Yes, the interiors are crap. The public is not blind. Maybe they’ve gotten better, but the competition has improved as well.

The perception gap is real. What it means is that folks inside GM believe they make great cars, when the bankruptcy is proof that they do not.

The only time simplicity works for me, is in heirloom quality vintage cars, with exquisite REAL metals, wood, leather and glass adorning the interior space.

Here are some examples of modern car interiors that are among the best…

http://www.motortrend.com/roadtests/suvs/112_0712_2008_infiniti_ex35/photo_03.html

http://www.automobilemag.com/reviews/driven/0903_2009_aston_martin_dbs/photo_01.html

http://a332.g.akamai.net/f/332/936/12h/www.edmunds.com//media/roadtests/spinaroundtown/02.bmw.530i/02.bmw.530i.int.500.jpg

http://www.motortrend.com/photo_gallery/112_0804_2009_toyota_venza_photo_gallery/photo_15.html

- The Theresienstadt concentration camp, called “the Paradise Ghetto” in World War II, was designed as a concentration camp that could be shown to the Red Cross, but it was really a Potemkin village: attractive at first, but deceptive and ultimately lethal, with high death rates from malnutrition and contagious diseases, and it ultimately served as a way-station to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
- Gijeong-dong, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea)
- Following the Manchurian Incident, and China’s referral of the Japanese occupation of Manchuria to the League of Nations in 1931, the League’s representative was given a tour of the ‘truly Manchurian’ parts of the region. It was meant to prove that the area was not under Japanese domination. Whether the farce succeeded or not is moot; Japan withdrew from the League the following year. [7]
- It was said of Beijing in an article on 08/12/2008 in the Evening Standard in the United Kingdom, that “the entire host city has been turned into a kind of Potemkin Olympic village”.

And the band plays merrily on….

You can watch the progression of material quality and design in the Cadillac line from the first-gen CTS through the STS and SRX to the current CTS and they’ve clearly gone in the right direction.

And if you’re carping about the C6 ‘Vette you need to look at the price point. It’s a vast improvement over the C5 (which other than its Tupperware seats was a substantial improvement over the C4, which was no improvement at all over the C3…) Should GM just say ’screw it’, jack up the ‘Vette price $20K and put F430-quality trim in the thing?

But…the sharp pencils got to the Chevy Traverse, same platform as the Envoy and same division as the Malibu but the interior materials are awful. Can someone explain to me what brilliant planner decided GM needed to build the Traverse in a different plant from the other big crossovers? I guess four years ago it really looked like they’d need that much capacity, but you’d think someone would have been bright enough by now to build enough flexibility into the tooling…

And yes, there’s a lot of other crufty interiors in the company’s products too.

If I ran an automaker the only people that’d have drivers would be the product managers responsible for the cars we sold into the taxicab market.

Really? Ever compare any speaker Sony has ever made to anything produced in Denmark? There’s no comparison.

Walk around a car show. Go from Aveo to Acura, BMW to Cerebus. There is a finite amount of answers to the question, and it all breaks on style and quality. It is, however, quite clear that until you get to the top, we ARE making it cheap and you will notice.

It’s really funny when you see the same “style” in cars up and down the line. Best was an Infiniti a few years ago that did wood grain, leather, sport silver trim, and carbon fiber, on the “do it all at once” plan.

The difference to produce the cheap car vs. the luxo ride is not so great, but the product has been very carefully metered for a long time. They knew how to get you to pay (still do, if you are a german car company)and made sure that the lines didn’t cross. When everyone else followed GM, this de-facto marketing partition worked very well.

Knowing how little you have to give to the market is no longer a valid business plan. You can’t get them to go Chevy-Pontiac-Olds-Buick-Caddy anymore.

At the NY car show, the new Camaro was open, and very pretty, moreso than in pictures. The interior needed a few more dollars. I know it’s not an S classe competitor, but it reminded me of the old days, not in a good way. It even had the F-Body door crash, which you think could be cured. Oh well, a set of glass packs and you’ll not hear the plastic.

Look at the interior of a current Malibu, Impala, Lucerne, G8, 2010 Equinox, any current truck or SUV, the Enclave and so forth and it’s interior is of better quality with more precise fits than the other two American manufacturers.

My 2008 Impala with 47K miles does not have a sigle interior rattle, the dash and glovebox lines up perfectly, the doors close with a nice thunk, everything lines up the way it should, knobs and controls are better thought out and easier to reach than the new Accord and I am hard pressed to find any flaws inside. I was able to find 3 Fords and 5 Chryslers in one day with many interior flaws and cheap interior plastic.

It seems that my Golf is upset at me for the post I made earlier about his interior and now has refused to start. So I publicly apologize. Please don’t be mad at me. Maybe I’ll even use a little Armor All on the dash today?

I have a 1997 Jetta with 290k miles and a solid interior, headliner, etc.. I did my research on the pre-1996 OBD-I models and they had interior problems. They also had coolant-related problems (radiator, heater core, etc.) since they were using the old glycol-based coolant and eventually the G-11 blue coolant.

The mid-1996 and newer VWs use the infinitely-improved G-12 (red) coolant. I haven’t had any coolant-related problems to date on my 1997.

But then again, I tend to purchase vehicles that are near the end of the production cycle – to make sure most of the bugs have been worked out…

But what does this have to do with this topic? Simple. I’m willing to bet my house that top execs at the U.S. companies never drove one of these for a week, let alone one hour.
Instead of being chauffer driven to hand assembled ringers, they could have been test driving one of these and then exclaiming ” %^$#-!!! THIS is what we should be designing”.

As for American interiors, GM has by far come the farthest. Compare an old GMC Envoy interior to the new Acadia. or an old Caddy Seville to the new CTS. Fit and finish are miles better, styling is better, most plastics are better.

I remember those god-awful GM interiors of even 15 years ago. Those were the dashboards with ribbon speedometers, banks of warning lights off to the side, orange fake wood, and acres of buttons that looked and felt the same.
I still think their Hall of Shame (since 1990):
1. The last gen Olds Toronado (sp?) with the strange touchscreen display that never worked
2. The IP “wings” that Pontiac used to control things like wipers. They looked tacky and failed after a while.
3. The steering wheels with dozens of buttons. From personal experience with a company 6000STE(SUX…sorry…couldn’t resist!), not all of them lit up.
4. The pocket calculator sized A/C and radio units with what seemed like a dozen buttons per sqare inch. Don’t forget the tape deck way off to the side.
5. The “why can’t they just rename it ‘auto lamp settings’” Twilight Sentinel knob.
6. The floor vents on their body on frame trucks/SUVs that took up an insane amount of foot space.
7. The HUD that never matched the dash speedo.
8. The badge in the interior that told you what you were driving. It looks like GM even knew their cars looked alike!

–and probably the worst crime done by GM while others ditched them…

Their reliance on those unsafe and tacky looking door belts so they can be in compliance with the 1989-1990 safety standards. No one used them as they were meant to be used and after a short period of time, many of them became so loose that they provided no protection…and every time you looked left while driving, all you saw was door belt. How’s that as a safety feature again?

Your “anything import is better” bias is rearing its head again. That statement quoted above is, as Spock would say, most illogical. Facts work better than emotion when you want to be taken seriously.

While GM certainly has its problems, Toyota is far from perfect.

You actually had cash back then to spend on the interiors, so why didn’t you use it?

This actually demonstrates a more fundamental problem that may be insurmountable for Detroit.

American engineers are trained:

How can I make a component of equivalent quality while reducing the price?

Japanese engineers are trained:

How can I make a better component while not increasing the price?

Neither engineer ever completely reaches his goal – over time, American quality creeps downward, bit by bit, while Japanese price creeps upward.

Thus the Cadillac eventually becomes junk and the Accord becomes expensive. However, it’s easier to introduce a model below the Accord (first Civic, and now Fit) than to develop a model above Cadillac (ain’t none).

Apply this thinking to interiors, and you can see the results.

It’s done by rewarding the one who points out the emperor is wearing no clothes, and promoting the one who creates a good outfit for him in time for the next public appearance.

GM, and almost every established organization over a couple thousand folks does just the opposite.