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Yeah, as a Kiwi, I'm entirely unsurprised. I've owned Japanese cars from various manufacturers, but the absolute worst I owned was a Toyota Cavalier - a rebadge

Yeah, as a Kiwi, I'm entirely unsurprised. I've owned Japanese cars from various manufacturers, but the absolute worst I owned was a Toyota Cavalier - a rebadged Chevrolet as part of some trade deal between the US and Japan - that the Japanese steered well clear of and immediately exported to NZ and Aus. It had a great wee 4 cylinder 2.4L engine, a hell of a lot of fun to drive, but it was of notorious build quality (which I learned after the fact). I spent a lot of time trying to keep it running, and in the end, it was worth a surprising amount at sale simply for the spare parts, because these buggers chewed through them and as they were gray imports into NZ, very hard to find official parts for them. It was the little things - like the interior light you could only turn on by turning the dashboard brightness dial all the way up - the boot/trunk latch that was made entirely of plastic, and was held onto the boot/trunk by plastic pins. The perpetual thirst for an odd (for Jap imports) grade of oil (5W30 only). The coolant that drained out if you parked on a slope. The sunroof that always leaked and you could never quite fix. The park lights that involved taking the entire bumper off merely to replace a bulb - in a country used to actual Japanese built cars, such European levels of PITA maintenance earned the Cavalier a deserved bad name. I don't know if GM just half-assed it on purpose, or by mistake, but it was hardly a soaring endorsement of American engineering.

mcny 7y ago
My 2007 Toyota Camry was made in the US and has a known problem of burning oil because the sealing between the piston and the cylinder rent desire all the oil back or something. My next car will not be made in the US, regardless of manufacturer.
- exhilaration 7y ago
  I'm in the US and Toyota fixed my 2007 Toyota Camry's oil burning problem in 2015 for free!!! The dealership had quoted me something like $8000 to fix it (more than the car was worth) so I'd given up. Then one day I got a letter from Toyota corporate telling me my car was covered by this warranty extension. That made me a Toyota customer for life -- my next car was a Toyota Sienna, I won't buy another brand at this point. My sister is still driving that 2007 Camry. You should contact your local dealer and ask them about this. You are most likely covered. If they don't help, find a way to contact Toyota corporate.
  - geerlingguy 7y ago
    I have a 2007 Camry... was there a recall for this? How would I know if I have the problem?
    - mcny 7y ago
      Only if yours was also made in Kentucky and even then Toyota apparently did the bare minimum they were legally obliged to do. From what I understand, mine was not part of the recall. you should go to https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls and put your VIN anyways just for your peace of mind here's scotty kilmer explaining the issue: https://youtu.be/B0NwnbVN1cw https://youtu.be/B0NwnbVN1cw
linksnapzz 7y ago
Why not both? The J-cars (cavalier/sunfire/sunbird) existed b/c of the second oil crisis in '78. GM needed something FWD, smaller than the X-cars, that could get better fuel economy than the RWD V-6 and V-8 cars it had been selling in the '70s. The thought was that people in the US would buy these because they had to, not because small cars would suddenly become appealing to Americans in their own right. The Js were never terribly profitable, the lower-end ones were almost certainly sold at cost to boost the company's mileage compliance numbers. The traditional easy way of squeezing costs out of a car is to pull them out of the interior & trim, which would explain the sunroof, the dash electronics, the trunk closures and taillights. The engine you got in yours is almost certainly the Quad OHC, one of the last Oldsmobile powertrain designs...in its original 2.3L config, Olds had it making 185hp (in 1989, with no turbo!). Powerful but with no balance shafts, it pulled well but sounded & shook like a pair of wolverines trapped in a dryer, which is why the 2.4L version got balance shafts and was detuned to 150hp.
- linksnapzz 7y ago
  <pedantry> Replying to myself: the 2.4 in a Toyota Cavalier would be an LD9-series Quad 4, not a "Quad OHC" which was an earlier L40-series SOHC version of that engine. </pedantry>
- davidgould 7y ago
  My then girlfriend had a Sunbird. She was a very nervous driver. I thought it was part of some other psychological issues she had. Then I had to drive her Sunbird somewhere. Terrifying! Somehow in a noisy gutless cramped smallish car GM had managed to reproduce the floaty uncontrolled body motions and vague imprecise steering of the full size cars of a decade earlier.
  - linksnapzz 7y ago
    It might sound crazy, but according to one of Bob Lutz's books, there is/was a huge corpus of GM Engineering Standards, some of which dated back to the 1930s, that had a big influence on design. This might explain why a compact Pontiac Sunbird might feel like a fullsize 1979 Pontiac Parisienne-both cars might have to meet the same set of criteria regardless of market fit!
to11mtm 7y ago
In the US the J-bodies (Cavalier being one of them) are regarded as somewhat disposable cars. In the US, the repair story is somewhat better, but that was more a result of the abundance of them in the states. The bigger reason that Japanese buyers stayed away from the Cavalier was probably due to it's engine size (JP taxes at certain displacements, I know going over 2.0L is a bump) as well as vehicle size (at least according to Wikipedia, it was too big to be taxed as a compact there.) Of course, being a J body doesn't help. The fact that many of the automakers had/have an unfortunate tendency to cannibalize themselves doesn't help either. Another example of this behavior from the 80s was the way GM would treat any project that could hurt sales of the Corvette (That whole mess with the Fiero, the way the Turbo 3.8 was quietly shooed away and ignored...) This infighting was at least part of the reason GM tried to start another car company in the US called Saturn. If you thought Subaru people were culty... Saturn had a whole thing where people across the country drove to the headquarters every year. They managed to build cars that were a bit more reliable than the rest of the GM line (Oh, they still had a couple of problems though. And the engines loved oil.) The original models also had a unique part line and were built in a plant that tried to follow a more Toyota/Honda style mentality. Oh. And plastic body panels. In any case, I tend to see more Saturns still on the road than any other GM small car of the 90s. It worked for a bit, until GM got tired of waiting for their sales to get up to speed, and started meddling with them TOO.
- linksnapzz 7y ago
  The Saturn plant had the advantage of a greenfield factory site and a motivated workforce, but I don't think that the product was ever as defect-free as the the Corollas coming from Fremont-also a GM plant, with a UAW workforce. Pretty close at times, though. ...thing is, the designs for the car, the plant, the tooling, the engines and the transmissions (unique to the Saturn SL1&2, used in no other GM product) the marketing, the dealership subsidies...all cost $12,000,000,000 in today's dollars. Chevy and Pontiac execs were fond of pointing out that the overhead of the Saturn project was so huge, that if GM just described the car to customers, and gave anyone who wanted a Saturn a new Cavalier, GM would actually lose less money than building and selling Saturns. You can buy a shitload of Cavaliers for twelve billion dollars. Of course, the original SL1 and 2 were updated with new-looking plastic interiors and body panels, but the basic car was still the same one that they debuted in 1989 when they stopped selling them in 2003. If it costs you that much to design a new economy car, you can't do it often, so the product goes stale, and fewer people buy it, and it costs more per unit to pay for upgrades etc. GM's inability to make its warring individual states cooperate is a goldmine of WTF moments in business history. Though I lay the Saturn debacle mostly at the Alden-shod feet of the late Roger B. Smith (of Roger & Me fame...)

mcny 7y ago

My 2007 Toyota Camry was made in the US and has a known problem of burning oil because the sealing between the piston and the cylinder rent desire all the oil back or something. My next car will not be made in the US, regardless of manufacturer.

exhilaration 7y ago
I'm in the US and Toyota fixed my 2007 Toyota Camry's oil burning problem in 2015 for free!!! The dealership had quoted me something like $8000 to fix it (more than the car was worth) so I'd given up. Then one day I got a letter from Toyota corporate telling me my car was covered by this warranty extension. That made me a Toyota customer for life -- my next car was a Toyota Sienna, I won't buy another brand at this point. My sister is still driving that 2007 Camry. You should contact your local dealer and ask them about this. You are most likely covered. If they don't help, find a way to contact Toyota corporate.
- geerlingguy 7y ago
  I have a 2007 Camry... was there a recall for this? How would I know if I have the problem?
  - mcny 7y ago
    Only if yours was also made in Kentucky and even then Toyota apparently did the bare minimum they were legally obliged to do. From what I understand, mine was not part of the recall. you should go to https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls and put your VIN anyways just for your peace of mind here's scotty kilmer explaining the issue: https://youtu.be/B0NwnbVN1cw https://youtu.be/B0NwnbVN1cw

linksnapzz 7y ago

Why not both? The J-cars (cavalier/sunfire/sunbird) existed b/c of the second oil crisis in '78. GM needed something FWD, smaller than the X-cars, that could get better fuel economy than the RWD V-6 and V-8 cars it had been selling in the '70s. The thought was that people in the US would buy these because they had to, not because small cars would suddenly become appealing to Americans in their own right. The Js were never terribly profitable, the lower-end ones were almost certainly sold at cost to boost the company's mileage compliance numbers. The traditional easy way of squeezing costs out of a car is to pull them out of the interior & trim, which would explain the sunroof, the dash electronics, the trunk closures and taillights. The engine you got in yours is almost certainly the Quad OHC, one of the last Oldsmobile powertrain designs...in its original 2.3L config, Olds had it making 185hp (in 1989, with no turbo!). Powerful but with no balance shafts, it pulled well but sounded & shook like a pair of wolverines trapped in a dryer, which is why the 2.4L version got balance shafts and was detuned to 150hp.

linksnapzz 7y ago
<pedantry> Replying to myself: the 2.4 in a Toyota Cavalier would be an LD9-series Quad 4, not a "Quad OHC" which was an earlier L40-series SOHC version of that engine. </pedantry>
davidgould 7y ago
My then girlfriend had a Sunbird. She was a very nervous driver. I thought it was part of some other psychological issues she had. Then I had to drive her Sunbird somewhere. Terrifying! Somehow in a noisy gutless cramped smallish car GM had managed to reproduce the floaty uncontrolled body motions and vague imprecise steering of the full size cars of a decade earlier.
- linksnapzz 7y ago
  It might sound crazy, but according to one of Bob Lutz's books, there is/was a huge corpus of GM Engineering Standards, some of which dated back to the 1930s, that had a big influence on design. This might explain why a compact Pontiac Sunbird might feel like a fullsize 1979 Pontiac Parisienne-both cars might have to meet the same set of criteria regardless of market fit!

to11mtm 7y ago

In the US the J-bodies (Cavalier being one of them) are regarded as somewhat disposable cars. In the US, the repair story is somewhat better, but that was more a result of the abundance of them in the states. The bigger reason that Japanese buyers stayed away from the Cavalier was probably due to it's engine size (JP taxes at certain displacements, I know going over 2.0L is a bump) as well as vehicle size (at least according to Wikipedia, it was too big to be taxed as a compact there.) Of course, being a J body doesn't help. The fact that many of the automakers had/have an unfortunate tendency to cannibalize themselves doesn't help either. Another example of this behavior from the 80s was the way GM would treat any project that could hurt sales of the Corvette (That whole mess with the Fiero, the way the Turbo 3.8 was quietly shooed away and ignored...) This infighting was at least part of the reason GM tried to start another car company in the US called Saturn. If you thought Subaru people were culty... Saturn had a whole thing where people across the country drove to the headquarters every year. They managed to build cars that were a bit more reliable than the rest of the GM line (Oh, they still had a couple of problems though. And the engines loved oil.) The original models also had a unique part line and were built in a plant that tried to follow a more Toyota/Honda style mentality. Oh. And plastic body panels. In any case, I tend to see more Saturns still on the road than any other GM small car of the 90s. It worked for a bit, until GM got tired of waiting for their sales to get up to speed, and started meddling with them TOO.

linksnapzz 7y ago
The Saturn plant had the advantage of a greenfield factory site and a motivated workforce, but I don't think that the product was ever as defect-free as the the Corollas coming from Fremont-also a GM plant, with a UAW workforce. Pretty close at times, though. ...thing is, the designs for the car, the plant, the tooling, the engines and the transmissions (unique to the Saturn SL1&2, used in no other GM product) the marketing, the dealership subsidies...all cost $12,000,000,000 in today's dollars. Chevy and Pontiac execs were fond of pointing out that the overhead of the Saturn project was so huge, that if GM just described the car to customers, and gave anyone who wanted a Saturn a new Cavalier, GM would actually lose less money than building and selling Saturns. You can buy a shitload of Cavaliers for twelve billion dollars. Of course, the original SL1 and 2 were updated with new-looking plastic interiors and body panels, but the basic car was still the same one that they debuted in 1989 when they stopped selling them in 2003. If it costs you that much to design a new economy car, you can't do it often, so the product goes stale, and fewer people buy it, and it costs more per unit to pay for upgrades etc. GM's inability to make its warring individual states cooperate is a goldmine of WTF moments in business history. Though I lay the Saturn debacle mostly at the Alden-shod feet of the late Roger B. Smith (of Roger & Me fame...)