Quoted For Truth.

 

haha. QFT!

 

arrogant dealers, and ****-poor customer and dealer service +1

 

I think that has a lot more to do with it then people realize. All of the fringe car companies decided to make their econoboxes more than just econoboxes. The market hasn't gotten much bigger, but thier are a lot more options.

Thats also another reason why you can't blame "import buyers" its just as Un-American to ask people to do something other than whatever the hell they want, as it is to buy a foreign car.

 

That makes sense, but to a great degree these companies were only able to establish themselves in the market because GM wasn't providing enough product differentiation.

That happened two ways -- first everyone started to see through the "brand jobs", especially in the 70s and 80s, and the perception was that GM built 4 of the same car.

And second, GM themselves compressed their line so that Chevy had upmarket models, Cadillac had downmarket models, and Buick/Olds were caught in the middle. That left room for imports on either end of the spectrum to get established.