I agree with your summary - but why have they even survived this long with such shoddy workmanship? GM's have been poorly built for at least 10 years. Same wi

I agree with your summary - but why have they even survived this long with such shoddy workmanship? GM's have been poorly built for at least 10 years. Same with Ford. My father owned an auto repair shop, and there seemed to be a big gap in quality between the old vehicles and the new starting in the early 80s. The old cars were tanks - built simply and reliably. The new cars much cheaper and poorly constructed, focusing on form over function. Back then Toyotas and Hondas seemed to be in their own class. The same old reliability, but built cheaper. They were ugly and didn't have many bells and whistles, but they ran forever. Since then the quality gap has remained, but Toyota/Honda have also overtaken the rest in style too.