GM Once Built A Car So Bad Two Broke Down During A Protest About How Bad They Were, One Catching Fire

GM is a remarkable company, when you think about them. On the one hand, the company is one of the most powerful and effective engineering organizations ever seen. They’re capable of some genuinely incredible engineering feats, ranging from the first turbocharged engine in the Corvair to the first mass-market fiberglass car with the Corvette, or developing the little moon rover for the Apollo program that drove on the moon, pioneering modern EV skateboard-type chassis with the Hy-Wire, and many, many more. They’re also one of the best organizations in the world when it comes to stepping on their own genitals, as so many of their engineering triumphs are blunted or even destroyed by terrible marketing or product planning or quality control decisions. It’s one of these feats of failure that I want to talk about today, one so colossally bad that it inspired Canada’s first class action lawsuit.

That lawsuit was about a car called the Vauxhall Firenza, and it’s an interesting coincidence that the car’s name starts with “fire,” because the actual cars themselves tended to start those, too. I’ll explain.

In 1971, GM’s British subsidiary Vauxhall decided to introduce a new compact car to the Canadian market, a tidy-looking and quite conventionally-engineered car, one designed to meet the growing demand for smaller, more fuel-efficient cars. On paper, the Firenza, which was a re-badged third-generation Vauxhall Viva, seemed to fit the bill, and the price – $2,600 maple-soaked Canadian dollars, or about $16,000 in today’s money, was just right.

The cars themselves, though, were not just right. At all. Right off the showroom floor, problems started to appear, and ranged from electrical gremlins (these were British-built cars, after all, so there’s a lot of tradition and experience with that sort of thing) to brake failures to steering problems to overheating issues that sometimes ended up as engine fires. They would also rust if you looked at them with a tear in your eye. I think maybe the headrests functioned without complaint, but that seems to be about it.

GM quickly leaped into action by removing the “Vauxhall” name and badging from the cars, solving the problems entirely! Now the car was just known as the GM Firenza, and that was that, with everyone happy about everything afterwards, forever.

No, no, just kidding. Of course that didn’t help. I don’t really know why they bothered, or who they thought they were fooling; the Firenza’s deep quality control problems continued, to such a degree that one in 20 Firenza owners ended up joining the very Canadian-politely-named Dissatisfied Firenza Owners Association, which was officially incorporated in 1973.

GM was certainly not helping the situation, with the Pontiac dealerships most Firenzas were bought through refusing trade-ins of these still only one- to two-year old cars. GM announced that in 1973, no more Firenzas will be sold in Canada, citing something about expenses of importing the car, but everyone knew that was bullshit.

In March of 1973, the Ottawa chapter of the Dissatisfied Firenza Owners Association issued a list of demands to GM Canada:

compensation for their cars’ high depreciation;

compensation for expensive repair bills, towing bills and rented cars;

extended warranties on their Firenzas;

courtesy cars while their Firenzas were fixed;

and copies of work orders for work performed

After some back-and-forth with GM Canada, the company offered owners an insulting $250 credit to their purchase of a new Chevy, Buick, or Pontiac. This was the last straw, and in May of 1973, 32 owners drove their Firenzas to a protest outside of the House of Commons.

Here’s where it gets really incredible: during the protest, two of the 32 cars had major breakdowns, one overheating and one actually catching on fire. During the protest! I know there’s hardly ever a good time for a car to catch on fire, but I think this helped make their point.

On the other hand, that’s only, what, 1/16 of the cars actually failing? What do these people expect?

Newspapers of the era showed very embarrassing (to GM) photos of the cars breaking down at the protests, with quotes from the participants like “when I push the brake pedal, the windshield wipers go on.” Another quote notes an owner had gone through three radiators and a transmission in the span of a mere 9,000 miles.

This was, of course, a disaster.

Eventually this all almost led to the first actual class-action lawsuits in Canadian legal history; legislation was written to allow for a class-action lawsuit, which hadn’t previously been a thing in Canada, but GM settled with the owners, giving them $250 plus fair trade-in value for their cars.

What a massive, miserable mess. It’s a good reminder of just how much chaos a really crappy car can sow, and the value that comes from owners banding together against a corporation trying to screw them over.

Oh, GM. How can you be so good and so bad all at the same time?