Demote General Motors

I was a Chevy guy for about thirty years. My first car was a 1959 Impala (a salt-infested, rotted out mess, pretty much like the one above) - I bought it for $25 and it lasted exactly two weeks. Most of my cars have been Chevrolets. So far it's been three Impala's, a 1962 Nova, a 1983 Cavalier, two Celebrity station wagons (1984 and 1987 - my wife drove the '87 for ten years), a 1973 Suburban and a 1991 Lumina. The only other car I really liked was my 1965 Tempest that I bought off a farmer for $600 in 1970.

But the best car I ever owned was the 2001 Chevy Impala. I picked it up used in December 2001 with only 17,000 miles on it and traded it in at 75,000 in September 2008. I liked it so much that we bought a used 2006 Impala for my wife in 2007 with only 4,000 miles - and I was very disappointed in it. It was like a different company had made it.

General Motors has seen better days; they have had 30 automobile recalls this year alone. And it's all their fault.

DETROIT -- General Motors is recalling about 500 pickup trucks and SUVs to fix faulty air bag controls, its 30th recall so far this year.

The company is in the midst of a company-wide safety review after it mishandled the recall of more than 2.6 million older small cars with faulty ignition switches. GM has acknowledged knowing about the switch problem for more than a decade before it began recalling the cars in February.

Meanwhile, federal safety regulators said that it was "likely" that more than 13 people died in the cars recalled for the defective ignition switches.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or NHTSA said in a statement, "The final death toll associated with this safety defect is not known to NHTSA, but we believe it's likely that more than 13 lives were lost."

By refusing to address the ignition switch problem for ten years, General Motors probably saved a lot more than the $35 million in fines imposed so far by the government. That's the nature of the game they play - dollars versus your lives and fortune.

I remember our 1987 Celebrity had the power steering go after only 40,000 miles. I complained about it to a friend (our police department's garage manager who used to work for GM car dealerships) who just grinned and said that they saved $0.55 on every Celebrity manufactured just by using cheaper bushings in the steering assembly.

The Celebrity was manufactured from 1982 to 1990 when it was replaced by the Chevy Lumina. Sales of the Celebrity averaged 350,000 annually from 1984 to 1987. In 1986 Chevrolet sold almost 405,000 Celebrities, making it one of the most popular cars in the U.S. For argument's sake, let's say that General Motors sold a total of 3 million Celebrities in its eight year production cycle. That's over $1.5 million GM saved by sliding cheap bushings into the power steering assembly alone. That savings cost me over $600 when the unit went south. Who knows what other "savings" cost consumers a bundle?

Not that General Motors is the only corporation screwing the consumer - no - not by a long shot. But I now avoid their products like the plague. Our two current vehicles are a Ford Explorer and a Toyota RAV4.

Goom bye GM.