Short story.....

Back in about 99 (junior year of highschool) I started to get heavy into GM cars. Car that sparked it honestly (even though I had the 79 forumla) was a brand new 1999 Grand Am GT my manager at work had at the time. It was black and had the chrome rims and dual exhaust. I did not know much about cars at the time...but I remember that car jumping to the top of my attainable car want list..even ahead of new Mustang's and F-body's (whose insurance I could not swing).

Anyway..I remember when I saw the interior on her Grand Am GT, I thought it was the neatest interior I had ever seen (remember it was 99 and I was just into cars)..the coolest design ever. Then I remember reading a review of the GA in a mag, and they trashed the car...especially the interior. The more I read...the more cars that I thought had cool interiors got roasted in the mags (Bonneville, Firebird, Corvette, etc). On the otherhand I remember having my 88 Turbo Coupe and it seemed to have a pretty nice interior (least for a used car).

Anyway...sorry for the story...but my basic question is...how long as GM interiors been inferior to the competition?

 

1980s.

Original "J" car to be exact. Last new car from GM that had an interior that was on par with everything else.

 

Also...I have always wondered something.

My 79 Firebird Formula had the Trans Am interior in it which had the machined metal dash, full guage package, racing looking wheel. I always thought this was one of the coolest interiors of it's time...maybe all time. Is that true or am I just being nostaligic.

For those who don't know...this is the package..

http://www11.brinkster.com/turbo301/...E_interior.JPG

 

I don't know. They might use better materials and all that jazz now but I think they have gotten just plain dull. My 95 and 92 both have great looking interiors. The 95 has a cockpit-like appearance and the 92 has a nice big flat top with good crevaces in the passenger side.
Now, it seems like every car they produce has the same boring looking interior. 2 vents integrated into a center stack, and 2 identical looking vents on both the passenger and driver side.
What they gained in materials, imo, was lost in creativeness and originality.

 

Most writers note the endless plastic as the reason for labeling them cheap.

But then again, if I wanted steel I would buy a '75 pickup.

 

GM's interiors of the 70s were pretty nice.

Take the Formula/Trans Am interior that Branden brought up. Turned-alumunum faceplate area around the guages. A seat that was very stylish and comfortable, chrome metal (!) shifter handle. Even on the automatics (which had a scooped out thumb slot to push the shifter button).

My dad still has his '78 Impala (bought new) that even though it looks a bit worn now, you still get a great feel of how it was. Thick, soft padding on the doors, a dash that doesn't look like it was either strained to look like something else, copied off of something else, or drawn by someone who spent too much time designing machinary.

The new Impala and GMT-900s seem to be getting the design & feeling back, so I guess there's hope.

 

I think early to mid '90s is when they lost it...more towards the late '90s. I too think the third gens have a great look to them, and if you look at the materials, they're really pretty good. I mean, the cloth was of higher quality than anything GM has made lately short of a G6 (witness the cloth in '96+ F bodies...that stuff is CRAP, but then again the leather is too), the dash had a nice soft feel to it, the door panels had this stuff called CLOTH on them...I mean, imagine that...

I think the height of despair in GM interior was my own Grand Am GT Branden waxed poetic about I never warmed to the design, the seats were uncomfortable and had cheap cloth, the door panels were a sea of monotone plastic, the leather steering wheels in all of them delaminate at some point, the radio volume and tuning ***** are microscopic, etc. I owned the car for a year and a half...I have not one good thing to say about the inside. It was wretched. At least the design of the GP is better looking, the seats while flat don't hit my back wrong, and the door panels have this stuff called upholstery...again, go figure.

Most '80s GM cars, while the ergonomics were kinda off compared to new cars and the durability wasn't always the greatest (warping dashboard, anyone? Sagging headliner??), at least the materials were well made and the designs typically were not offensive. I remember my mother's basic '85 Olds Calais. The cloth was nice and soft, the door panels had cloth on them, there was nice brushed aluminum trim with "Oldsmobile" in chrome letters across the dash above the glovebox...it was an inexpensive car that didn't feel cheap on the inside.

I like what I'm seeing with new interiors from GM though...a G6 blows away a Grand Am, and even the revised '06 GP. Cobalts look great too, as do the new trucks. I'm hoping the next gen GP (still pleading they don't call it G8!!!) gets the attention to detail the G6 did...

 

One more thing...the "wow" factor needs to come back, too. I remember sitting in an '89 Corvette the day my parents bought my old RS...that car had it. I sat in RP's own C6 Z06 in KY, and it was like "eh" inside. A G6 looks nicer! I was shocked that the door sill plates were the same crappy plastic found in my 5 year old GP. Even my dad's TrailBlazer has brushed-stainless-looking sill plates. And this Z06 is a $70k car?

Hey guys, keyless ignitions are cool and all, but why not give me some visual pizazz while you're at it? And no, I don't the Atari look of that C4, either

 

My 86 Lesabre had a nice interior. Those veltet like comfortable seats which were comfortable as hell and made traffic feel like nothing. Hell, come to think of it, it rode better than a new BMW (honestly didn't feel any bumps or anything) but my sister took it and killed it
Not to mention that fake-*** wood looked actually decent for the time until someone broke in and cracked the **** out of it for the stereo.

 

Seems to me GM has been known for crappy interiors about as long as people have cared about interiors. I don't know when this trend of feeling up everything on the inside of a car began....to me, if the interior is comfortable and ergonomic I'm cool with it. I don't need to run my hands over the dash and pick out the hard pieces.

 

2000

Japanese cars from the 90's are no better than GMs. I think VW raise the bar for affordable (under $25K) cars around 99/00

 

In addition to my Z28, I have a 2001 Suburban Z71. For yrs. GM used that crappy carpeting in it's car & trucks. My Suburban has really nice carpet in it. Thick & soft. I'd like it my house. They are getting better all the time. The newest car I sat in was a Cobalt SS. The design I can describe as sleek. It's not a term I'd use for GMs of the past.

 

I remember looking at my dads 87 Z28 interior as being amazing. My father kept it clean all the time, and it always looked brand new. When compared to the 83 and 84 Cutty's we had, it looks super high tech. I look at other cars from that era, and it only makes it better looking.
I did notice one thing though. I had a 95 Taurus, and when a similar year Grand Am, Grand Prix, Lumina or whatever GM car, Im amazed about how poor the interior quality is. Now, the 95 was deffinaly not luxurious, but eveything looked solid. It wasnt clutted with buttons and dials like a Boeing 707 of GM cars. The switch gear was smooth and the plastic was good for 95. I also sat in Camry's and Accords of the time, and only the Camary could match it or beat it. It flowed better and the cool 3D guages looked better.

I now sit in my Maxx, and the interior is night and day from any 03 Malibu. The blobbyness of old GM design made me wana puke. All surfaces are very smooth and flush. The switch gear is very asian in feel and opperation. No cheap clicks or clacks. No rattles over rought NJ highway. Everything holds together. And to go C&D for a little bit, the dash is very soft and smooth. It flows very well. My only gripe is the design of the center stack and lack of two tone interiors. I have sat in all new mid sized cars and Id say that the Malibu deffinatly has it over the Camry in quality of feel, but the Accord is by far the nicest looking interior of the bunch.
Id say that only a few cars remain in GM's stable that could be considerd cheap, and most of that is Pre-Lutz.

 

The 2000 Blazer I own I thought had a decent interior even though it is all plastic. My only problem is bouncing down the country roads they rattle quite a bit. I could hear a pin drop in my 05 GP, night and day difference.

Unfortunately my wife likes the size of the Blazer and thinks the Trailblazer is too big. So I'll have to deal with the rattles until GM pops out another SUV that she likes.

 

The biggest difference in the early 90s was the ergonomics - Japanese cars (especially Honda) were quite good, while many American cars still had cluster that one couldn't read through the steering wheel and crap like that. I will say that until sometime in the mid-/late-90s, that low-end Japanese cars were not "all that" in terms of quality and durability, with the exception of their switchgear which I feel was world's ahead of GM at that time.

I like the layout and appearance of my Impala's interior, but frankly the quality of materials throughout is quite horrible and probably not even suited to a child's toy. And a pox on the person who selected the vinyl for my truck's seat.

Stuff like this hurts GM far more than they want to believe, since a heck of a lot of first-time new-car buyers are coming from rather old used cars.