The year 1955 was a major change form previous years. Pontiac and Chevy had new bodies, new chassis, and new engines; the 265 cu inch V8.
Any all new car has teething problems that take some time to sort out; the 1957 Chevy was actually a good car!
@Docnick The 1955 Pontiac and the 1955 Chevrolet engines were completely different. The 1955 Pontiac V8 displaced 287 cu in. By 1957 Pontiac had the bugs out of the engine and 1957 Pontiacs were winning stock car races. The 1955 Chevrolet V8 had some problems in the beginning as well, but as you indicated, the 1957 Chevrolet was great.
Back in the 1950s, each division of GM had its own engine. That changed in 1977 when the Chevrolet V8 engines were being installed in some Oldsmobiles and the buyers weren’t being told about the switch.
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As far as talking to mechanics: I think they are very useful for knowing what problem areas they see in certain models. Otherwise, they are seeing a biased sample of cars. That is, they are only seeing the ones needing repairs. Or, they only see Nissans, for example. They are not getting randomized samples, or double-blind studies. Of course, if I owned a Toyota, I would want a mechanic who knew Toyotas extremely well.
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Exactly, mechanics don’t have info about the frequency of problems - how many per thousand cars.
True…they don’t…however they do see patterns in problems. Friend in Central NY use to own a Pontiac/GMC and Nissan dealership…Now it’s just GMC truck and Nissan . His dealership saw a big up-tick in faulty intake manifolds many years back. So much so he had to hire an extra mechanic to keep up. He saw the same thing with with early Nissan CVT failures.
When I bought my Highlander I also looked at the new Pathfinder. I asked a trusted transmission shop I’ve done business with about the Nissan CVT’s. His shop is big (10+ bays). He does a lot of work for the local dealerships. On that particular day he had at least 3 Nissan CVT’s in his shop being replaced or repaired. Told me to stay away from them for a few years until Nissan can get the kinks out.
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@MikeInNH Thank you for saying what I was trying to express. Mechanics do see trouble areas in a particular make of vehicle. These mechanics can tell you how hard it is to make a repair on a particular vehicle.
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I did a short stint with an independent. He was older and is top tier. He included model and year trouble areas as part of his diagnostics. But if you asked him what the best or worst car eas, his response was always “they’re all junk”.
There are two things that need to be said. First, Japan had a reputation for shoddy products before WW2. After the war, the government set up a commission to provide export licenses only for products of proven high quality. First I heard about this was when Japanese business visitors were asking me where to buy Japanese cameras. I asked why not just buy them at home? They said not the same quality. Second, I worked in engineering for Clevite, a major manufacturer of auto engine bearings. Our tolerance on bearing thickness was 0.001 inches. When the Japanese imports came along, we were told that their tolerance was 0.0001 inches and we were going to have to change all our machinery, materials, processes, and measuring equipment to play catch up, and that took a lot of years.
Good point, JT. My observation is this:
- When a Chrysler part fails due to an inherent weakness (design flaw) and you go to get another one, they sell you the same part with the same flaw.
- When a Toyota part fails due to an inherent weakness and go to get another one, they sell you a new, improved part that has been strengthened at the point of failure.
The scheme adopted by Chrysler, Ford, and GM (and other including Toyota–no one’s perfect) is responsible for the success of Dorman Products, a company that specializes in re-engineering and producing only parts with inherent flaws.
And you can blame Japanese quality improvements on a guy hired by General Douglas MacArthur, who wanted to rebuild the Japanese economy as a democracy… He referred William Edwards Deming a statistical and quality control expert to the Japanese.
See this place… W. Edwards Deming - Wikipedia
Back in the spring of 1971, we test drove a 1968 Toyota. I don’t remember what model it was. I was impressed by how well everything fit and how quiet it was for a four cylinder. I was not impressed by its two speed automatic transmission. We also drove a new Datsun 510 that day and a new Chevrolet Vega. The feel of quality of the Toyota was better than the Datsun and certainly better than the Vega even though the Toyota was three years old at the time.
That was 50 years ago and I remember thinking at the time that if Toyota keeps up the quality and installs a better transmission than the two speed automatic, Toyota would have a great product. Fifty years later, I am driving Toyota products.
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Saw a Model T Ford on the road yesterday, seems like pretty good longevity to me.
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Nothing against the whole TQM (Total Quality Management) movement, but man a lot of meetings and manuals. In the non production environment anyway, most of what folks came up with could have been done by a good systems analyst and a manager interested in efficiency. Now in a manufacturing environment where you have to study failures and back to the proximate cause, you need more people involved.
One interesting aspect though is designing products to meet the intended use. Not over-designing or engineering if it is not wanted by the customer but getting it just right. So when you think about it, people trade cars within ten years mainly, so should it be designed to go 30 years trouble free? Or is that excess engineering not really wanted or needed by the primary customer. Sure Model T still running (with some help over the years) but who wants a Model T for a daily driver? I have to admit that one guy in the truck plant drove his Model T or A every day to work, winter and summer.
Just saying that part longevity and reliability is just one aspect of bringing a product to market. All kinds of other issues like color, design, fabrics, intuitive controls and so on. But one important thing to me is how the wife gets treated at a dealership. Does she feel comfortable with the service or sales staff or do I have to worry that she’ll be taken advantage of? I think this is one area that Toyota really needs to work on, but I’ve never owned one.
Lecture over.
The 1972 Corolla with automatic transmission our family had for 16 years and ~165k miles proved surprisingly trouble free.
The transmission remained trouble free. Aside from standard maintenance the only repairs ever needed were wheel bearings on one wheel and later a cylinder job after I fried three cylinders with daily commutes running at 70 mph on the interstate. Keep in mind (which I failed to do at the time) that Toys of that era weren’t designed to be driven that fast and hard nor expected to last that many years and miles.
Body rust was a different matter. By the time we sold it the back quarter panels were about 80% Bondo and spray paint. Amazingly though the frame and brake lines weren’t badly rusted, probably because Dad had it undercoated several times over the years.
The seals around the door windows were so dried out that wind ruffled my hair even when the windows were cranked shut. The rear window defroster had long since worn out. But those would have as easily worn with age on any vehicle.
At the time of purchase my parents test drove the budget trim cars of Chevy and Ford, a VW Beetle, and a Mazda with a Wankel rotary 3-cyl engine. The Corolla won out hands down.
Despite the popularity of VW Beetles, I always thought them a miserable, noisy vehicle to ride in. I was quite relieved when my mom absolutely nixed the Bug from the list after one test drive.
Although I liked my 1987 Olds Ciera enough to drive it 20 years it always had a ton of problems, especially the transmission, from the beginning. Even worse was the 2007 Impala. Both had very, very thick service files by only a couple years old. So when I decided to ditch the Impala hanger queen I reverted to a Toyota and have been delighted to have a trouble free car.
The initial hassle over the torque converter turned out to simply need the software update. But I had to escalate to corporate and the zone rep to get the dealership to flash the update under warranty. So as earlier noted in the discussion thread, the car has proven good but the dealer service department lousy.
In '81, I bought my first–and probably my last–Chevy. A new innovation at the time was to include a couple of sheets of gummed labels, preprinted with the VIN, in order to speed-up the intake process when the car came in for warranty-related repairs.
I don’t recall the exact number of labels that were provided, but my estimate is that something on the order of 20 labels were included with the maintenance schedule. Within the first two years, every one of those labels had been used-up, and the service manager used to grumble about having to hand-print the VIN on every service order when I came in for yet another warranty-related problem.
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The Toyota service department at our local dealer seems to be competent. If my wife takes the car to be serviced, she is treated courteously and isn’t talked down to as some service areas do to women.
The Chevrolet dealer was also courteous when I had a Chevrolet Uplander. When I bought the Uplander, I was assigned to a female service writer who was quite knowledgeable. The Uplander had a bumpy feeling in the steering gear which the service writer explained was the intermediate steering shaft. She had the technician shoot a little lubrication into the joint and then ordered a new shaft. This was while the Uplander was on warranty. She explained that the joint on the shaft was like a rotator cuff. I couldn’t resist. Mrs. Triedaq had just had rotator cuff surgery. I told the service writer that the problem was caused by my wife driving the Uplander before she had the surgery and the Uplander had caught the problem from my wife.
When the female service writer left, I was assigned to a man who was taking night courses at the university where I was teaching. When I would bring the Uplander in for servicing, he would come into the waiting room between customer and talk about the courses he was taking. If Chevrolet still made minivans, I would have bought another Uplander.
I guess I have been fortunate in having traded with a couple of dealers who are competent and respectful.
The Chevy service department at the dealer where I bought the Impala was very good to work with. Admittedly, there was one service writer who was an idiot… courteous but still an idiot that I avoided. However the other service writers had some real mechanical knowledge. My favorite was a woman who came from a family of auto mechanics and had worked as one herself for several years. She went on test rides with me, listened to the car, felt what it was doing, and did a great job of writing service tickets that accurately explained the problems. And the mechanics there often took the time to explain to me what the problem turned out to be.
I looked seriously at getting another Chevy or a Buick to replace the Impala. But 27 years of endless problems with my two GM cars plus my parents even worse problems for 25 years with an Olds made me decide to go with my Camry.
Original and unrestored? I don’t think so.
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Remembering probably a 70’s corolla a bud had, going through hilly terrain had to floor it downhill to get as fast as he could to get uphill. Like some comedian said the brakes were not so good so if you have to stop fast turn on the AC 
He must have learned that technique with a VW beetle.
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