You have nothing to say but this?
Keep reading about the 69 Charger while I drive the real thing from the 21st
century.
How's your F body or whatever piece of shit you drive.
Dumb fuck.



"80 Knight" <nospam (AT) nospam (DOT) com> wrote

You don't drive a real Charger. You drive a piece of shit, with 'Charger'
slapped on the side to make it sell. A real Charger never had 4 doors, and
never will.

"Victor" <vmark(nospam)99 (AT) telus (DOT) net> wrote

80 Knight wrote:
scoop. And, I would agree. ;-)

Your question was about why GM fell so far behind...
There are multiple reasons, of course, but some of the things GM did
in the 90s were just dumb.

They put all their effort into trucks. They kept car designs around
for way too many years without restyling them much (e.g. Chevy
Cavalier the same from 1982-96), and really never did much advertising
for their formerly strong selling makes like Buick and Oldsmobile.

All the effort seemed to have gone into trucks. What effort was put
into cars was done for Chevrolet and Cadillac, and the other makes
were forgotten.

I do think that people no longer wanted the American type of car- e.g.
soft riding, wire wheels, chrome trim, etc- and GM kept that around
longer than most. People were shifting towards "world" type cars that
were sportier and had more of a focus on handling than soft ride. I
think this is why Buick and Olds came to be seen as an older person's
car- whereas before they had been highly respected.

Pontiac- well, I don't know what happened there. They always had a
sporty, youth riented focus. I suppose there were just other choices,
such as VW and Honda, that younger people gravitated towards...
although GM cars across their makes were often too much like one
another in terms of styling. Same body, just with different
nameplates.

Also, even though quality improved greatly by the late 80s, people
still bashed American cars well into the 90s, and the authors in
magazines certainly didn't give them credit for making the
improvements they did make, though they really did deserve credit for
that. E.g. making the cars more fuel efficient, making them more
reliable and needing less maintenance by switching over to fuel
injection and distributorless ignition. The magazines never seemed to
have anything positive to say about GM, but I think they chose not to
see anything positive.

What is more amazing to me is that the Japanese were able to improve
their products so quickly, and respond to market changes as quickly as
they did. Perhaps they did it because their volume at the time was
smaller so they could respond more quickly. So many Japanese cars in
the 70s and 80s were buzzy four cylinder cars with a poor ride,
cramped interiors, and few options. For them to have been able to
expand their dealer networks and offer more luxurious, sophisticated
cars as quickly as they did, well, it's pretty amazing.

But they obviously reinvested in research and development properly and
came out ahead.

Getting back to GM, I really think they focused too much on trucks (as
did Ford, by the way) and not enough on cars, and they let foreign
makes just take over the car part of the market by not advertising
enough or updating their products quickly enough.


On May 4, 2:15Â*am, who <i... (AT) notaspammer (DOT) net> wrote:

njot wrote:
GM sowed the wind and now they reap the category 5 Hurricane.