Sep 13

GM: May the Most Misleading Car Company Lose

By Alex Neihaus Cars 1 Comment »

OK, so we’ve all been reading about how the “new” GM is going to put customers first. And how the “new” GM isn’t building drek like my 1973 Chevy Vega (which came with a free case of oil in the hatch) and my 1986 NUMMI-built Chevy No-Go…er…Nova…which was designed to stall whenever the accelerator was pressed.

Now it seems that the best the new chairman of General Telephone and Motors, Ed Whitacre, brings to the mix is a reprieve of the desperation move Lee Iococca made when Chrysler emerged from one of its routine trips through bankruptcy court. Let’s take a look at the embarrassing result of Whitacre’s reported directive to create a massive new taxpayer-funded marketing program to get back market share. If this represents the best marketing the “new” GM can muster, I want my $60 billion back.

The real question is, what if you really did want to take advantage of this “guarantee” to drive, say a new-generation Corsica…er…Malibu or you have forgotten that the F-platform Camaros competed with Yugos in the cellar of the quality ratings and you wanted a new one. What if a retread executive from, of all places, AT&T, convinced you that you really could get your money back if you didn’t like the bucket of bolts the polyester clad, red-faced liar at the local dealer sold you? What would that be like?

It would be something like this and this:

  • You have to keep the thing at least 30 days — get this, called the “vesting period.” Amused yet? Yeah, they think they’re building equity with you during this period
  • You don’t get back those noxious “fees” GM’s dealers charge you to process paperwork (hey…maybe restaurants will start charging separately for the water they wash dishes in and the paper they write the check on)
  • Did you take a loan to buy your new lemon? The interest is — you got it — on your nickel
  • No leases need apply
  • What do you actually have to do to return the thing? Simple: return it to the dealer — who’s absolutely going to want to see you — and fill out a bunch of paperwork, including “any…documentation GM or the Administrator may reasonably request.”

Bottom line, GM is right back where it was…misleading people instead of building cars people want. As I once heard someone say, same circus, different clowns.

9/ 16 update: You gotta read…and I mean you gotta read TTAC’s post that details the dealers’ terms and conditions on this program. Check out #7. Dealers now have an incentive to sell you the car for close to MSRP…then buy it back at 67% (2009 models) or 74% of MSRP (2010 models), pocket the bogus fees they tacked on to the original sale, pocket another $1000 for their trouble, then resell the car your kid vomited on the carpet in and which you used to pull parking meters up and in which the upholstery was an ashtray to the next dupe for as much as the floor salesman can extract.

Geez…if this is GM insisting that its dealers treat customers better, I’d hate to see what’d happen if they declared open season on Grandma.

Sep 01

You drive, you text…you die. Just try not to kill me, too

By Alex Neihaus Cars, General musings No Comments »

Every day for nearly 17 years I’ve commuted on the Mass Pike between my home and workplaces in Cambridge, Boston, Burlington and, now, Waltham.

Drivers on the Pike have long been deserving of the appellation “Masshole” — you can’t believe what I’ve seen people doing.

They eat, they sing, they use bedpans, they trim their nails…heck, they even paint their nails, they throw things at you, they drive winter “beatahs” so they can dare you to slam into them when they cut you off at 90MPH to get onto 128.

But nothing has scared me more in the last few years than watching Betty in her Hummer SUT and Bob in his Escalade texting. They text with one hand…they text with both hands. They take cell phone photos of themselves cutting people off, then they text the pix to family members with a “woot.”  They text while they are painting their nails.

Now, finally, there’s a YouTube video for them, that should be required viewing before being issued a Fast Lane transponder:

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Jun 06

Gymkhana, or I ain’t your target market

By Alex Neihaus Cars No Comments »

OK, I don’t know what DC Shoes are…and whoever these people are, they certainly didn’t create this video to try to get me to buy their stuff. I am just not their target market.

But I gotta say, this video has four minutes of the most spectacular drifting I have ever seen. “Oooo!,” you’ll say when you see Ken Block smash the fluorescent lights. “Whoa!,” you’ll shout when he slams the driver’s rear wheel into the water balloon in the hand of a dummy (which is seated comfortably in a folding chair). And you’ll be outta your seat when your see Block slam out of a doorway and drift clockwise to within inches of the edge of a dock.

(But what’s up with the paint-ball stuff? Does the shooter celebrate because he hit the car or because he just lives to shoot again?)

This might not rise to the level of an Internet meme, but it’s pretty close.

(Oh, and you can skip the last few minutes…unless, of course, you wanna see the clothes.)

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Jul 27

Consumer Reports is the Church Lady

By Alex Neihaus Cars No Comments »

I’ve been reading Consumer Reports since I was a teenager.  Without a doubt, they the most authoritative consumer product testers. And they know it.

I’ve always been amused by their combination of geeky testing regimens and their 1930’s-derived Socalist practices (purchasing a subscritption to the magazine makes you a “member” of Consumer’s Union and eligble to vote for their directors).

But they’ve always been both supercilious and self-righteous. For years, they claimed “no advertising” but gleefully pumped their (now-made-useless-by-the-Internet) car pricing “service.” Finally, after years of duplicity, they changed their claim to make an exception for their own ads without blinking an eye.

But when they decide they don’t like something, look out. They’ve tortured Suzuki (who deserved it) and Bose (who didn’t). CR was the earliest — and most smug — detractor of SUVs.

Unlike almost any major American news outlet today, their masthead contains zero, none, nada email addresses for readers’ responses. Alone among American journalists, CR doesn’t need to hear from anybody. Even the blog post I am about to blast doesn’t take trackbacks…their bubble is complete.

On now to a piece of advice I read tonight in CR’s auto blog. Tony Giorgianni’s mostly banal post on getting the most from a new car (offering wisdom like RTFM and “get winter mats”) also offers the surreal advice that new car owners should “Change a tire. It’s…a good idea to do a trial run with the jack and spare tire…”

Now I don’t know what planet Tony and CR’s editors are on, but I absolutely guarantee that nobody…and I mean no one…is going to test changing a tire. It’s so ridiculous that only CR could give this advice with a straight-laced face.

You betcha, Tony. When I get my next new car, I’ll suck down a large dose of fish oil and prune juice, then run right out and practice changing tires.

Update: As of the day after I posted a comment with a link to this post on Consumer Report’s original post, they haven’t approved my comment. Sure, they could argue I am trolling for traffic. But I’m not, and I don’t think they really believe that either. They’re just keeping the membrane impenetrable.

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May 30

Don’t worry, Microsoft, Oracle and IBM. That BMW you see in your rear-view mirror isn’t coming after your maintenance business

By Alex Neihaus Cars No Comments »

why bmw is never going to threaten microsoft or apple, or carmakers stink at software

 

When I first bought my 330i with the notorious iDrive (which, by the way, is very, very cool), I was stuck by the fact that the car seemed to be less a mechanical device than a digital one with wheels. That impression has only been confirmed over the last three years as the car has needed just three oils changes but half a dozen reprogrammings. When the car is reprogrammed, it takes the dealer more than a day and, if it crashes, not only does it have to be restarted, but the frakkin’ car (what am I going to do when Battlestar Galactica ends??) won’t even start until the entire image is properly downloaded. OK, I gotta admit I think that’s kinda cool, especially when the dealer does it on his nickel and you get a BMW loaner to drive for two days.

But that isn’t what’s pissed me off. What gets my goat is that for the last three years, each reprogramming has added new functionality. The dealer doesn’t know what’s in the new release of E90 software. BMW keeps it a secret. They seem to see this as service and not as a benefit to owners. We upgrade our computers, why doesn’t BMW encourage us to update our cars?

Want some examples? Here’s partial list of functionality that’s been added to my car over the several reprogrammings it has had:

  • MP3 was added to the CD player
  • Color schemes in the graphics display were changed
  • iDrive performance was improved
  • A new automatic ventilation program was added to the climate control
  • New commands were added to the voice control system
  • Mileage has improved by about 3%

So, what am I bitching about? Simple: if I didn’t have these things done under warranty repairs, I’d have never received them. Dealers won’t upgrade the car on request; you have to have a warranty problem. Plus, they have no idea what’s in these updates; they simply apply them when instructed to solve a problem — even a problem that has nothing to do with the lack of functionality provided in the updates. BMW never makes the list of enhancements public. My question is: why?

Think of the revenue stream from upgrades from people who own a 2006 model which, when produced, didn’t have a timer to start the ventilation system on hot days, but which through the magic of software can be made to have it. (This actually happened in my last update and I had to download a manual for a 2007 model to figure out how it works!)

I know why BMW is the best brand in the world. But nothing’s perfect…I suspect it’s more than a little German to keep adding functionality to older products but keep it a secret. Oracle, IBM and Microsoft people: sleep well tonight. BMW isn’t about to steal your maintenance agreements.

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Jan 18

The death watch for GM is over: the ‘08 Cadillac CTS is a used Buick

By Alex Neihaus Cars 4 Comments »

rusted buick -- like the rest of GM -- just rotting away

There’s a very entertaining series on one of my favorites blogs, TTAC, entitled “General Motors death watch“. I am sure they are much hated at GM, but, frankly, I think the bloggers there have been evenhanded. GM has been a mess so long, I can now officially be excused for buying a new, manual three-speed Chevy Vega in 1973. (I paid $2300 for it, courtesy of Nixon-era price controls.) Still, I think TTAC has been waiting for rigor mortis so long, it can’t see that GM is already a carcass.

Lately, the auto press has been falling all over itself to praise GM’s new cars, especially the interior fit and finish of models like the Enclave and the CTS. Interior fit and finish is especially important to me because, after all, you sit in the thing for three to five years and every flaw eventually becomes something you stare at and wonder, “How could they let that out of the factory?”

I checked out an Enclave in the showroom; the panels in the exact center of the dash under the analog clock were misaligned. I didn’t bother to test drive it, knowing that misaligned panel would drive me crazy. Now, I’ve taken to peeking through the windows of parked Enclaves to see if it was just a sample defect. Nope. They’re all like that.

This week, curiosity got the better of me and I test drove a $50K ‘08 Cadillac CTS with four-wheel drive and the direct-injection engine. The showroom unit had a terribly misaligned panel where the front passenger’s knee rests against the transmission tunnel. Defect just on that one? Guess again. A different unit, the one I drove, had the same problem. Now I have another GM model to stare at in parking lots. The fit and finish in that car was no better than an 80’s Corsica, despite all the press fawning over stitched leather and the stupid Viagra-enhanced navigation screen. (The latter gives itself an erection every time you push a button on the dash. Reminds me of one of those pump-kits that promise…uh…lengthening).

I have no freakin’ idea at all what these press guys are smoking. If an average car nut like me can see this stuff in seconds, why don’t they?

Still, the promises of resurrection from GM management continue. Yesterday, GM told analysts it’s going to be profitable in a couple of years. That reminds me of the kind of wishful talk that accompanied Roger Smith’s attempt to “take on the Japanese” in the 90’s. At the end all he could offer was a “a used Buick.”

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