$50?

 

guionM I can do better than that list.

How about the rear intake manifold leak, the very placement of the engine, the thin ring lands in the pistons which causes them to crack when adding boost, the weak transmission and rear end, swaybar endlinks that are made of out plastic, the unbalanced steel drive shafts, the excessive wheelwell gap, the submarine looking T-top hatch, the plastic interior that easily scratchs, the opti, and other things I can't think of right now. Replacing a window motor doesn't even compare to the amount of effort it takes to fix most of those problems.

If evidence of past performance is a guide I think I'll just sit back and wait for the reports of problems with the new 5gens and decide after a few years goes by.

Hal

 

I don't understand why someone would want to use a car 7 to 17 years out of production to use as a comparison guide for reliability on a new car. The cars have nothing to carry over except for the name.

 

The engines have great durability if you keep them out of boost. What percentage of 4th gens ended up being boosted at one time or another? I doubt the number makes it into the double digits. While, yes, they could have used a better rings, or gapped them differently, but if it reduced the durability of the engine, it would be a bad move overall. Great for boosted folks, but bad for everyone else.

Also, the non-vented opti was the issue. In 95, when the switch was made to the vented opti, the issues were mostly taken care of. Now, most of the opti problems are with the batch of cheap Chinese optis that were sold all over eBay, for pennies on the dollar. Even some of the MSD optis were not done correctly.

Other than those two issues, I pretty much agree with the other points in your post.

 

is a gto's quality really better than a 4th gen? i never had problems with either of my 4th gens. i saw the gto and the only thing i liked about them was the seats.

 

Okay guys, before we rag on 4th gens any more, make a list of other high-performance cars that were introduced in or around 1993 for a similar price and had a significantly better track record as far as reliability/quality.

 

Why would someone bring up boosting an engine.
THEY WEREN'T DESIGNED FOR THAT!!
That could ruin any engine, for cryin' out loud!
That's not a quality issue.

NO company is going to design AND build an engine to withstand nitrous or forced induction JUST IN CASE an owner may want to do that in the future.

 

Thank you. The boosted comments made me laugh. Actually LS1s have proven to be quite receptive to boost as long as you don't overdo it. In reality, if you're looking to run over 6-8 PSI on ANY motor not originally designed for forced induction, you're begging for problems.

Same with the 10-bolt rears. Again, as long as you're not throwing super-stickies on the back and making a ton of passes with 'em, the rear end should hold up. The car was engineered fine up until the point of failure above and beyond "normal" use.

It's the other stuff like window motors and the optis on the LT1 that are maddening, because those weren't done right from the very beginning and routinely failed under normal use.

 

FWIW, my 95 Z/28 still has the opti it left the factory with.

 

Well, I know it's hopeless here. Those that believe me already do, and those that don't won't. I just want to state my case clearly. Those that want to continue an argument past this point will fall on my deaf ears.


Jason:
You would never consider previous quality as an ongoing issue??? GM certainly hasn't been winning people over with their new stuff.

And to the others that think nobody should ever boost a stock car:
Huh???? I'd expect that from some other model than the Camaro. The ring lands (not the rings) were cracking under very little boost, not a huge amount. The V8 Camaro should be able to handle higher performance enhancements without the need of a complete rebuild. There was a premium put on the price of the engine that I think was unwarranted due to it's actual quality, especially the LT1. This is more obvious now that they can make a v6 with almost the same horsepower.

With attitudes expressed by some of the so called "enthusiasts" on this board I don't see GM going out of its way to achieve any kind of status in the auto industry for quality any time soon. GM can continue to make pretty styles and colors with cheap parts and poor fit and finish and most will remain content until it falls apart.

Hal

 

I can't speak for Jason, but I wouldn't consider previous quality as an ongoing issue specific to a new generation of a vehicle wearing the same nameplate.

In saying this, I don't mean to deny that the reputation of a past vehicle has an effect on sales or stereotypes of a new one. Just that I don't think that effect is specific to the new vehicle, and therefore isn't something that can be addressed by the vehicle development team any further than ensuring that the new vehicle doesn't suffer from those issues.

GM hasn't been winning people over with their new stuff? On the contrary, I think that's exactly what they've been doing -- just slowly.

Just a couple examples... G8 is one of very few models whose sales haven't suffered (and, in fact, have grown) in the past several months. CTS and Malibu are winning awards and selling well.

 

GM knows people will boost their f-bodies/corvettes/etc. The problem with boost, based on the forced induction forum, it is addictive. You keep the boost to a reasonable level (~5 lbs), and you should have a long life out of the stock engine. But the attitude I see there is "I'll throw this turbo/super charger and rebuild it when it blows up." Plus, like I indicated, a very small % of f-bodies will go the forced induction route. It probably isn't cost feasible to build a bullet proof LT1/LS1 from the factory to handle the rigors of 6+ lbs of boost. Look at the cost of crate LS7s. Look at the S/C'd Cobra motors from a few years ago. They ain't cheap.

There are plenty of guys who have relatively stock f-bodies last more than 150K miles. There are several LS1 vettes with over 200K, and even one guy who has 300K on his car. They have bolt-ons (exhaust, CAI, etc), but they aren't digging into cam swaps, head swaps, forced induction, crazy tunes that require the use of 100+ octane fuel, etc.

Would it be nice to have a car that can handle anything you throw at it? Yes....but how much would you be willing to pay? I'm sure if the new camaro came with a completely hand built, forged/balanced/blueprinted engine, ready for 20+ lbs of boost, or a 200 shot of nitrous, the base price would make some vette shoppers cry. You gotta pay to play.

 

You can apply that to any car. You were citing specific parts of the 4th gen...T-tops, opti, 10-bolt rear end...that are not even on the 5th gen, which is what I thought were were talking about.

And no, I wouldn't call quality an ongoing issue since because as I mentioned, the only thing the two cars share is the name. There is a world of difference and many years of manufacturing technology separating them. If you want to try to predict that the car will have quality problems, again, you can do that with any car.

 

Because the car was sooo damn good that it the benchmark for performance. Almost Everything gets measured against it.

 

Ive owned 5 f bodys going back to my 71 camaro to my present 95 ta they were all fall apart leaking rattle buckets man those 2nd generation doors were[are] horrible but i loved every one of them they are america.as to loyalty rebates were giving it to them to produce these cars out of our hard earned tax dollars.the only loyalty will be felt is when you blow away the arch rival mustang.