That particular car has been around a fairly technical road course and after a few laps with one driver had to be cooled down because the brakes and rotors were literally smoking. I suspect he was riding the brakes but at any rate that's abuse that led to warping, not any defect on the part of the car (or the manufacturer).

 

That's my point. That car was abused, and any car tested by magazines is going to show accelerated wear. What it can show is over the years, the CTS interior may wear faster than an Acura. The thing to do is look at the tests from magazines, and then, most preferably, find out from real owners of the cars. Based on research, you can make any car as reliable, or as much of a POS as you want.

 

I have had my GTO brand new since 2005. I have about 31k miles on it at the moment and nothing mechanical has failed. However, GTOs are notorious for having paint issues. The paint is too thin and easily flakes off from normal road debris. I do have one paint bubble on the silver part of the steering wheel, but that is the only problem I have had in my goat. The '04s had the most problems because of the car's computer.

All in all, the GTO was a great purchase for me and is holding up very well.

 

It currently has around 48,xxx on it. I will drive it more this year now that the house purchase is done. I bought it summer of 06 with 24K.


My Pulse Red paint SUCKS! The guy who had it for 18 months (lease) did not care for it much Interior was clean but the outside had NO wax on it and it seems acid rain got to the roof and trunk lid.

We've re-painted the front half and I've spent hours buffing and waxing the rest of the car, it has a really nice shine to it now and spends most it's time under a car cover, but I have never had a car that scratches so easily Mine is chipped up in the front wheel wells alot and I have a bra for trips but none the less it's got chips and damage from acid rain. It looks better then most though and 99% of people dont notice.

I did realize the leather stitching on the top of one of my rear seats was pulling apart. I dont know if the sun warped it or something.

 

Must be a Holden thing ... there's lot of complaints on the G8 boards of paint chipping and scratching easily. Fortunately mine's been good so far.

 

I had 0 issues with my 06 Cobalt in the 2 years I had it. Interior, exterior, powertrain, etc were solid from 5 miles to 25,000 miles on the odometer. I just didnt like the cheap cloth material on the door panels. I drove it hard with many a powershift being performed and often at that. My 08 Malibu has been the same. Flawless inside and out with all systems functioning perfectly but its only been not even 9500 miles on the odometer and 13 months of ownership. I love the car and the only things stopping me from buying at the end of my lease term is lack of a 3rd pedal and no bluetooth connectivity. I'm leaning toward replacing the 'bu with a manual tranny Cruze 26 months from now and a 5th gen not long thereafter to join the Cruze and my 4th gen. I am however dissapointed with the CTS results from earlier in the thread; not too promising of a notion.

 

I'm putting about 1K a week on my G8 GT, I now have over 32K on the clock and everything seems OK...

I am however dissapointed in the paint quality...

 

Seriously? A VW fanboy has no business badmouthing GM on interioir quality. Try to find one average millage VW that doesn't have a an interior that looks likes it been through a world war.

 

i assume im not only one that owns a third gen camaro here. seems GM hasn't learned from some past mistakes. all of the interior switches on the third gen camaro have similar painted pictures/logos on them. all of them, each and every single one of them have worn off. you would think that GM would have learned something since then. despite the flaws of the third gen camaro, i still love them. i can honestly say though, as far as long time reliability GM has usually hit the "nail on the head". my 89 camaro has 172K on the original 305 and trans, as much as a drive it hard it has never failed me. sometimes i wish it would fail so i could have an excuse to drop in a more powerful 350. my 91 cavalier also has many interior issues but is also a very dependable car, despite being almost 20 years old with 142K+ on it. its dog slow but continues to run dependably with little major issues. i dont know if newer GM cars are as indestructible(have never owned a newer car), but as far as their older models go, they are rock solid dependable(and cheap to fix when something does break). the interiors suck, but i can put up with that.

 

You should go sit in a new VW. The interior is typical european - solid. And I'm not a VW fan at all.

 

My 06 Audi A4's interior was VERY well put together with very nice materials... far better than my 335i and in some ways better than my GS400.

With that said, the issue Audi/VW has seems to be with those interiors lasting into higher mileages. I only had that car for 28k miles. It was already developing a few noises that shouldn't have been there and had a couple small areas of paint coming off... if it was going to be anything like other VW/Audis I've seen in the past then by 100k miles that interior was going to be in pretty sad shape.

 

I haven't been watching their other vehicles too closely (actually I think most of the ones I mentioned in my original post are now gone from their test fleet or were already gone at that time).

But their CTS continues to have bundles of problems.

http://blogs.edmunds.com/roadtests/2...aler.html#more

My desire to own a CTS has gone down dramatically after reading about all of these issues. I fell in love with the car based on the interior design alone but it seems, at least in Edmunds' case, it's all superficial quality.

JD Power's quality reports seem to agree... they say the CTS is of average quality overall.

This also makes me wary to consider the new Buick LaCrosse when it comes out.

I've had a ton of problems with my 335i but those haven't bothered me TOO much just because it's a lease. My next car I intend to own for a LONG time and would like to feel like I can depend on it to be reliable.

I'm really going to have to think long and hard about whether I can trust GM with 30 grand for a relatively unknown untested car like the LaCrosse.

 

Don't believe me, try this:
pull up a Honda Accord (EX-Auto), click on specs, then click on true cost of ownership. Pay attention to the 'repair costs' part of their "TCO". Repeat for the Camry (LE-Auto), and now the Malibu (LT1-Auto). 2009 numbers are this:

Year 1:
Accord: $0
Camry: $0
Malibu: $0

Year 2:
Accord: $0
Camry: $0
Malibu: $0

Year 3:
Accord: $99
Camry: $0
Malibu: $111

Year 4:
Accord: $238
Camry: $238
Malibu: $262

Year 5:
Accord: $346
Camry: $346
Malibu: $382

Total:
Accord: $683
Camry: $584
Malibu: $755

Now, ask yourself this: how did Edmunds supposedly run up $755 in REPAIR costs on a vehicle that has a 5-year, 100,000 mile warranty? Average mileage for a vehicle is 15k-18k/yr -> after 5 years, this vehicle should have (at the high side) around 90,000 miles. They supposedly started incurring repair costs in year 3 under their True Cost to Own tables! Really?! If any repairs were needed on the car, wouldn't GM be handling that for free under their warranty? It's not like the 5yr/100k warranty is new - GM's had it out on their vehicles for 3 model years (4 if you include the 2010's). Makes you wonder how thorough they are on the rest of their numbers if their TCO numbers cannot accomodate a 3 (or 4) year old warranty program on what would be the world's largest auto manufacturer (during that same time period).

Special note that "Maintenance" has it's own seperate category under the "True Cost to Own" calculation.

 

The 5/100k warranty only applies to the powertrain. It's very limited. The "bumper to bumper" warranty on a Malibu is only 36k miles.

So, when the A/C pump on your Malibu with 36,378 miles on it stops working, you the customer are paying to replace it. Or when a light burns out on the radio, or when it throws an airbag fault, or a seat heater dies, etc etc, that's all yours to deal with at full price.

And even before the warranty is up there is some validity in reporting the dollar value of warranty claims as "cost of ownership" even though the costs aren't passed on to the owner/customer. There's a price on convenience, and when your transmission locks out all but 2nd gear because of a failed solenoid at 18,736 miles while you're traveling offsite for work on a Wednesday afternoon...There is an associated price even though it may not be the actual cost of warranty repairs.

 

Bumper-to-bumpter runs 3yr/36k. You really think that you'll incur $755 non-powertrain repairs in years 4 and 5? I'd believe it back in the late eighties/early nineties - but as an owner of an '03 Suburban (65,xxx miles), '04 Malibu (70,xxx) and '06 G6 (88,xxx), I have a hard time believing an AVERAGE person would run up $800 in non-maintenance, non-powertrain repairs in just those two years.