BarryG

You're not the only one. I wonder the same thing. You should read owner's reviews of the Malibu on www.carreview.com. Almost everybody has identical experiences with the car.....horrible. Everything breaks on it. And the Cavalier is another mystery. If you drive on of those and actually purchase one, you either haven't test driven anything else or you've got brain damage. That car is such an outdated, crude, cheap POS. As a rental maybe but to be making car payments on one?

carguycw

A few reasons...

1) Low sticker price. Many Americans will buy low-quality crap if it's a really good deal. The continued success of Wal-Mart proves this.

2) The mighty GMAC financing and incentive machine.

3) An unparalleled dealer network. Chevrolet has dealerships in rural areas. Mazda generally does not.

4) Many Americans still operate under the old-fashioned tradition of always sticking with one domestic brand. If you believe this type of thinking is dead, you haven't visited rural Texas. However, this viewppoint IS dying out, fueled largely by years of inferior, outdated, unreliable FWD crap coming out of GM.

However, I think it's important to note that the Cavalier IS in a sales tailslide (compare the production figures 10 years ago if you need proof), and there's a reason that Toyota is now selling more passenger cars in America than GM, despite far lower fleet sales.

leungwingkei

People have to consider long term costs, rather than the cost of the purchasing price of the car alone.

A Cavalier may be cheap initially but with all those repairs and such in the long run, the costs will almost be as high or even higher than a Japanese counterpart.

Even if the repairs are convered warranty, there is no reinsbursement for the time and hassle spent on taking the car to the dealership for repair work.

TIME IS MONEY. The time can be spent elsewhere like be able to get to work instead of going to the dealer to get the car fixed.

People seem to neglect and ignore these long term and invisible costs, when purchasing a vehicle.

Although, I'm sure some Cavaliers are bulletproof and give hundreds of thousands of trouble free motoring with regular maintenance, there is alot of both objective and subjective data indicating that American vehicles break down more easily than slightly more expensive Japanese competition.

UCSBgeek

I think it's just bad management / design. The domestic car makers (except maybe ford) seem not to put as much into design. Also, with the last gen f-body, they needed to make less of that awful forest green!! I don't know how they managed to market those so well... the mustang has a bazillion different shiny colors...now I most of the f-bodies I see are that green...so why did the mustang win out? Maybe it's just me?

I don't really have anything against domestics though, in fact I really thought the Focus might be pretty good, it was disappointing to hear about the reliability problems though

Farsyde

i think this is also attributed to how they drive their cars as well. If they grannied it around town nothing would prolly happen. Yes I know Sub. markets the wrx as a performance machine but in the same token, camaros and mustangs break just as often if driven like maniacs.

Everyone buys a car for different reasons. And these "idiots" as many of you so elloquently call them had their reasons. Maybe their prejudices for buying the car they did blinded them to the reliability of the car. Of maybe they wanted a car that wouldn't compromise performance so they bought one with crappy interior. The truth is if money wasn't an option people would prolly make much more sound decisions. This debate has been going on forever. You can never answer a question when the basis for their decision is what they need for a car at that moment.

As for the manufactures, their only motive is money. They aren't in the business of making safe or fast or pretty cars; they are in the business of selling a product with more desirable features than the next guy. If you could get millions of people to buy a rock for $1000 and you could do it forever would you need a reason to improve on your rick?? No.

Its all about the benjamin's.

carguycw

FWIW, I think this is the main problem with GM in particular. I think that GM is still stuck in the late-50's to early 60's mindset about small cars- that they're only for first-time buyers who will "upgrade" to a full-sized car when they have more money, so the main priority is to make the car cheap and load it up with features to make it sound attractive on paper; long-term reliability is unimportant because it's just going to be traded in on a Buick in 4 years. They still don't seem to understand the fact that many people actually LIKE small and practical cars and expect them to be NICE and HIGH-QUALITY. This is the main reason why they're getting their butts kicked in the marketplace.

GM Management =

JAC

But how much does a Cavalier costs?? less than 14k?

And it's not only the cavalier, every GM car (not truck) I see looks crappier and cheesyer than the last one, verytime I see one I say to myself: "what the hell were they thinking?". For example, wtf is the montecarlo suposed to be? a boat/car/pick-up/ugly??

The other american automakers have issues but not as bad as GM, GM has like 10 different brands of cars and somehow they manage too keep them equally crappy, even some of the higher end cars; the other day I went to check out the H2 and the first thing I though when I got inside that thing is "GM", a 50k+ SUV and it has an interior similar to that of a grand am, don't get me wrong, I like the truck, but what's up with the cheapness?

Farsyde

you would think that any car over $30k should be relatively reliable. But look at almost any cadillac. Even the BMW X5 got horrible ratings for reliablility.

Personally the H2 is crap. They took a bad *** jeep like the Hummer and turned it into the H1 still keeping all the essence of the military hummer. It could still climb 60 degree inclines and it could still go practically anywhere. But the H2 is a disgrace. They took all the utility out of that car and made it a super expensive super luxury car. Its a god damn hummer, not a mercedes. They castrated the hummer with the H2. Damn rich people can corner the market so easily. Bastards.

BarryG

HAHAHA! That is so so true. Every time I see one I think the same thing.

carguycw

Hummer H2 Finishes Last in J.D. Power Survey

"It's so much louder than my Lexus! Is this normal?"
"I know it's big, but 11 mpg?!? I thought than my E420 got bad mileage! Is this normal?"
"There's so much wind noise! Why is that?"

Just goes to show that money does not necessarily equal brains, and that baby boomers in search of midlife crisis mitigation should stick to Boxsters.

Farsyde

hmmm, i think i'd take a miata before a boxter. Isn't the miata like the defacto mid life crisis car??

TrexPro5

What about the paint on the new Protege's? I know the BEAUTIFUL classic red that I have on my car is already chipping like CRAZY because, at least it looks to me, like its a single stage paint. Why do automanufactuers use single stage paint? To save money... hrmm where was my car manufactured and built? Japan?! no!!! I can promise you that my car is ALWAYS cleaned properly, hell there isnt even a hint of swirl marks on it either. Again if you search under my name from way way way way back my Mazda dealer told me NOT to buy the yellow protege5 because the yellow paint would fade and some of the paint wasn't put on correctly. That doesn't say to much about quality of an import car.

Check out some Nissan's while your at it. Those cars where built with one thing in mind.... MONEY?! I know, I know we all love the 240sx but man the interiors on those cars are disgusting (Im talking about the late 80's early 90's). Granted the budget racer doesn't really care about the interior of his/her car just because they generally rip them out anyway .

If you want to bring styling up what about that new POS Honda suv thing? Again, I would rather push one of these off a cliff than an ASStec but even then this car is ugly as ****. For my money what style do I like? Doesn't get ANY better than the '67 Ford Mustang Fastback.

I know this doesn't help my arguement at all, but the 77,78 Trans Am (aka Smokey and the Bandit Edition) were basically the first rice mobiles. Can you believe that the "Buzzard" decal on the hood was about $1000 option?! jebus!! Even today those STUPID *** looking things are going for about $300!!!

Edit: Damn I suck at English.

UCSBgeek

The thin paint on a lot of new cars is supposedly for environmental reasons.

TrexPro5

Interesting, Ive never heard of that before. hrmmm, I didn't realize automakers where in the buisness of saving the environment (that is only a joke Im not trying to be a smart *** to you at least). I wonder how the thickness etc of your paint affects the environment... (brb digging).

hihoslva

It's not the paint on the car itself - it's mostly the MANUFACTURING of the paint that dumps all kinds of **** into the environment.

C'mon - the paint on cars hasn't been very good since the 50's.

Environmental regulations have led to the degrading quality of many finishes, not just auto paint. Industrial finishes, poylurethanes for flooring - they've all suffered because MAKING them dumps too much crap into the air and the process had to be revamped.

~HH