I find your comments about GM products being designed with parts that break down after 20,000 miles to be far from my own experiences with my last 5 GM cars, 2 Chevrolet Camaros, 1 GMC Jimmy, a Buick LeSable, and my current vehicle, a Buick Ranier. Both Camaros were driven over 100,000 miles with no parts failures, only replacing brake pads and tires. I had a breakdown on my GMC Jimmy at 155,000 miles when the heater core needed to be replaced. I drove the LeSabre for 90,000 miles and had zero breakdowns and was still getting 32 - 34 mpg on the highway. My Ranier has 47,000 miles on it and I have had no parts breakage to date. My Toyota, Mercedes, Nissan, and Volkswagen driving friends talk about their great cars, but when we talk about frequency of repairs, they almost always have had problems. Perhaps my experience is unusual. After having owned six imports, I must say that my experience with GM products has been more satisfying. Even my son-in-law remarks how much nicer my Buick Ranier is than his Toyota SUV - and more reliable.

I was working for a supplier of GM's around the time you conducted that interview, and have to say that the great word from GM at the time was "MAP", not "Quality". Does anyone else remember MAP? It was an ill-conceived attempt at factory-floor communications technology, which collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions. Ethernet won, since it was cheap, standardized and reliable. Later, GM's great word became "QS 9000" - a good starting point, since strong systems can lead to good results. But they never required the results, nor the improvement in results that could have lead to an improvement in their quality and warranty costs. So compare the quarterly warranty costs (as a % of sales) of the Big Five automakers for the years 2003 to 2006 (data from Warranty Week, June 20, 2006) :-

GM 2.6% - 3.3%
Ford 2.25% - 2.7%
Daimler-Chrysler 2.7% - 5.2%
Toyota 1.2% - 1.3%
Honda 1.2% - 1.65%

Is there any doubt that Toyota and Honda are operating different Quality processes than GM, Ford and (especially) Chrysler?

Guy D Gimson
Quality First LLC
Charleston, SC

In my experience with a Tier 1 supplier, the thing that struck me about GM was the almost complete lack of cross-functional coordination. It frequently seemed to me that at GM, the left hand did not know what the right hand was doing. It was very common that I would be given conflicting directions from different functions within GM, even to the point of having the same terms defined differently by different functions. I found myself educating GM personnel about the practices of other functions and pressuring them to contact their coworkers to coordinate requirements.

I suspect that these experiences illuminate a deeper problem within GM, and perhaps one of the root causes of their quality problems: GM's senior leadership has been unable to manage and coordinate relationships within the company, leaving it to lower-level personnel to overcome these differences on a case-by-case basis. As a result, GM is a patchwork of personal networks, each with a unique set of goals and operating methods. It is as if GM makes cars only because everyone arrives at work each day expecting to do so; not because of any deliberate or coordinated alignment. In such an environment, variation in results, and hence poor quality, would be unavoidable.

To say that GM lacks customer focus is, to me, an understatement. To me it seems they have a complete disregard for the satisfaction of their customers. I experienced what seemed to me an unreasonable fault with my Chevy, and more recently, so did my Mother. In each case, I took the time to write a letter to General Motors, explaining the problem, and asking them why they thought this was acceptable quality. I did not receive any response from the first incident. I received two letters after the second, however neither letter referred my problem. Rather, each of the letters simply assured me, as a "valued" customer, that GM would weather this economic storm, and that I could count on them being there in the future. Huh? I don't want them there in the future. I want them to go out of business, like any other company would that treated its customers so.

We had to replace the transmission in our 1997 Chevy Venture van at about 50,000 miles.

I bought my first Toyota, a Sienna van, about 3 years ago. Loved it, but it has 1 and only 1 design flaw, imho: it is possible to knock the gearshift out of position while reaching for the radio controls. However, they did put some radio controls on the steering wheel.

Great stuff - sad, but oh so true. I hope that some GM execs respond with a truthful, non-BS response, but I know they won't. Good job Jim in doing your part.

I listen to all the carping about poor GM quality and wonder why have I had such a dramatically different experience? After growing up in a MOPAR household as my parents owned 13 Dodges in a row because of a family friendship with a dealer, I thought I was destined for a life of Dodge ownership myself. Then the dealer made a fatal error in judgment that caused the entire family to drop him like a rock. We tried a Ford only to be even more disappointed, not by the dealer, but by lack of product quality. Things like stainless steel brake lines corroding completely in less than 10,000 miles, four times in a row. Poor design, you bet. The factory tires not lasting to 10,000 miles even though they were properly inflated and well-maintained. Various other issues were also prevalent.
I switched to GM and have not looked back except to occasionally reminisce about the “bad, old days.” I have since owned seven GM vehicles and have amassed nearly 900,000 miles with very few issues. A Chevrolet Camaro Z-28 provided over 300,000 miles in ten years with only normal wear and tear items before it was sold so we could get a Safari minivan for our budding family. It returned over 150,000 miles before it was traded in 2007. My first four GM vehicles each provided over 150,000 miles before they met their next owner. I found the key to be routine maintenance. Change your oil at suggested intervals. Don't buy cheap gas. Pay attention to your tires. Listen to your car and feel what it is doing. Don’t mash the gas when pulling away from a stoplight or standing on the brakes when you need to stop. Common sense goes a long way but many folks seem to have either missed that lesson or forgotten it over time. I remember while I had my Z-28 being asked to give a ride to a friend when they dropped their new Honda off at the dealer to correct something that should never have made it passed the dealer in the first place, let alone the factory. I ended up giving six round trip drives in ten weeks for the same issue. I think the perception of Asian cars having better quality is more prevalent than reality. American-bashing seems to be in vogue these days for some reason. I just speak with my wallet. I am concerned about how much of a role the government will play in transforming the company as I believe the government has the absolute worst quality service anywhere.

Mr. Harrington, the articles are very good, and timely. Keep it up. I'll reply to the poster of QS-9000 was a joke. ...really? I am an auditor and consultant in the the quality field. I watched quality go from 5000+ ppm to 100 ppm to 10 ppm to now most of my clients are at 0-5ppm consistently. Delivery went from <90% to consistent 99.999% every month. All in about 15 years. Not every supplier is at these levels, but thousands are. The vast majority have improved dramatically. Not a joke, at all. However, the far greater dilemna is that the Detroit OE's did not fully embrace ISO and QS-9000 internally. They got their certificates, but never embraced the culture. That is where the issues mainly lie. PS: QS-9000 was replaced by TS-16949 in 2002. Since your post mentioned QS rather than TS, I assume your experience with the quality program is quite dated.

For the life of me, I cannot understand the continued mantra of mis-information coming out of the American public and media regarding the "perceived" quality gap between GM and Toyota, Honda and others. The evidence simply does NOT back up those claims. If you will look at the latest quality and reliability ratings from JD Power and others you will see that most GM brands rank at or higher than Toyota and Honda in quality and reliability. Who has been recalling the most cars lately? In 2007 Toyota recalled MORE automobiles than they manufactured! These are FACTS, and yet you continue to spew forth "marketing drivel" that Toyota has brainwashed the American public with for years! Go out and drive a new Chevy Malibu or Equinox and compare it to a Camry or RAV4 and tell me which one is built better? Compare a Buick Enclave or GMC Acadia to a Highlander and see if you think the same thing. Or better yet, go compare a Buick LaCrosse to a Lexus ES or Cadillac SRX to the Lexus RX and you will find that your "perceptions" of the gap between Toyota and GM will "evaporate" into the same hot air that you have used to try and substantiate them. Didn't Buick just "dethrone" Lexus at the top of the reliability and dependability ratings? People like you who are stuck in the past lamenting the cars GM was building a quarter-of-a-century ago as "evidence" of GMs woes, need to WAKE UP and realize what century you are in!

In 1988 GM was saying all the right stuff. However, now in 2009, the cold hard fact is that they are in bankruptcy and Toyota is not. Why didn't their quality policy save them? Because they did not walk the talk.
James Kannal
show me the data