General Motors was once the largest, wealthiest and most admired company in the world. What went wrong in the years leading to the company's 2009 bankruptcy? Many, many things went wrong. And those mistakes are reflected in surviving copies of GM's products.
From
curbsideclassic.com:
"Despite its name, the Lumina failed to bring any light to those dark
years at GM when it arrived. The Lumina was a desperate effort to play
catch-up with Ford’s runaway hit Taurus as well as to parry with the
Camry and Accord; the result was predictably dim. It instantly joined
its smaller brother Corsica as the very icons of fleet queens, a title
its W-Body successors defended right to the present. Did they have
redeeming qualities? Undoubtedly; but I’m hardly the one to ask. Try
Hertz."
"GM’s W-Body started out as the GM10, which got off to miserable start
with the 1988 Buick Regal, Olds Cutlass Supreme and Pontiac Grand Prix
coupes. The whole GM10 program was quite likely the single biggest
boondoggle of the Roger Smith era; their development cost a
mind-boggling $7 billion ($13 billion adjusted), and the goal was to
build these cars in seven plants at 250,000 units per year per plant; in
other words, a 21% share of the total US market. What were they
smoking? Soon enough, GM would be fighting for a 21% market share for
the whole company, never mind mid-sized cars.
The enormous sunk costs and subsequent pathetic sales meant that GM
was losing some $2000 per car on these at the time the Lumina made its
belated appearance for 1990. The old saw that GM lost money on its small
cars because it had to build them to meet CAFE targets isn’t nearly
encompassing enough. When asked by Fortune why GM10 was such a catastrophe, Smith replied, “I don’t know. It’s a mysterious thing.”(wikipedia)"How long has it been since you've seen a mid-90s Lumina on the road? Quite a while, I'm guessing? And how long since you saw a mid-90s Toyota Camry? Probably this morning?
