Bart, My extended family's experience mirrors your friends. My parents had it with GM vehicles. My Dad worked for GM for 36 years but couldn't drive the 80's fullsize GM junk anymore as a personal vehicle. By the mid 80's dad put my mom in a new 300SD Mercedes. One tiny problem over the years with AC controller, that's it, drove it nearly 15 years, the rest just regular maintainence, sold it for strong retail money in one day. Then bought their first Lexus mid sized SUV, they have had 3 now. Each one of them, exceptional quality vehicles, nothing but regular maintainance, and the first two sold for strong money used. Another family member has two 90's full size Landcruisers and a mid 90's Lexus full size SUV, very minimal problems over the years with any of them. In '07 we bought our first new Toyota product, a new 2wd 4Runner. Has 160k on it, now, great vehicle, only repair needed has been me replacing the rear brake calipers. If I'd flushed the brake fluid out at 100k , doubt I'd had the internal corrosion. Until we bought that 4Runner, had my wife in several 90's American built front wheel drive Gms and Fords and was always working on something on them. Never again.

OPH - could well have been something I did wrong, don't know. We built it absolutely stock with the exception of the Comp Cams cam.

Worse was it was my son's car. Bad enough when its your own that doesn't turn out well; but when it's for your son and it comes out bad, just makes you want to chew nails!

The Mustang wasn't a pace car (heavier), rather a turbo option on the standard fastback. Still have it to this day, and it will still outrun stock 302's from that period. Never had it through the clocks, so don't know what 1/4 mile it will run.

Jon.

I could outrun the 1979 302 on foot.:D

All Decals, Lights, and Pose; my 301T experience was no "Luv Fest"
 

Can still see it like it was yesterday, even though it was a 1983 summer night:

I'm sitting at a light in my '78 TA w base 400/Th350 2:56 gear WS6, "test-tube pipe" replaced cat w stock single into 2 exhaust and cross-flow muffler. Opened shaker scoop, other than that it's Stock-Stock-Stock.

What pulls up next to me, but a sweet looking '80 Turbo SE TA. As the multi "Turbo" hood lights let me know "Mr. Turbo" wants to run, I smile from the multi display "power" :rolleyes: show and know: "I got this" and smile.

I take off from an idle; Shifting my "low performance" 180hp 400 coupled Th350 like a manual from 1st, 2nd, 3rd; we leave the light and we barely get 1/2 a length and I'm already walking this guy - bad. So bad - I can still see his expression as he turns with surprise to see me driving past. We go about an 1/8 mile and I'm so far ahead of him I back out and let him catch up. He punches it on a roll, I answer the call and walk him bad again...adding insult to injury.

At the next red light I'm stopped in the same left lane I'd been traveling and he - "Mr. TurdBlow TA" - pulls up and makes a quick rolling right on red to avoid eye-to-eye contact and more embarrassment.

If it makes any of you 301 Turbo Lovers feel better - L-82 Vettes got handed the same - by a lowly "base" 400 auto w a 2:56!!!! :pound:

The taurus broke down constantly since the day it was bought, and all 7 lexus were perfect and never broke down ever, Okay I can see that's not a comparison........................:rolleyes:

I worked as a line mechanic at a Buick dealership from 1982-1985, I am quite well aware of what GM was selling then. I owned an 81 Bonneville diesel, supposedly one of the worst engines GM ever made. Mine ran over 150,000 until I sold it without any problems with the engine or transmission, 20 MPG in town and as good as 32 MPG on the road.

One of the biggest problems with the 5.7 diesel is no one including GM dealerships knew how to properly maintain it. Wrong oil, most dealerships used gasoline engine oils. No one ever cleaned or replaced the breather elements in the valve covers. Crankcase pressure builds up and ruins the ring seal as well as blows the front and rear crank seals.

1987 3.8 FWD Bonneville close to 200,000 miles when I sold it because of rust on the body, running gear was still fine. Transmission was O/H at 100,000 miles. 92 SSE Bonneville transmission replaced at 100,000 miles went to 200,000 miles and was wrecked.

I already explained I owned a Z24 Cavalier that went to 200,000 miles until the timing chain took a dump.

My current 93 K3500 dually with Detroit Diesel 6.5 Turbo Diesel 245,000 miles also supposed to be a junk engine. Runs well and saves me fuel over a gas engine.

Foreign and domestic car makers have both made junk as well as good cars. Toyota and Honda were keeping their recalls hidden from the US gov't NHTSA pretty well until recently. The wonderful Toyotas have had their share of recalls both above board and under the table since the unintended acceleration incident showed evidence that Toyota knew there were problems with their cars and were keeping silent as well. Same as GM knew about their ignition switch problems for years and didn't address it head on.

Takata, the Japanese owned air bag manufacturer made millions of defective air bags and won't recall them and is under the eye of NHTSA. Just because it's designed by a Japanese company doesn't make it perfect. They can all screw up and it's proven.

Consumer Reports until recently always gave glowing reviews to foreign makers, now it seems they're backing off of the foreign manufacturers as they have proven they're indeed fallible. Consumer Reports as well as other magazines touted the foreign cars and faulted the domestic cars. Perceived attitudes had help from magazine writers. Not saying the domestic cars didn't have problems and they lost market share from it in the 80s, but the publications during that time didn't help.

For every foreign car success story their are domestic success stories too. For every disaster someone relays about a domestic car there are also foreign disaster stories. If it's mechanical it can break, no matter what nameplate it has or how much it cost new. :focus:

Put a Fork in it
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You mentioned the cost difference between the Ford and the Lexus.

Why should the less expensive car be expected to break down more often?

Both should be reliable cars no matter what they cost.

I'm happy that you've had good experiences with your American cars. Unfortunately enough of the car buying public didn't have the same good experiences, enough that many turned to foreign cars.

The American car makers gave it away, they were the leaders and thought that the public would buy whatever they decided to produce. They were wrong, and the great proliferation of foreign brands in the US market proves that.

Unfortunately the same line of thinking killed the Pontiac brand. They decided to cut costs to the point that enough of the car buying public no longer trusted their products. They cut costs to the point where Pontiac completely lost its identity too.

Very sad turn of events.

Way too much use of Body Cladding - aka lipstick on a pig - by Pontiac contributed to final coffin nails

During the times all you guys are talking about I was in a dealership doing something. Wheather it be working on the line , or in the parts dept. or selling them or at the last as service mgr. One of the biggest reason everyone THOUGHT the forgien car were so much better & they weren't, it was that the service dept. & sales dept.'s did there job on selling all the service work that was needed to be done to keep them running like they should. The forgien car dealer beat into there customers that you have to do the REQUIRED maintiance to keep them running good all the time. Most of the American car dealers just said drive them ,,, when they break well fix it thats what the warr. is for. Then when they broke down because the maintiance wasn't done when needed they blamed it all on the car, not the fact that when they needed something fixed , the customer remembered that the saleman siad the warr. will fix it. But the warr. doesn't fix maintiance items & they got mad at the junk car. While the forgien car dealer got it beat into there customer that you have to do the maintiance or it will break down & the warr. wo't fix maintiance items , so they had the items that were maintiance items repaired & kept up with so the car seemed not to break down & they were great cars then. BUT,,, the maintiance cost for just about any forgien car was almost 3 times what the american car was because they weren't schooled like the forgien customers were. But if the American buyer did the same amount of maintiance the cars would have lasted just the same , because during that time ALL the cars were junk & all the car makers wanted at that time was the money. They were no different they just wanted the money & as much as they could get no matter how big the lies were. Any guy on here that has worked as a tech for any time during that time has to know that what I just typed in here is the truth. Most all the cars from 1975 to 1999 were all junk no matter who made them. The all mighty dollor was the king & we were the jokers.

Gee, I don't know Bart...... does a Mercedes and a Yugo owner expect the same reliability no matter what they pay for their cars? You get what you pay for, I bet you've heard that expression before maybe? If that's true your LS3 and an LT1 ought to be the same no matter you paid more, and an stock 4L65E and a Hondamatic ought to perform the same correct?

There were no major foreign brands in the US until the late 70s and 80s. Volkswagen the peoples car was probably the largest segment at that time. Talk about a car company shoving something down your throat. VW kept the same basic car and engine for 3 decades.

Datsun started selling cars across the US in late 60s early 70s Small cars 4 cylinders that rusted out in about 5 years. I worked at a Datsun dealer in 1969-70 and while the engine and drivetrain was good the bodies and interiors were crap. The 70s Toyotas and Datsuns weren't any marvel of engineering, I worked on them.

Mitsubishi made the famous LUV truck for GM in the mid 70s, another POS. Now the domestic companies came out with the high tech aluminum Vega engine, POS lucky if you made 50,000 miles with one. Ford shoves out the Pinto and Mustang II. This happened in the early and mid 70s when GM and Ford was supposedly making quality cars. Chrysler always made crap, but they were cheap crap.
There are many reasons that Pontiac went under, GM really didn't nurture the brand and it seemed Pontiac was an afterthought. Management sucked and were not car people. They did the same thing to Olds. Ever notice how Olds lost every one of their model names just before they got axed? Pontiac also lost all of the familiar models just before they got axed. I believe some of GM brass had planned to get their brands narrowed down before 2000.

I still wonder why GM needs 2 truck lines that are the same, except for trim and model designation.

GM started it's quality slide when they switched over to small FWD cars which they were not familiar with and didn't know how to correctly build them. The knew how to build the big FWD cars, Riviera, Toronado, and Eldorado E body. The RWD cars B F and G bodied cars weren't crap, the X J and A bodied FWD cars were the problem children which did the most damage to GMs reputation. The foreign manufacturers had been making FWD cars before GM started and had a head start on how to make them. It's not as simple as some people would like to believe and not one event inside Pontiac or GM caused the death knell for Pontiac. Bungle after bungle by management took it down slowly along with increasing competition in the marketplace.

If you look at all the domestic car companies you'll see Plymouth dropped from the chrysler lineup and De Soto dropped many years ago. Ford dropped Mercury recently so there is a trend among all the domestic brands to streamline and cut costs. Evolution I guess.

I'm still not happy after many promises to get Pontiac online and once again make it a performance division again, got cast aside. Many things played into the decision as well as GMs plea for money from the Feds.

I knew the Yugo would come up. Pretty extreme comparison between it and a Benz, don't you think?

Buying a car from a tiny eastern European company with no record of quality or value was a roll of the dice, but if you're desperate for a car and have extremely limited funds you might do that.

The buyer of a mid-priced compact or intermediate should expect a reliable car, and so should the buyer of a higher priced car with more power and features. A car that costs $20k should be no less reliable than one that costs $40K, people don't expect to get half the service life from a car that costs half as much. It doesn't work that way.

A big portion and consideration omitted so far from this thread discussion is the MAJOR shift in base part #s and the DOWN-sizing design that occurred starting w 1978...see the 77 vs 78 Grand Prix for example.

When I was in the parts biz in the early '80s most dealerships, part stores, independent garages in the USA could full function and service most American vehicles utilizing the 25 to 50 top part #s. as we all know in hindsight now, those required inventory(s), part numbers, and designs radically changed in a very short period of time.

The 1980 vs. 1981 Quadrajet and the wiring harness on the Trans Am is a perfect example...then as this OP pointed to the third gen FBody redesign thrown into the mix. Anyone remember the base engine in an '82 Bird was a 4-cylinder?

The rapid redesigns flooded the various inventory streams and often techs didn't know, or have time to learn and/or keep up w corrective procedures, as the continued rapid changes continued as US Mfg's struggled to keep up with import designs and sales.

I can tell you from personal experience that the brand new 1985 Olds Cutlass Supreme V-6 Auto I owned looked very nice but was a total POS quality wise (the cheap @ss interior always comes to mind and it was a decked out "Supreme!") Nice styling design, not so great quality or reliability wise. THAT is what continued to be pushed onto the loyal customers until enough was enough and people voted with their feet.

As far as new vehicles are concerned, despite love our 60s to 70s Pontiacs; when it comes to our personal safety on the road I'm not going to place loved one in potential personal harm driving an antique vehicle as a daily driver on the HiSpeed roads around here.

Ex: Replaced a '04 VW 1.8T POs Passat w a 2015 FORD Fusion, which is perfect for the moment for my Mrs. If it doesn't provide adequate service we will replace it. Safety and reliability of a new vehicle trumps ANY brand loyalty IMO. My servicing a daily driver, other than basic maintenance, ended w the Passat. Too many sensors, connectors, diagnostic software/hardware etc. w minor issue causing major inop status.

Modern vehicles are designed as throw aways after a set time frame and mileage. Started with the "downsizing" mentioned above.

Packard, Plymouth, Pontiac :2cents:

Hell if anything the 20k car might be more reliable then the 40k car. :oogle:

X2! That has been my experience working on peoples junk for years. Agree 100%. By the way the LUV was Isuzu's pos. Mitsubishi made the pos "D50" for Dodge, as well as a bunch of oil burning 2.6/ 3.0 litre engines.

The 95 does not look much better than the 85, this is not a great car. Lets compare it to a Chevy Beretta then. There are plenty of 2.2l and 2.8l chevys still running the streets today. Once again foreign cars had nothing on domestic cars past, present or future. If you keep up on maintance all old cars will have a longer life and will probably all leak oil eventaully. Once again foreign cars being better than domestic was/is all hype
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A lot of people around here buy a POS 6-10 year old Mercedes or BMW so they can look "cool".:rolleyes: They bring them in the independent shop where I am to get them "repaired", then they find out why the original owner got rid of them in the first place. These are "throw away" cars as well, albeit throw away cars that still look good paint wise. $5000 water pumps and such. They usually have to sell their wheels off the cars to get them running again. I am glad I am going to retire from this in about 10 years. As far as the garbage from everyone in the '80s, I laugh now everytime I see a worn out pos from that era wandering down the street with "Antique"/Collector car license tags on them.:gag:

We have had 5 of those mid to late '90s Corollas hauled away to the junkyard with blown engines just this year (One was a newer style, around 2003). Customer didn't want to spend any more money on them.:2cents: Most of them have broken door handles all around.

Full disclosure: I can tell you, back in 79 thru early 80s we were all actually looking forward to the new cars and trucks "as promised" performance, especially the FBody GMs.

Back then when I pulled in to their driveway with my - as I described it to my fellow out-of-town motor-heads - 1st '78 Firebird, I can still hear Brad exclaiming in excitement "You bought a freaking TA!!!" You bought a freaking TA!!!"

That was the same excitement I felt when his Bro Scott bought a new Dark Blue w light blue gut '83 Berlinetta Camaro V-6 w Stick from A.J. Foyt Chevy. We WANTED them - those initial '80s 3rd Gens to be as great as they were advertised and promised to be...

Like it or not, fact is - There is a reason why the 5.0 Fox Mustang became "the car to have" in the '80s. The Trans Ams, IROCs etc. "looked the part" but failed to deliver...

The rest is history. R.I.P. Pontiac.

Well to be fair, those 5.0 Stangs are still cool to this very day.