of the G’s and were obviously inferior to the FWD cars from Japan Inc. Game over.
As far as the 231 of that era. One word…SLOW.
I had a 1978 Cutlass Supreme Brougham. It had the (Olds) 260 V8 instead of the 231 V6. The last V8 I have owned and the last good GM – followed by a whole string of GM losers for me. It is my understanding that the 260 V8 was the standard Olds V8 with a smaller bore. Never had a problem with it – it wasn’t very powerful but worked smoothly. Maybe I avoided the (in)famous tranny problems by not having much power on tap.
My first cars were all used — in order — AMC, Dodge, Ford, Dodge. I changed the oil, brakes, coolant, plugs, etc etc on these cars — they were simple to a fault.
Then I bought my first new car (had just gotten married) — a Chevy Citation. Everything on that car had problems — engine, transmission, a/c, major water leaks, etc. Getting the dealer to fix things was like pulling teeth. The car was actually roomy, comfortable, reasonably fun to drive. But we owned it for less than 2 years.
Traded it on a new Nissan — and now 25+ years later — I have never gone back to a US brand car. I did own one Nissan that was a clunk — but Nissan stood behind it way past the warranty.
I might actually be interested in some of the new GM vehicles — but I’d never take the gamble to buy one, only lease. But then, GM isn’t leasing are they?!
I’d put this article firmly in the old wives’ tales category! Cheap Japanese steel? Same mindset as those folks who didn’t like them little four cylinder foreign cars! So GM made crap four cylinder cars on purpose to meet the expectations of the public. They were awful, “so you cheapies, buy a real GM car with a V8″. That’s my cynical outlook on GM marketing of the time.
The original V6 was made from a Buick V8, hence the 90 degree vee angle. It was made to replace the disastrous aluminum V8 of 215 cubic inches, which Buick then sold off to Rover for $22 million. The Olds version of the 215 V8 had slightly different heads and block, including 5 studs per cylinder for the head. The Buick had only four, and wasn’t that great, as Rover proved for decades. The Olds version was stronger to allow the use of turbocharging in the Jetaway F-85 for 1962. GM didn’t sell that tooling…..
So the 231 arrived with an irregular firing order, and was rough. Some years later, GM made a new crank so that the firing order became regular– quite a clever idea, subsequently copied by Audi for their V6s to this day.
Some years ago, I read an article by a GM powertrain engineer, who said this 3.8l was the most friction-free engine GM made by about 1998. Also about the most reliable. Don’t think this engine had anything to do with GM’s demise.
So, if you want to drive a rough GM V6, strap yourself in an 8 year old AstroVan with the Chev 4.3 liter. Now that’s a dog of an engine to live with, but still seemed to last well.
windswords:
GM’s maximum market share was 52% in 1962, and that might have been the only year it was ever over 50%. They’ve been in a slide, with a few brief interruptions, ever since.
Some people will tell you that GM at one time had over 60% of the market. I’ve even had an extended email exchange with one prominent curmudgeon on this point. The source of the 60% number: until a point in the 1980s GM’s market share was often calculated as its share of domestic car sales, not of all vehicle sales.
The last time GM was poised to dominate the market was in the early 1980s. If they had not blown the X- and J-cars, they’d be in much better shape today. There’s a great chapter about the J-Cars in a book by either Brock Yates or Maryann Keller. GM execs convinced themselves it was great, even though it wasn’t.
In general, GM has been a failure of organization, together with a failure of culture. They could not have kept operating as 5+ separate divisions. But they have been reorganizing over and over in search of a single, streamlined, centralized organization, and none of the organizations along the way have operated well. The cars reflected this.
The early 3.8 engine problems were but one symptom of a long history of GM’s abuse of customers. It is hard to pin down one point in history when that abuse became overwhelming.
VW of America, BTW, has the same disease today.
Picking a minor point in the article, I miss referring to engines by their cubic inches. Two-thirty-one. Three-fifty-one. Four-twenty-seven. It rolls off the tongue like poetry.
I had the 196 (3.2) in my 1979 Monza Spyder. It was dreadfully weak, but fiercely indestructable.
So the world’s largest auto company (at the time) lopped two cylinders off a V8 to give a V6 with the wrong angle between the cylinders and a weird firing order?
That pretty much says it all.
This story is misleading to put it mildly. While it is true that there were issues with the Buick V6 early on, especially in its earlier “odd fire” form, the engine developed into a reliable (some have said bulletproof) engine that in 3800 Series I and II form, lasted into the 2000’s. It was the basis of everything from the turbocharged Buick Grand National/T-Type to stock block Indycar engines and NASCAR BGN engines of the time.
The article conveniently points out the early issues with this engine then goes off on some tangent about SUVs, ignoring the fact that this motor was developed and refined over the years and became a good engine for GM.
You forgot the notorious head gasket failures of the 231 as well.
While the 231 was part of it the very idea that they were facing off against Honda, Toyota and Nissan with the line up they had was ridiculous.
This is what happens when you are a large company with huge market share. You get soft and forget where your root are and no longer appreciate the customer.
Jimal, you are partly correct. Having been a buick mechanic in the 70’s I could write more than 800 words about the 231. The 3800 series was vastly improved, but you should expect that after 20 years. The early 231’s offered dismal mileage, weak power( the first turbo in ‘79 had only 145 hp)and a rough agricultural sound no matter how well they were tuned. Remember, the older hondas and hyundais sure werent perfect either, but they were relentless in improving every chance they got. Unlike GM who only got drunk on SUV profits and dividends.
The Corvair certainly garnered a lot of bad press for being “Unsafe At Any Speed.”
The truly sad thing about the Corvair was that the 1965 model fixed most of the issues that earned the U@AS label. I had a ‘65 Monza that I raced with the OSU Sports Car Club. The car was sweet with a predictable power-induceable oversteer that really helped get the car through the tight gates.
I replaced my Monza with a pony car in 1969 that was a nicer and a lot faster but never as much fun to drive.
WMBA Right on with the engine specs. I also agree the 231 engine was not the problem with these cars. This engine was a Buick V-8 with 2 cyl chopped off which made it an odd fire sequence. The new crankshaft had offset rod journals to make it an even fire sequence, much smoother. Then a counter balance shaft was added to make it smother yet. One of these crankshafts came into my shop to be reground because a rod bearing failed, the oil passage from the main journal to the rod was never completed from the factory( I suppose the drill bit broke during that maching opperation) yet it ran thousands of miles just getting lubricated from splash. I finished drilling the hole and reground the shaft.
BTW: 1 Liter = 61 cubic inches. A 229 cubic inch engine is 3.754xxxxx liters.Or 3.8.
Cubic inches are derived from bore x stroke IIRC.A measure of capacity,a description, not a fundamental factor in the quality or reliability of something.
Like the Buick 3.8 [originally a 2 cylinder chop of the aluminum 215 C.i.d. v8 using a cast iron block] I believe the 229 Chevy was taken from it’s V8 brother, the 307. A relative of the Chevy small block.Quick and easy way to get a v6 and be able to use many of the same parts and tooling : lop two cylinders off a v8.
Same way Pontiac came up with the Tempest 4 : 1/2 of their 389 V8.
The current 3.8 V6 engine played a key role in Buick scoring first place in the latest JD Powers survey. This relatively simple engine maybe the most reliable engine on the market.
Of course GM finds ways even to destroy success. The entire Buick carline that scored so well in this survey will be gone, soon replaced by vehicles built on the unreliable Epsilon platform. The failure of the Aura will be brought to Buick.
I still cannot believe the Lacrosse and Lucerne are among the most dependable cars in the world!
Buick is now the kind of reliability, and the aging 3.8 played a role in this!!
Mikey is right, the 3.8 was a 90 degree engine as were its 3.0 and 3.3 variants. The 60 degree V6 came in sizes of 2.8, 3.1, 3.4 (with a dual OHC option for a few years) and now two versions of the 3.5. The Buick 3.8 was later revised as the 3800-II and it is a fine engine. There are millions of them in existence and they are stout motors; they are just dated in their design (pushrods).
I believe GM’s big problems occurred years earlier. They stopped caring about workmanship and quality of materials in about 1969 or 1970. They felt like they didn’t need to because of their indomitable market share. They had pesky Plymouth nipping at their heels with low cost cars and Ford constantly trying to out do them model for model. They wanted to stay competitive, allow UAW wage increases and they took the low-road on cost savings. As an example just look at the 1965-1970 Chevrolet engine mount fiasco. They did an ostrich on that one and didn’t effect warranty repairs until they were forced to by NHTSA in December 1971; six long years after the first Chevies started driving off on their own with stuck throttles due to broken (cheaply bonded)mounts.
I worked for a Chevrolet dealer in 1973 & 1974 and was responsible for warranty repairs. I believed back then that they weren’t going to make the end of the decade with the crap that they were producing; some of the warranty work that came through the door was atrocious. I guess they didn’t believe it either because their powertrain warranties were reduced to 12 months or 12,000 miles in about 1971 from the previous 5 year, 50,000 miles.
Regarding the Vega, I believe it was in fact, a signal of GM’s impending problems; their inability to get it right the first time and the subsequent dithering about how to resolve the problem.
GM is a typical American business (Greek?) tragedy that has befallen many large U.S. corporations; they always seem to kill the golden goose.
I think GM’s biggest issue was ignoring the small cars, because they couldn’t make money on them. The problem is, that the teenagers and twenty somethings that had the craptastic offerings of the late 80s and 90s, alienated them from GM. When their Cavalier or Grand Am gave out, they bought a Honda or Toyota. Now in their late 30s and 40s, these people won’t look at GM. This is why Toyota does Scion. It may not be highly profitable, but it gets people into the Toyota stable early, and keeps them their. Then as they make more money, they can move on to Camry’s, and when they make even more, they can move on to a Lexus. This lack of forsight is what hurts GM. GM lives in the know.
I have a friend that has an ‘84 Regal. That 231 has no power what so ever, and the car is boaty. It really has no major differnces in than a 60s or 70s car. What I don’t get is why if the Grand National could have fuel injection in 84, why couldn’t the other 231s? He is throwing a 383 into it, and turning it into a hot rod, but I can’t see how this version could sell as a family car in ‘84.
In my eyes the pivotal point was the replacement of the very popular RWD G body cars (Cutlass, Monte Carlo, Regal) with the GM10 cars
I agree…I see this as the tipping point in their market share decline. The sales of these brand names plummeted after the conversion. The fact that they, as another poster mentioned, launched them all as two doors and waited a couple of model years to launch a four-door was a huge problem. At about the same time, Ford swung for the fences with the new Taurus (which they never even launched in a two door format).
I believe a book was written about the whole GM10 fiasco, but a quick internet search didn’t reveal anything.
“When a company can’t recognize, admit and correct its mistakes, it’s a rudderless ship bound to hit something, eventually.”
The crux of the matter.
In my eyes the pivotal point was the replacement of the very popular RWD G body cars (Cutlass, Monte Carlo, Regal) with the GM10 cars, which had none of the ‘plushness’ of the G’s and were obviously inferior to the FWD cars from Japan Inc. Game over.
I’m not so sure about this. I have not-at-all fond recollections of the domestics’ big rear-drivers: they were slow, sloppy, not all that roomy, and the trim, electrical and powertrain trouble was all still there.
About the only advantage they had was that the they were marginally cheaper to repair. Cold comfort that was, to anyone except your mechanic.
Just today it was confirmed the Dutch importer (Kroymans) of GM USA products went bankrupt after GM Europe refused to take over the import rights.
GM USA products officially imported here were Corvette, Cadillac (some models) and Hummer. There are also 3000 unsold cars of these brands on a lot right here apparently, which is quite a lot considering there are about 500.000 new cars sold in the Netherlands (population = 16mm) yearly and the three brands mentioned have a negligible market share.
Kroymans was also the importer of these brands in Germany by the way, but the German subsidiary is now trying to find external funds to move on as a seperate entity.
I have a number of quibbles with this article. The Vega sold very well, and it was more powerful than pretty much all its competition. It also had excellent handling. It wasn’t that Americans weren’t ready for four cylinder cars. They just wanted them to last.
As pointed out by several others, the 231 was already an older design that originated in the Special in 1961. I’m not aware that this engine had any specific weaknesses (other than the later cured roughness), as it was 3/4 of a Buick V8. I suspect that any problems that did occur were poor workmanship or cheap parts (head gasket). It was intrinsically a rugged design from the very beginning.
The Chevy 229 was built alongside the Buick 231 for very obvious reasons: both these engines were made on the same transfer lines as their V8 brothers; hence the 90 degree design. Capacity constraints limited the volume of the 231/3.8, and when Chevy needed a V6, the cut off two cylinders of their V8.
GM’s problems of the seventies and eighties with quality were rampant across the board; and there were so many more extreme examples, like the Olds Diesel, the Caddy V4-6-8, etc. etc. I’m surprised to see the 231/3.8 be picked as the nadir of GM; and I don’t agree.
@MBella..Your friend has a 1984 Buick Regal.That makes it 25 years old!So the old Buick is kinda slow.So now after 25 years,its intact enough to hot rod it.
Only 25 years and its ready for the junk yard.There is just no excuse for lousy quality like that.
The 231 c.i. v6 was only a small part of the problem; the heart of the problem goes back to that famous statement by Alfred Sloan to the effect: “We’re not in the business of making cars, we’re in the business of making money.” Throughout its history GM has viewed small cars as simply something to keep the natives happy, while management went about their grandiose plans of putting a Cadillac or SUV in every garage. GM’s record of small cars is one of mediocrity and failure: The Corvair, Vega, Chevette, X-cars and J-cars. In the 70’s I drove a Vega, an Opel and finally a 1980 Skylark, to say they spent more time in the shop than on the road is not much of an exaggeration. The 231 v6 may have been a piece of crap, but in the 70’s the quality of GM products collapsed across the board. The management at General Motors simply pretended the problem did not exist, even while customers (like myself) fled GM and never returned. General Motors real problem is stupid, inept management.
I can’t pin all of GM’s problems on this engine. Not even close.
GM’s problems can be summed up by looking at what happened to Oldsmobile from 1970 to 1980.
In 1970, Oldsmobile offered four basic car lines – Cutlass, Delta 88, Ninety-Eight and Toronado. The Ninety-Eight was basically a stretched Delta 88 with a different grille, roofline, decklid and quarter panels.
All of those cars came with an Oldsmobile-built V-8. Every engine in the lineup was tough, fast, inexpensive to repair and very durable. The Turbo-Hydramatic transmission was a corporate transmission, but it was a gem – probably the best automatic transmission in the world at that time.
What these Oldsmobiles weren’t was economical, but most Olds buyers didn’t particularly care. If you were worried about gas mileage or low price, you bought a Chevy Nova with a six and a stickshift.
The quality control on those cars was usually good, because Olds had a fair amount of control over what it built and shipped.
The Oldsmobile nameplate stood for something; thus buyers could be reasonably confident of the quality and performance of the cars that wore the rocket badge.
Fast forward to 1980.
Oldsmobile is now offering the small Starfire coupe, which is a rebadged Chevrolet Monza, and the front-wheel-drive Omega compact, in addition to the Cutlass, Delta 88, Ninety-Eight and Toronado.
The Starfire is just as unreliable, cramped and slow as its Chevy counterpart. The X-car Omega? We don’t have to rehash that sorry story.
Even the bigger cars were equipped with engines from the various divisions, some more reliable than others. And the biggest stinker in the lot – the Diesel V-8 – was developed by Oldsmobile!
So Oldsmobile could be a cheap car, or a slow car, or a plush car…but it wasn’t necessarily a reliable car, unless you were savvy enough to know which drivetrain combination to order in your new car. And it wasn’t necessarily a fast car, either. The days of the glorious Rocket V-8 were long gone. Oldsmobile no longer stood for anything.
The same thing happened to Pontiac, Buick and Cadillac during the decade…with equally disastrous results.
Ironically, in his book, On a Clear Day, You Can See General Motors, DeLorean noted that one problem GM had was that Chevrolet was too big to run effectively. It survived on inertia and the belief that people would buy new Chevrolets because….they had always bought new Chevrolets.
It was easier to run the other divisions, because they were smaller and more responsive to decisive leadership.
So what did GM do? Strip the divisions of their autonomy and turn the corporation into one big Chevrolet Division!
During the 1970s, when the competition was weak, GM could get away with this sort of arrogance and myopia.
But by the early 1980s, when Ford got its act together, Chrysler offered the minivan at the same time, and the Japanese and the Germans continued attacking the low and high ends of the market, respectively, GM was in serious trouble.
If you google W body instead of GM10, it will pop up on Wikipedia, there is also mention of it on Roger Bonham’s site.
johnny ro nailed it with: “They were fat and happy when VW first showed up. They did not react with the appropriate alarm and failed to change. This is a tipping point, where their attitude, already wrong, caused them inarguable damage.”
The reality is that Detroit has turned out steaming piles of crap whenever they try anything beyond the V-8 Barge or Pickup truck categories. Since Day One.
The have never been able to build a reasonably priced, reliable economy car, EVER. Nor car they build sports cars, small family sedans, attractive coupes, hell, *anything* beyond vague floaty barges with V-8s or pickups and pickup derivative (SUVs). I’ll give them Muscle Cars, but those are just floaty V-8 barges with attitude.
Once the rest of the industrial world got up off the ground and got to work again after being carpet bombed in WW2 Detroit’s days were numbered. Only decades of peace and prosperity kept them afloat. Their market shares have been shrinking steadily since the early 60s, and will have diminished to single digits or zero by the end of the next decade.
–chuck
Bang on:
I came home from the hospital in a 1960 Pontiac, and as a kid we had a string of boring but anvil reliable GM products. We even had a Vega which lasted through 8 years of Canadian salt. But Dad’s last, and the worst by far was the 1983 Regal with the 3.8 V6. It ran rough and burned oil. The wheel cylinders tore out of the backing plates. Best of all the frame rotted out behind the back wheels and fell off with the bumper. The Vega was more fun to drive and lasted longer.
The drag race between our Regal and my friend’s ‘79 Turbo Regal was the stuff of legend. The impossibly high axle ratios made for bog-slow acceleration, and over 50mph we were still in first gear. The Turbo was only incrementally faster, the boost only served to overcome the inefficiencies of it’s afterthought turbo plumbing.
That was it for GM. Dad drives a Kia Rondo now.
Every time I take a leak in a public restroom, and read “3.8 liters per flush” on the urinal, I think of GM. Seriously.
I don’t think one can lay the blame of all GM’s failures on this engine. It’s really the whole shebang. GM has had its successes in the market place, but they’re greatly outnumbered by their failures. Therein lies the rub.
chuckgoolsbee: The have never been able to build a reasonably priced, reliable economy car, EVER.
The Focus is reliable, reasonably priced and an all-around good car. It isn’t beautiful, but neither are the Corolla or Sentra. It’s just about 25 years too late.
chuckgoolsbee: Nor car they build sports cars, small family sedans, attractive coupes, hell, *anything* beyond vague floaty barges with V-8s or pickups and pickup derivative (SUVs).
Can’t buy it. The Corvette was a world-class sports car in the early and mid-1960s and is one today; the original Mustang was a milestone car that was quite attractive and was ahead of any comparable import competition (please consider price – most European cars were considerably more expensive while offering much poorer reliability); and the post-1962 Valiants and Darts were quite good small family sedans, as was a 1960s Chevy II.
@psarhjinian
I believe that the RWD Olds Cutlass was the #1 car in terms of sales for several years in the 80’s. I don’t have the data in front of me but I’m quite sure this was the case. It is easy to look back at these cars out of context, but at the time they were popular. The GM-10 thing was a big deal (and a big letdown) at the time.