1999 Pontiac Grand Prix GT - Bad quality parts / components / manufacturing

1999 Pontiac Grand Prix GT - Bad quality parts / components / manufacturing

This email is being written by someone who since his first vehicle in 1985 has sworn by GM products all the way. In my mind, they were the best vehicles on the road…..until now….. I’m a Canadian, living & working in Toronto, Ontario. Please bear with the mileage being in kilometers and the dollar values being in Canadian funds. J My wife and I purchased a 1999 Pontiac Grand Prix GT 4dr in Sept 2001. At the time the car had 23,000 km on it. One could assume that the car was being turned back onto the dealer’s lot because the lease was up, or perhaps because it was a lemon. I assumed the first. Turns out I was dead wrong. Thankfully, I purchased the extended warranty which was around $800 extra, because over the next 2 years, the GM dealer poured another $1600 of work into this car in warranty work for all kinds of various things. Like any car, mine has seen some wear & tear and is now up to 143,000 km, and there’s been the usual brakes & cylinders replacements, tire changes, and all the normal tune ups & oil changes etc that go with owning a car. I have no issues with normal wear & tear problems…it’s a part of life. However, what has happened with my car in the past month, has got me thinking, I’ve purchased my very last GM car. First up was the heater transistor needed replacing, although it had been replaced not 13 months earlier. $150. Next up, the heater motor ran out of oil so it started to make a howling noise everytime someone touched the brakes. Thankfully a GM mechanic was able to force some oil back into heater motor and he did it at no charge, but put me on notice that it’s just a matter of time before the motor goes and the part itself will be $180. Next up, throughout October & November, we started to notice that everytime we had the car parked on our driveway outside and it snowed or rained, that there was water on the floor of the front passenger side of the car. Turns out there was a leak up behind the heater somewhere due to rust. $550 to plug that leak, just before Xmas. GM has been selling cars in Canada for over 80 years. You’d think they know that salt is used on the roads here in Ontario in the winter, and build a car with metal that can stand more than 5 yrs on the road. The last straw was today. I’m driving to work on a morning when it’s getting colder outside. I put my window down to have a smoke and it stops working. New electrical switch required to get the power window going. $372. Since the beginning of December, I’ve spent $1090 on items that I don’t necessarily see as “wear & tear”….not in a car that’s only got 143,000 km on it and fairly well taken care of. I could see it if this was a car with 200,000+ km that some of the things that have happened to me in the past month, would happen through wear & tear, but not on this car, not this early. In my opinion, GM has completely lost it’s focus when it comes to securing quality parts & components to build it’s cars and/or the quality of work that goes into building their vehicles is way lower than what it used to be. I’ve decided that I’m not going to be one of the people that continues to finance GM’s Quality Assurance Long Term testing program any longer, where the lucky winner gets to fork over money to fix GM’s problems, and they say thank you very much for the money and keep the data. GM’s going to have to reimburse me for all 3 of the items that happened in the past month for me to consider even looking at another GM again in the future. After each incident, I sent an email to GM on their website, documenting the problem.

After the “patch the rust box” incident, I finally got a call from a CSR at GM while I was away on vacation for Xmas. We managed to connect just after new year’s. While she was nice and quietly listened to me, there were no offers to do anything for me, only that she’d look into a few things and get back to me. She’s not gotten back to me. GM has failed on all counts in my mind. Not only do they now build a bad quality product, they do a lackluster job of backing up their product with service. These big companies with their billion+ $$ profits should be able to do better. Anyways, there’s my story. Not sure if others have run into similar problems with their Pontiac.

Don G

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