I was recently told that some folks think The Autopian has it out for General Motors — that we write too many stories about GM failures, and that we therefore have some kind of beef with the company. That couldn’t be any further from the truth; in fact, to combat this silly notion, it’s time for me to write a quick blog about something I’ve been saying for many years: GM is the greatest automotive engineering company on earth. Better than Koenigsegg. Better than Rimac. Better than Tesla. Better than the Germans. The problem is, it’s oftentimes held back by executives and product planners. Here’s what I mean.
It’s really not hard to engineer a great expensive car. Worst case, you can hire out a third party like Lotus or Multimatic or Magna or Continental, and they can put together a sharp-handling product for you. What’s much, much more challenging is engineering a good inexpensive car, which is why it’s hard for me to consider anyone but GM to be the GOAT of the car-engineering world.
The most obvious examples are the various generations of Corvette, especially the latest ones. We’ve probably all read the recent stories about how the $200,000, 1,250 horsepower Corvette ZR1X lapped the Nürburgring in just 6 minutes and 49.275 seconds — nearly 3 seconds quicker than the $320,000 Ford Mustang GTD.
No matter what price class — whether it’s the base $70,000 car or the $200,000 top dog — the Corvette decimates the competition. This has been the story of the Corvette…pretty much since the beginning — go up against a much more expensive competitor (oftentimes from Italy or Germany) and whoop its ass around the race track.
For as long as I can remember, the Corvette has been leaving performance car reviewers with their jaws on the floor. Remember when Top Gear compared the C6 with the Ferrari 575? “This car really is like Robbie Williams. Who could have guessed that behind the ‘Take that’ nonsense, there was a proper musician trying to get out,” Jeremy Clarkson said, referencing the singer Robbie Williams, who broke off from his boy bad to become a true legend. “The Z06 is $60,000 pounds and the Ferrari 575… is 160,000 pounds. And if a martian came to earth, he’d have the devil’s own job explaining why,” he continued.
Then Top Gear gave the car to The Stig, and watched as the American budget-supercar decimated the 575, and even beat out the Ferrari F430, Lamborghini Murcielago, and Pagani Zonda!:
Then, when the C7 came out, Top Gear put it up its base trim, the Stringray, against a Cayman GTS, which put up a time of 1:21.6 on the Top Gear test track, while the Corvette matched the Porsche Carrera GT at 1:19.8.
Yes, you read that right. The base Corvette, which started at around $58,000, put up the same lap time as a $440,000 Porsche with over 150 horsepower more! Sure, the Porsche was 10 years older, but that’s still absurdly impressive.
We can just go down the line with numerous examples of GM dominating far more expensive cars. Perhaps the most mind-blowing, to me, was the Chevy Camaro ZL1.
There’s supposed to be a big gap between a company’s supercar and its muscle car. The supercar, like Dodge’s Viper or Ford’s GT, was the track weapon, while the muscle car, the Challenger or Mustang (respectively), was the straight-line sledgehammer. This was the case with the Camaro and Mustang, too, but then came the ZL1.
I don’t think people realize how mind-blowing the ZL1 was; Road & Track declared it “The Greatest Track Car GM Has Ever Made.” How? That’s a two-ton car! But sure enough; if you look at the the Jalopnik article “Here Is A List Of Cars That The 2017 Camaro ZL1 Beat Around The Nürburgring” from my former colleague Michael Ballaban, you’ll see that 7 minutes 29.6 seconds beats these:
Lamborghini Gallardo LP570-4 Superleggera
Koenigsegg CCX
Ford Shelby GT350R
Porsche 911 GT2
Mercedes-AMG GT S
McLaren 650S Spider
Jaguar XJ220
Caterham R500 Superlight
Trabant
(That last one is RICH).
In 2017 the Camaro ZL1 1LE achieved an even quicker time of 7 minutes 16.04 seconds, absolutely crushing the M4 GTS, Ferrari 488GTB, and Nissan GT-R, and ending up neck-and-neck with the Lexus LFA. All from a standard Camaro chassis!
There are tons of examples of engineering marvels, as well as just some cool, soulful cars GM has built over the years that were just awesome. Here are a few:
Chevy Avalanche:
Midgates are becoming more of a “thing” since EVs entered the mainstream marketplace, but it was Chevy that popularized the concept with the Avalanche, a truly absurd truck with a single piece body instead of a separate cab and bed, storage bins in the bedsides, coil springs in the back (!), and of course that foldable second row that joined the midgate in turning the bed into an 8-footer. It’s a fantastic truck, and beautifully engineered.
GM EV1:
The GM EV-1 was, in some ways, the first mainstream modern (ish) electric car. I’ll quote myself here:
Just to give a little context for those of you not familiar with the EV1: It was an unbelievably advanced electric car built by General motors between 1996 and 1999, and leased to about 1,100 folks, many of whom were celebrities on the west coast.
[…]
…You’ll see technologies that were unheard of in the 1990s. The 0.19 drag coefficient still beats that of any Tesla; the cast aluminum strut towers (here’s GM’s patent) were innovative back then, and you could argue might have inspired Tesla’s GigaCastings; low rolling resistance tires were really barely a thing a the time; the heat pump that is so important to modern EVs getting decent range in the winter was super advanced, as well, and wasn’t found in even much more modern electric vehicles like the early Tesla Model 3. Add the aluminum space frame construction, hidden antenna, and optics-headlights and GM had something truly state-of-the-art.
It was truly revolutionary, but GM killed it, and though their reasoning was sound (it was expensive), the way the company did it created a PR disaster.
The vehicle was so beloved that, when GM pulled the plug on the egregiously expensive program that, one could argue, was perhaps a bit early given where battery tech was at the time (“I said, ‘Roger, just keep in mind what we have here. We’ve got about a gallon of gasoline worth of energy in those 870 pounds of batteries, and we effectively re- fuel it with a syringe’” is an amazing quote from former president of energy and engine management, Don Runkle, referencing former GM CEO Roger Smith (via Automotive News)), hundreds of people took to the streets
The Hy-Wire:
Check out that GM’s Hy-Wire; here’s what Jason had to say about it:
While hydrogen fuel cells really haven’t caught on, you know what did? GM’s revolutionary skateboard chassis design for EVs. Replace those hydrogen tanks with batteries and you effectively have the platform that all modern EVs – from Volkswagen to Rivian to Ford to Hyundai to Tesla to whomever – use today. And guess what GM did with it?
Jack. Jack feces.
Still, it was innovative.
Cadillac CTS-V Wagon:
556 Horsepower through a six-speed manual transmission, in wagon form? There was nothing cooler in the early 2010s. ‘Nuff said.
The Entire Saturn Brand:
Admittedly, some of Saturn was marketing/product planning/customer service, though the engineering side of things deserves some credit, too. The plastic exterior panels were brilliant, and the affordable, safe chassis tech made for a great value.
The Silverado:
I currently daily-drive a 1989 Chevy K1500 GMT400, with a 350 V8, four-wheel drive, a five-speed transmission, and a 14-bolt rear axle. It gets 14 MPG, but it’s simply a sensational truck, and so is the current Silverado, which blew me away after having driven the last-gen (whose interior I found uncompetitive).
Chevy’s engineers don’t know know how to build trucks; they know how to build the greatest trucks of all time, like the GMT400.
Chevy Volt:
The Chevy Volt wasn’t commercially successful, but it was a well-engineered vehicle featuring a semi-EREV hybrid system that was, at the time, truly innovative. Here’s my breakdown of how it works:
It was a good car, and it was well engineered. A T-shaped battery pack sitting under the rear bench and along the spine of the car was filled with liquid-cooled prismatic lithium-ion battery cells. A charge-port located on the driver’s side fender filled up those cells:
The battery then sends juice to an inverter to convert electricity from DC to AC to power the 111kw (~150 hp) electric motor, which feeds a planetary gear set that’s part of the “Voltec electric drive system.”
This drive unit is exceptionally complex, and actually features a 74 horsepower (55 kW) generator that acts as a secondary electric motor to propel the vehicle.
Here’s a slightly more translucent one version of the above shot:
The short of it is that, during normal EV-only operation, a clutch locks the electric motor to the ring gear, creating a 7:1 gear ratio between that primary motor and the differential output. In other circumstances, like at high speeds, the generator will assist the traction motor. If the car runs out of charge, the gas motor will run the generator to power the main traction motor, and, in rare cases (as mentioned before), the gas motor will run the generator while that generator is coupled with the traction motor, and thus the gas engine will be mechanically connected to the wheels.
Here’s a breakdown of how it all works:
GM’s EV Strategy
The Chevy Bolt is no Tesla Model 3, but it was a highly competitive, low-cost EV that offered good range to the layperson on a budget. It did have some “thermal event” issues, which definitely don’t help prove this article’s point, but with the highs come the lows.
And right now, I’d say GM is seeing a high when it comes to its overall EV strategy. Among “Legacy” automakers, it appears to be doing the best, as Matt wrote late last year:
GM’s stated goal this year was to reach profitability in 2024. When that was announced the assumption was that GM’s EV sales would be way higher than they are now, but it sounds like GM is going to pull it off at some point in Q4.
This is a big deal. General Motors has been making electric cars for years and has invested in a platform, Ultium, that can be produced at a large enough scale that the company can start to squeeze out some sort of profit.
With the exception of Tesla, no large non-Chinese automaker I can think of is truly profitable when it comes to electric cars. The investments are too high, the market too competitive, and the scale just isn’t there yet. By doing everything on one platform GM has gotten a little closer.
[…]
Technology is important, and GM’s Ultium isn’t particularly groundbreaking, but having the most efficient platform in the world in terms of range is less important for a company than having one that’s efficient in terms of production. After a lot of work, GM is getting there, helped in large part by its sub-$30k (after incentives) Chevy Equinox EV.
35 grand for an EV with a range over 300 miles? Not bad. To avoid losing your shorts on EVs like everyone else? That’s more than just not bad; that’s amazing.
There Are Tons Of Other Examples
I don’t know that I’d call the current Chevy Trax an engineering Marvel, but it’s a phenomenal value, as Thomas explained in “The Surprisingly Nice 2024 Chevrolet Trax Is $21,495 Of Fundamental Goodness.” (Like I said: It’s a lot harder to build a good car that’s cheap than it is to build a great car that’s expensive).
Then there’s the Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing, the world-beating Escalade, the GMC Envoy XUT (convertible SUV!), the weird convertible pickup Chevy SSR, and that’s just in the last few years. Go back in time, and you’ll find innovation after innovation.
I regret having even started this list, because to be truly exhaustive, it would probably add another 1000 words to this article. But you get the idea.
Mercedes’s Take: Oh, but don’t worry, David, because I’ll add more for you!
General Motors was once a transportation powerhouse that Chrysler and Ford simply could not even come close to matching. David has told you why GM’s automotive engineering is some of the greatest on the planet, and that’s true. But rewind your clocks back several decades, and the GM Mark of Excellence could also be found on market-dominating buses, best-selling diesel engines, and the most popular diesel-electric locomotives.
General Motors got into buses through its acquisition of the Yellow Coach Manufacturing Company in 1925. Yellow Coach was the bus arm of the Yellow Cab Company, which was run by John D. Hertz, yes, of the Hertz rental car company fame! Yellow Coach would later forge one of the greatest advancements in bus design: the monocoque structure. Until about the 1930s, buses were mostly body-on-frame designs. These buses, which usually rode on existing truck chassis, rode high off of the ground and featured rough rides. The 1936 Model 719 highway bus was a revolution, as it featured a transversely-mounted diesel engine in the rear and an aluminum monocoque. Yellow probably didn’t know it back then, but this would become the blueprint for most coach buses and transit buses ever since.
General Motors believed in Yellow so much that it fully absorbed the company into the GMC Truck and Coach Division. GMC would go on to create history’s greatest and most dominating American buses in the New Look and the RTS-II transit buses, as well as highway icons like the Scenicruiser and the “Buffalo” bus. Just how good were GM’s buses? From the period of 1930 to the 1970s, General Motors was America’s number one seller of buses. America’s cities and bus fleets scooped up GM models by the tens of thousands, effectively forcing competition like Flxible and Eagle to fight for second place at best.
It was a similar story when it came to the might of GM in diesel development and locomotive development. In 1930, General Motors purchased the Electro Motive Corporation and the Winton Engine Company. General Motors had invested tons of resources into perfecting the diesel engine and filled its halls with some of the most brilliant engineers of the era. This division, which would be later called the General Motors Electro-Motive Division (EMD), would build some of the most iconic and most powerful diesel-electric locomotives that the world has ever seen.
By 1953, GM’s EMD held an impressive 73 percent of America’s locomotive market. In a distant second place was the American Locomotive Company (Alco), which held a mere 15 percent of the market. Even when General Electric became a major locomotive competitor and moved into second place in the 1960s, GM EMD still managed to control 70 percent of the market.
Meanwhile, GM’s investment in diesel also paid off in the form of the Detroit Diesel Engine Division. GM’s Detroit Diesel two-cycle diesels dominated America’s highways for decades in everything from fire engines to legendary Class 8 semi-trucks. One of the best-selling Class 8 engines of all time is the Detroit Diesel Series 60, a straight-six known for its good power, repairability, and longevity that could easily pull loads for well over a million miles. GM also used to build big trucks like the innovative ‘Cracker Box’ that I recently wrote about, and the GMC TopKick that formed the base of U-Haul’s largest trucks and the base of countless school buses for decades.
Sadly, General Motors has given up on all of these paths. General Motors sold off its bus operations in 1987, sold off the Electro-Motive Division in 2005, and GM relinquished majority control of Detroit Diesel in 1988 before later pulling entirely out.
Jason’s Take: Despite what people seem to say, I respect the hell out of GM. They’re the only company to build a car that drove beyond Earth!
I know it seems like I’m always picking on some embarrassing GM act of half-assery or absurd penny-pinching, or just general crappiness, but the truth is when they have to, GM can out-engineer almost any entity on the planet. When NASA needed a car, a literal, human-driven automobile that was capable of being driven on the Moon, it was GM that stepped up and designed the first motorized ground vehicle in all of human history ever to drive off the surface of the Earth.
The more you think about it, the more incredible it is: no one had ever done this before, and very little of GM’s previous automotive experience would really apply. Not even things like rubber tires could be used; thermal issues demanded that an entirely new method of making tires had to be found. They had to start from scratch, figuring out how to make a viable, useful vehicle that could operate in incredible temperature extremes, a near vacuum, on rough surfaces, since you really can’t get more off-road than the freaking moon, and had to be able to fold up like origami.
Seriously, look at this:
That folding system is an engineering marvel on its own!
The Lunar Rover GM developed was an absolute triumph, and the three that were built for Apollos 15, 16, and 17 all worked without a hitch. Sure, I may make fun of how Vegas would rust on the showroom floor, but that doesn’t change the fact that GM engineered a car that was shot into space and then drove on the moon the first try.
Oh, and since we’re talking about GM triumphs, I feel like we have to mention turbocharging, right? Especially because it involves my favorite GM car, the Corvair.
The first mass-market turbocharged cars were from GM, way back in 1962, the Oldsmobile Jetfire and the Corvair Monza. Just to put things in perspective, a 1965 Corvair Monza’s turbocharged flat-six air-cooled engine made 180 hp; compare that to another small sporty coupé or convertible that made 180 hp and you’d be looking at a 1998 Audi TT – 33 years later. Sure, maybe GM didn’t explore turbocharging as much as they could, but they were way, way ahead of everyone else.
With That Out Of The Way, We’re Going To Keep Telling Fascinating GM (And Other Automaker) Fail Stories
GM is fully capable of stepping on its own ass by taking shortcuts and starting things that it doesn’t fully see through; in fact, Jason wrote about this in “Here Are Five Times GM Developed Some Pioneering And Important Innovation Only To Fumble It And Have To Catch Up Later Like A Chump.”
This ruffled some feathers, as have a number of our GM Hit or Miss and Unholy Fails articles like these:
The 2004 Chevrolet Malibu Is The Worst Of 2000s GM Distilled Into One Car: GM Hit Or Miss
Here’s How The Cadillac Catera Got Lost In Translation: GM Hit Or Miss
The truth is that most of our GM stories have been positive, so there’s definitely a bit of hypersensitivity. Just thought I’d write this article to let you all know that, in my mind, GM is the GOAT of automotive engineering. Product planning/bean counting? No, the new Blazer is a huge disappointment and leaving money on the table for the Bronco and Wrangler, the diesel Equinox was the dumbest idea ever, the Buick Cascada was doomed the day it hit our shores, Mary Barra saying she was going to skip hybrids because EVs are inevitable was silly, and I could go on and on the number of foolish moves GM has made throughout the years.
But they weren’t the moves of the engineers. When it comes to engineering, GM is — at least in my view — at the top of the automotive food chain. And has been for some time.
GM is the classic case of running the race well ahead of everyone and then wrecking the car right before the finish line.
Fantastic ideas, engineering, and even product planning for longevity. They do so well inventing it and developing it, and then launch it in a half-assed way and play catch-up for years after or cancel it entirely.
So many good ideas cut short by bean counters and poor upper management hubris.
Many great hits. Many misses. Maybe the penny pinchers forced suboptimal changes. And when you consider the pressure the Japan3 exerted since the 70s, maybe this makes sense. (most of the fails are after this time.)
I had heard all the complaints for decades, and thus avoided all GM products. Now we have 2 here at home and one is “not bad” and the other one is “amazing”. After I got t-boned while driving my son’s Miata, he focused his savings and sacrificed his winter beater GLI to purchase a next level dream car for himself: A C6 Corvette. Manual, and white exterior with blood red interior, just like the first one in 1953. It’s an absolute screaming deal for him to use for autocross and HDPE. It cost $15,500 for a 400+ horsepower car that has factory adjustable suspension stuff ready to go to the track with.
I traded a RAV4 that we hated (stupid 7spd auto transmission) for a 2015 Silverado. I was hesitant, but the WT model doesn’t have the lifter problems since it has no cylinder de-activation. It’s been a very simple and reliable work truck. When the thermostat went, it was simple and very inexpensive to replace at home. Yes it has cheap plastics and the truck shudders over bumps, but it works and keeps working. I get it, they make vehicles that can be used hard and neglected a bit. That’s something you could never do with a German vehicle.
I love the styling of the 2015 Silverado
Me too! I think that specifically the 2014-2015 will age very well and be the next modern classic GM look. The Cateye had a small grille but has aged into looking kind of nice, then the blob eye has a grille that is too wide for all that front mass. The 2016-2017 have the same classic side styling, but they tried to modernize the headlights and it looks fussy. I think the 14/15 Silverados may be the next GMT400. I went down a rabbit hole for American truck styling and it’s crazy how they make small changes every couple of years to the grille and trim and bumpers. What a cost waste. I realize it’s just a mid-cycle refresh, and that in the 50’s you had a new style each year.
I’m a bit surprised how nice the WT rides, and now get why many people drive them. I do wish it was smaller, but that’s coming from someone who owned 3 first generation Tacomas. I lowered it with a 4/6’’ drop and it’s now perfect for loading stuff and the dogs can jump into the seats easily. 4×4 still works fine. GM is impressing me?!
The 2014-2015 design was clearly too good to last. Easily the best-looking gm trucks since the mid-’90s. Plus they finally fixed the infuriating and painful steering wheel being on a different vertical plane than the seat which was also on a different vertical plane than the pedals. And the interior door handles were actually in a decent spot, no longer wedged between the occupant’s hip and the door! Their first new-design truck in decades you could get in and think, “hey, this actually doesn’t entirely suck.”
i worked at pep boys for 3 years and i’m convinced that most of the “problems” people have with any car is due to sheer neglect than a problem with the car itself. My mom asked my why i’m always “working on my car” when i was literally just changing the oil, spark plugs and struts. you know the BARE MINIMUM. my mom was like “ive never had to do that on any of my cars”
That may be true for some cars but on things like mid 90s German cars with biodegradable wiring the problems are well outside the control of the owners.
GM makes such a large punching back (besides its size), because of the squandered potential, how they would repeatedly get so close to something not only different to the rest of the industry, but potentially better and/or interesting only for obvious penny-pinching in the interior, hidden in the drivetrain, or the follow up generation. Other times, they’ve been guilty of some truly horrendous garbage that will forever grace cheap AI-generated “Ten Worst Cars” lists, where cost cutting seemed to be the only apparent thing. Being so big, they sell a lot of stinkers that aren’t so easily forgotten by the people who had the misfortune to own them.
OTOH, when Hyundai/KIA puts out yet another hand-grenade engine in their bland-mobiles that fails in the millions across multiple family lines, the press largely shrugs it off and touts the latest low-production stripe package with Radio Flyer suspension that can handle well on a perfectly smooth racetrack and fans defend them as “not HyuKIA of 5 years ago” because nobody expects much from them. Or Chrysler who are masters of wrapping and perfuming shit to make it appealing to people who don’t care. Or Nissan whose days of greatness are decades ago and the people with no credit buying them have little other choice.
With regards to BEVs specifically, GM has recently excelled at selling Honda Prologues.
Was there any engineering cross-pollination between Hughes Aerospace and GM after GM bought Hughes in 1985?
Then again: “Nazi armaments chief Albert Speer allegedly said in 1977 that Hitler “would never have considered invading Poland” without synthetic fuel technology provided by General Motors.”
Have you seen a Buick Riviera or Reatta dashboard from that timeframe?
And the first auto HUDs
And my coworker worked on some kind of headlight (smart headlight maybe) – I’ll have to ask him about it.
Conversely the Hughes missile production line in Tucson was set up by GM production engineers
David, I think the word you’re looking for is, “was.” As in, “General Motors was the greatest automotive engineering company in the world.”
I came here to say the same thing.
Other GM cars/tech that are excellent: GMC Typhoon/Cyclone, GNX, ’57 Chevy (That one is for you, Torch), QUADRASTEER, the Suburban (longest running car name), the Fuelies, that technology that sprayed toxic snow and ice melting goo on rear tires, …
I can’t see “GM” juxtaposed with “engineering” without recalling my experience with a rented very early Saturn L-Series. I was driving. My wife asked me to stop so she could get something out of the trunk. I pulled over to the side of the road, but critically I did not put the transmission in Park. It seems like this confused the auto-locking logic because from then on, every time I shifted from Park to Drive, the trunk lid popped open. There was nothing I could do to persuade the car to reset, so I ended up tying the trunk lid closed.
Never count GM out. I actually think that GM are better positioned for both the present and future than any other domestic company, and that’s despite their lack of hybrids. They have a fresh lineup of well-received gas cars for the large majority of people who are still buying those, and they have very solid EV technologies to carry them into the future.
Hybrids are their only glaring miss, but I think they will be able to weather that shortcoming until more people are buying EVs (or until they bring back Voltec).
Never, ever underestimate GM’s engineering.
Or GM’s management to make the wrong strategic decision.
The engineering can and often is the best in the world. But the people building the cars just don’t give a shit. A Toyota Highlander built in Indiana is bullet proof with fit and finish befitting a Rolls-Royce (best paint job I’ve ever seen on a non-exotic production car and perfect panel gaps). Meanwhile a $120k Cadillac has primer showing through at every panel edge, door alignment that makes a Model X look good, rattling interior, a console with a half inch gap where the platic parts don’t and cannot be made to fit properly, a rear main seal leak at 1000 miles that drips on the exhaust and stinks up the cabin like a clapped out beater, and an engine octane knock under full throttle that I fear will result in a sized engine and an off track event at 120 mph.
There’s so much great engineering and potential at GM, but unless you own a hand-fettled press car that fixes / screens for these production issues, you’re rolling the dice / probably buying a car with 1980s Cavalier build quality. Somehow Toyota and Honda avoids similar issues in their US built cars.
From both a production and from a durability / longevity perspective it’s hard to argue Toyota / Honda don’t have the best auto engineering in the world. And Hond’s success with their performance cars is almost as impressive as GM’s (S2000 specific output better than Ferrari and highest in the world for a decade, Civic Type R faster in C&Ds lightning lap than the first Ford GT, and the original Integra Type R is a car that has to be experienced to appreciate how fantastic it is – even vs today’s cars)
Unfortunately “engineering” is only one piece of the puzzle.
Exactly.
Execution is the other half – and it’s often what you want to sentence the people responsible for your GM vehicle to after something stupid breaks/malfunctions/is unfixable for cost-cutting/beta-testing reasons.
Such as Oldsmobile Diesels.
Anything Northstar.
V8-6-4
Anything X Car (including the last RWD X Cars which would often be seen driving at a slight angle due to wonky factory alignment)
Self-composting Corvair head gaskets & late 70’s/early 80’s A-body interior plastics.
Current GM truck engines.
Etc, Etc, Etc
The crabbing rwd Xcars didn’t come from the factory that way, they omitted the dowel pins between the rear axle spring mounting pads and the leaf springs. Over time, one side would inevitably slip backwards. The guys in the 1930s put those dowels in for a reason LOL.
FAX.
Agreed. Design is another big part, and they’re failing that rather abysmally lately across the board.
The people who have been whining about anti-GM bias around here are rather full of it. I’ve defended this site reminding all that this is the place where the Pontiac Aztek gets paraded around only semi-ironically. If anything this site is far, far more fair to GM than any other site, and maybe even more fair than GM deserves.
There are plenty of GM efforts that I’ve admired over the years, and then there are plenty of products that I would argue are a crime against humanity (see article on 2004 Malibu).
Reminds me of the people who get pissy at Consumer Reports when tests don’t confirm their own biases. People hear/read what they want to.
I haven’t seen much anti GM bias in the articles, but I certainly have in the comments!
Which is fair, as a number of people have probably been harmed by GM over the years. But also people who have loved their GM products over the years.
As for anecdotal bias, I will continue to hate on the Dodge Stratus, for instance.
I LOVED the first-gen cloud cars when they came out. I was in high school and I wanted a Plymouth Breeze real bad. The big disclaimer here is that I never owned one, and if I had I probably would sing a different tune. But for the time the styling, value, and particularly the interior were so appealing to me.
We too loved the Stratus when we first got it. The value especially; it cost about the same as a Contour but was vastly roomier, and better looking. And it was certainly about a million times more exciting than the automotive novocaine that was the Malibu. It was also a very nice purple-ish color. Very neat.
Unfortunately it blew more head gaskets than an entire fleet of 00’s Subarus.
Better than Toyota and Honda? LOL
Honda and Toyota make it obvious that they’re run by engineers. I noticed you left those two out…
GM’s executive board should be filled with engineers, unless the UAW wants a works council, then half engineers/half mfg/labor
Toyota and Honda’s engineers are watchers. They watch other’s engineering and improve them to near perfection. GM is first, Toyota/Honda is good.
like Apple.
Off the top of my head:
First production car with variable valve timing.
First production car with specific output of over 100 horsepower per liter.
First and second hybrid vehicles in the US market or in the world.
Let’s not forget Honda’s cvcc cylinder head that when fitted to a GM V8 enabled it to pass emissions regulations with no catalytic converter, which the head of the GM at the time said it was impossible
Sounds like a lot of Firsts to me
Honda yes. Toyota not really. Toyota is ultra conservative and not big on innovation. Now It is true that they massaged their hybrids to perfection and you have to give them that. But aside from that Toyota’s main strength is conservative engineering and consistent quality.
Whaaa…. Toyota not big on innovation? That’s an absolutely crazy claim.
What did they innovate now?
I believe Honda and Toyota are slipping as they promote more MBAs into their US management ranks. This was a problem for GM back to the 80s.
A problem temporarily solved through bankruptcy but one that will likely catch them again.
An issue with all industries. MBAs are counter to engineering.
David, what are you smoking these days? And why aren’t you sharing?
I’ve never smoked! (OK, celebratory cigars, but that’s it).
David, I’ve never claimed you were anti-GM.
I’ve stated that Torch is, and I still stand by that.
And it isn’t just him, rather most automotive journalists have it in for GM. And I understand why – they are an easy target.
It is easy to be negative toward a company that has been around for as long as GM and for “owning” the USDM (and much of the foreign markets) for literally decades. You sell that make cars for that long, there WILL be stinkers. What the press does, however is endlessly bring up those stinkers to keep up that negative image alive, all while we have long forgotten about stinkers from other carsmakers because no one brings them up.
The worst part of GM has typically been their marketing. Contrast that with Ford and Dodge (and a few other companies) who typically do a great job at making their cars have a personality through their naming and ads and little touches. Fun names like Raptor and Hellcat. Awesome badges like the Demon logo or promotions like that Hellephant. Even Dodge’s colors are just entertaining like “Go Mango” or “Plum Crazy”. GM on the other hand has trim levels named 1 LT or 2 LT. They have the greatest mass produced V8 of all time and instead of calling it Thor’s Hammer or something awesome like that, its simply LS. They’ve had car’s named SS, HHR, SSR.
My favorite GM blunder in marketing has to be the Volt. Even the brochure for the car is vague enough that it makes it difficult to see what the car actually does, and I OWN ONE.
To be fair, whenever I explain how a Volt works to people that ask me about it, I’m usually greeted with a blank stare or, “OH SO ITS A HYBRID”
You just explained why their brochure was so bad. And mind you, when it came out, all that stuff was (and kind of still is), cutting edge. You get blank stares now, but there would have been a lot more blank stares 15 years ago. Wow, I can’t believe it’s been that long. I always wanted a gen 2 Volt in that bright blue that was in the press photos.
Gen 2 Volt is a fantastic car, especially if you live in a CARB state and can get the absolutely nuts PZEV warranty. The two major flaws that effect these cars (EGR & BECM) are both covered by the CARB warranty, although the BECM warranty is now covered on non-CARB cars.
I got my gen-1 in 2015 and back then people were just mind-blown by it. “So what happens when it runs out of battery?” –“Uh the gas engine turns on and I keep going”
I now have a 2017 and love it, though my rear defroster has left the chat.
Sure… lots of examples of good (even great) engineering. Not all of those are examples of _desirable_ engineering.
A house can be affordable, energy efficient and able to resist a hurricane. That doesn’t mean I want to live in it.
I would. I’m practical. Especially if the construction of that home got me a really low insurance rate and was so energy efficient, I barely had any utility bills.
There’s a lot more to a house than those criteria alone. They are important, certainly. My recommendation would be not to buy a house designed without an architect. Or without an engineer.
A concrete pillbox with the firing slit filled in meets those requirements.
No mainstream company has a higher ceiling, no mainstream company has a lower floor.
That sums up GM perfectly.
And sometimes they show up in the same car! The Citation is my go-to example of that, so brilliant on paper but it put its’ many first year owners through so much hassle that sales cratered for the back half of the run when it was finally what it should’ve been on day 1.
I know 2 people who had Citations split in half on them.
But they were the two best half-cars ever made!
/s
So were they in the middle of a divorce or was JT involved with his chainsaw? Or both! Ha ha
(I totally believe you and consider the Citation as one of the worst cars ever made…what’s funny is I had a friend who had one who painted it to look like a cow…also can never get the image of that vertical radio out of my mind!)
I could feel the spirit of the Corvette beckoning to my soul while scrolling the home page. I’ve been summoned like Mjolnir to Thor.
GM has been unable to get out of its own way for years now. The engineering and ability to punch above their weight classes has been that way for nigh 70 years now. The videos they put out in the 30’s are still the best explanations for how differentials and transmissions work. The corvette has been the gold standard for attainable sports/supercar since they started putting the eternal small block in in the late 50s, vs the truck straight 6 it originally came with.
But the choices and shadyness have always been there. Starting all the way back with the antitrust issues related to streetcars. Following through the 60’s with shooting the corvette factory racing programs down, into the Malaise and v8-64 & olds diesel disasters, and most recently with the ignition switch recalls. An issue they knew about for nearly a decade before the lawsuits and recalls were issued for a problem that killed over 100 people.
GM is still GM, look at the cancellation and resurrection of the Bolt giving up an early lead in cheap EV’s. I do hope they keep going more than any of the other big 3 though simply because they’re more willing to take risks compared to the others.
Those 30s training videos are pretty amazing. Its sad that with 3d animation etc, I still haven’t seen a video that exceeds the clarity and simplicity of explaining how car parts work than those.
Jam Handy productions! They’re the best at explaining everything they ever explained.
There were a couple of British Army training films from that era that did the best job I’ve ever seen at explaining to the layperson how different types of antennas work. Old US military training films did a pretty good job of explaining stuff too.
I am reminded of a RegularCars bit (if memory serves – on an RX-7) talking about potential; like a kid that “doesn’t live up to their potential”. To me, nowhere is this more frustrating than in their design department. Look at every single Cadillac concept released in a year beginning with “2”. Look at the Holden Efijy & Coupe 60.
Instead they spend their time putting bigger plastic grilles on trucks, available in your choice of very chromey, or “I haven’t actually read ‘The Punisher’ Black”.
The unsung hero of automotive engineering is Bosch; they have invented probably more things automotive than any OEM.
Including DieselGate!
Or does that make them an antihero?
Bosch warned VW not to use that shit illegally, but of course VW did anyway.
Bosch: Hey, this system is just for testing.
VW: You’re not my real dad!
my only gripe with their offerings have always been that they make something great, but then ruin it with making it look ugly as they refresh them.
Don’t forget about Air Conditioning and home refrigeration through their appliance division Frigidaire
Residential AC would be Willis Carrier – founder of Carrier. The first self-contained domestic refrigerator was developed by Frigidaire. GM invested in the company two years after it was invented.
So… I don’t think GM gets any credit for that.
That may be true, but similarly Nash-Rambler-AMC’s “Weather Eye” climate control was developed in conjunction with their wholly-owned division Kelvinator.
My dad has a Frigidaire freezer in his garage, that my great grandpa bought using his GM discount in 1955. It’s been running continuously for 70 years, and has never needed a seal replaced or repair.
Ha- I had no idea GM had a refrigerator division!
That was a thing for a while, https://www.thedrive.com/news/cold-start-the-rise-and-fall-of-car-companies-building-refrigerators
Admittedly this is a bit flag-wavey, but on the surface GM has shown significant brilliance. Followed by astounding stupidity.
And, amazingly, they’ve so well-honed this culture so that it continues to repeat even decades, or even generations later.
Genuinely: there’s a lot of GM just playing catchup (and you can’t just do worse than your competitor, you’ve got to do slightly ‘more’). The CTS-V, as great of a vehicle it may be, was itself derivative of chasing the Germans (BMW had hot wagons in the form of the M5 back to the early 90s). And Saturn was created to try to catch up to the Japanese brands. Both are cases of trying to keep up with the Jones’.
There’s a lot of GM playing catchup decades after they invented the idea and gave up on it (as evidenced in the article).
That makes it worse!
The fact that they had such a head start and innovated so early, but they still get walloped by the Japanese is just so sad.
For me, the Saturn story is the most depressing in the history of GM. They were this close to building the best cars (in their classes) in GM history. Were they at Honda/Toyota levels? Not quite, but there were still lots of Americans at the time who refused to buy foreign cars. They could have been huge. But just as they were hitting their stride, the money guys decided to pull the plug on producing original cars, and Saturn became a ragtag conglomeration of GM cars built elsewhere.
Too true. I still loved my Opel-based Saturn Aura, but that’s the whole point — no car was developed by Saturn themselves after the S-series compacts. I would love to know what a full lineup of in-house Saturn-developed cars would have been like.
(I also had an SL2 and an L300, so I experienced the full lifecycle of that company.)
The Aura wasn’t Opel-based, not really.
The Epsilon platform was a world platform codeveloped by GM North America, Opel and Saab.
As for the Aura itself, despite looking a lot like an Opel, it was little more than a 2008-2012 Malibu with a different rear greenhouse. The two cars even share front doors, windscreens and probably roof panels.
That’s not to say it was a bad car, but it was a distinctly American-flavored version of an Epsilon car. As opposed to the L Series and the later Vue and the Astra, which literally *were* Opels…or the various Opel-Buicks that came about after Saturn died and GM shifted it strategy of rebadging Opels to Buick.
Epsilon was a fine platform, so it didn’t matter that the Aura was a sister to the Malibu. However, in my opinion the Aura was leagues ahead of Malibu in terms of exterior & interior styling, despite their shared elements. It just goes to show you how far GM had evolved from the days of no-effort badge engineering.
The Aura also had the LZ4 3.5 V6 as its base engine in the first model year, rather than the Ecotec 4 in the Malibu. My Aura had the 3.5, and it was a great base engine. (And as it turned out, a much safer choice than the upgrade “High Feature” 3.6 V6.)
Oh, by no means do I consider it a bad thing that the Aura was closely related to the Malibu. That generation of Malibu was a high mark for GM in terms of having a competitive, appealing product.
And, like you, I also liked the Aura’s European-flavored styling more.
It’s just that the Aura was exactly that: Opel-inspired, rather than an actual Opel.
That is because Saturn cost $5B to launch, and then was losing a further $2K-$3K per car…and on low-margin, low-ATP cars to start with. There *was* no path forward where Saturn got to expand—or even continue making—its unique cars that didn’t involve lighting a ton more money on fire.
Faced with the decision of spending billions more to give Saturn a larger line of specially developed cars or to figure out how to integrate Saturn’s philosophies into corporate engineering, GM wisely chose the latter.
Ironically, if GM hadn’t had such a bloated, inefficient management and product development structure, it wouldn’t have *cost* so much to develop Saturn and it could have been profitable. But the company had to get away from itself and silo Saturn off in order to make cars and a culture like that, at great cost. A more efficient company could have done it for less. Toyota probably spent a third of that launching Lexus and developing the original LS 400, and we see how that played out.
Saturn burnt up so much money. I understand the place they were at kind of demanded that the went off on their own. However the fact that every nut and bolt had to be a Saturn nut and bolt, not a GM bolt was just throwing money into the bonfire.
We’re often quick to blame GM’s toxic management, but their engineering group is equally to blame for absurdities.
Hard to say whether that was the engineering dept’s hubris of getting to actually design a car from scratch, or the management sticking to their guns of it has to be separate and making the GM parts bin off limits.
I do remember one of their ads did mention that the transmission group was ready to do live testing before the engine group had something for them to bolt it too. So they mentioned that they stuck it in another GM brand vehicle so they could get on with their testing.
That said their testing seems to have been the problem point for many GM products/innovations over the years. The concepts were good but details were missed that reared their ugly head once the vehicles were in the hands of the customer. Now again was that the engineer’s hubris saying “this is ready for production” or management saying “this needs to go to production NOW” and we will worry about any problems that crop up later.
Hence all the times they canceled a vehicle just as soon as engineering fixed all the problems that came up after launch, and of course sullied the reputation of vehicle in question, leading to the early demise.
The Citation II was a perfect example of fixing a lot of problems after launch, and trying to polish the tarnish off of the turd they had launched with that II.
Maybe I’m just bitter having worked with the OEMs where, from the outside, engineering often gets seen with rose colored glasses (and management gets all the blame) – but Engineering just as complicit in the sins.
There is so much infighting within the same engineering group, and against other engineering groups for everything (incl. the petty battles to slow the other engineering groups – which they see as a personal win to gain timelines for their projects)
Which of course is why I gave those examples. It certainly wasn’t Accounting, Product Planning, Marketing, or Management that said you can’t put a proportioning valve in the X-Body, because it is highly unlikely that any of them even knew what a proportioning valve was.
On the flip side sometimes the engineers get handed constraints that are too tight to achieve the desired outcome and often have to choose between coming in on time and in budget and falling short of other goals.
The Dodge Dart is a perfect example of that. I had a discussion with the person who led one aspect of that vehicles development. Fiat had made a deal to get the rest of the Chrysler for free by producing a “40 mpg” small car in the US and having it on sale by a certain date. The on sale date wasn’t realistic from an engineering stand point and of course they didn’t want to spend too much on the car that they knew wouldn’t sell for big money.
That meant engineering cut corners everywhere they could to meet the timeline and budget. For example they started with the Euro C segment chassis and cut it in quarters and added width and length. But they didn’t have the time or money to optimize the design for strength vs cost vs weight. They chose to say screw the engineering team that needs to meet the fuel economy goal and threw a bunch of low strength steel at it and called it good.
So yeah it was management that made the Dart overweight and why it shipped the first batch of automatics w/o properly functioning transmission control software.
It’s that astounding stupidity that kind of negates the whole “GM is the greatest…” argument. That and a lot of those examples are very last century.
Is and Was are two very different things. Kinda like saying “Boeing is the greatest airplane manufacturer” while staring out over an MCAS-generated debris field.
The “Cadillac of” has lost its original meaning when you look at the last 50 years of it.
That’s only half true. The truth is GM did not need to play catch-up to BMW, because GM itself, in its Holden division, pretty much invented the big stomping V8 performance sedan in the early 90’s.
Performance sedans have been around much longer than the “early 90s” with and without 8 cylinders.
Yes. But I am just saying- the big sport sedan with American V8 and competent independent suspension- that was Holden’s doing.
I’m not sure I understand how “American V8” became the measuring stick for an Australian car.
However, if cylinder counts and “competent suspension” are your measure, a Mercedes 560SE (incl. SEC & SEL) in the 80’s (~300hp) would arguably qualify (50 more hp than the largest Commodore V8s of the early/mid 90’s – it didn’t cross 300hp ’til the end of the 90s)
Sporty sedans have been around a while. And each decade would have its own measuring stick.
I would say the Merc S class was more luxo than sport. The Holdens were always available with manual transmissions. I don’t think any of the Mercedes S class with V8 engines ever had stick shift. And American OHV V8 is a significant point because American V8’s have a huge aftermarket allowing endless modifications and hop-ups.
I’d argue the 5th Gen Camaro (especially the later 1LE, ZL1 and Z/28 variants) ushered in the return of the proper American muscle car.
Agree. GM has had tons of great engineering in various phases of its existence. Most of the awful ideas, and failures of the good ideas, came from Management, Marketing, and Accounting.