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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

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...)

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...)