OT: Why are luxury GM interiors still so bad?
Sorry for the totally OT topic, but this was a topic at lunch today at the office and I've found the collectively hivemind of this board to be astonishingly knowledgable about cars.
I am no GM hater - I grew up riding in my grandmother's mid 70's Olds Ninety-Eight Regency, which had just about the coolest f'in interior of any car I've ever sat in. And for cheaper cars GM seems to have made huge strides in both materials and fit and finish; it's not a Volkswagen, but it's certainly no worse than most of the Japanese manufacturers at the same price point.
But for luxury cars . . . . woof. It's still REALLY bad. I had a chance to spend a few days in an current-model Escalade the other week, and it was brutal compared to my Mercedes. The plastics are all wrong, the switches don't have the right feel; the wood isn't as nice. Compared to the Germans, Lexus or even Genesis, GM isn't even in the ballpark on interior quality.
My question is: why? It's not really a substantive flaw, like it was 20 years ago - there aren't rattles, the materials don't fade in the sun. It feels like its an intentional decision to spend less and focus less on interior design and materials. Do Cadillac/Buick buyers not care as much about interiors? Is the supply chain different? (I find the latter hard to believe.)
It just seems weird to me - pre-malaise GM interiors were the finest in the world; GM cars are generally great products; and yet the luxury interiors are uniquely bad. There's got to be a rational explanation.
I had a chance to spend a few days in an current-model Escalade the other week, and it was brutal compared to my Mercedes.
Humble brag much?
DAMN OP, I'm impressed, excellent topic and love the way you worked the Escalade and the Benz into the thread.
I'm legitimately curious. I assume on a Michigan message board, lots of folks have nice cars and we don't need to pretend we're all driving beaters. If I were posting on RCMB I would've been more discreet.
March 16th, 2023 at 10:05 PM ^
I don't pay much attention to the interiors in my fleet of limousines. My chauffeur handles those mundane details
March 16th, 2023 at 10:23 PM ^
Never a fan of limos. My Bentley collection is perfect.
I got a Benz that I ain't even drove yet
Can't remember which house it is at
I have a mansion, forget the price
Ain’t never been there, they tell me it’s nice.
March 16th, 2023 at 10:28 PM ^
I just got me a 1987 Mercedes Benz Windshield Wiper Blade--Robin Harris.
I don't know. I drive a 10 year old Ford Fusion that reeks of cigarette smoke.
My 10 year old Fusion doesn’t smell like cigarette smoke, but the rust is starting to appear on the inside of the driver’s side front door.
I miss my titanium fusion..... she had 40k on her when she became mine.... she had 207k on her when some shithead rearended me and the insurance co. deemed her totaled.....
great riding, dependable set of wheels.
I hear you. I had a Fusion before my current Fusion. I think I had 140k on it. Loved that car. I'm sitting in traffic, we had not moved for at least a minute and some shithead rear-ended me too. Yep, write off.
March 17th, 2023 at 10:03 AM ^
I still have my 2010 Fusion Hybrid and it's been one of my favorite cars. Rust starting under the Passengers doors (which is super common apparently). 154k and it still is a great drive. Gonna miss it when it gets replaced later this Spring.
Rgard was never the same after they pulled his football scholarship for too much monkeying around…
Got fired as the MGoFrisbee Team equipment manager too...
you know the old maxim:
don’t frisbee fly
On your own supply
Too much playing in the mud.
I have a 2013 Focus ST and I still love it.
Too many buttons replaced by touch screens.
And no, I'm not a cranky old man, though I do rant like one.
I had some rental a while back where I couldn't change the volume if I was in the navigation screen. Idiotic.
Cars are the one place we should be adding tactile buttons, rather than screens you need to look at to use.
Too many buttons replaced by touch screens.
In general, yeah I hate this trend and it's one of the many reasons I will never get a Tesla. If I have to look down at a screen to adjust the temp, fan, and whatever else, I'm out.
GM has column shifter, buttons, knobs, and switches galore, plus tv for the family (with a slight mod). What's not to like?
Toyota, man. They aren't getting rid of those fat dials for a long time- they intentionally don't do crazy redesigns every year like most car manufacturers.
March 17th, 2023 at 11:31 AM ^
…and they’ve been taking every car manufacturer’s lunch money for the past 25+ years.
First day of the tourney, and this is when you want answers on this?
I think it comes down to cost. Upgrading a door skin from pleather to fine-saddle-grade leather may be $100 per door times 4 doors times 50k units per year. That is...wait for it....carry the 3....$20 million dollars. To cover that cost and retain profit, the domestics would need to charge you about $1200 for the feature. There is a metric in the auto-world that compares the options offered for the price paid by model. If you have the same options as a Lexus, but your price is higher, you lose.
I will keep out of politics, but unions raise the cost to produce higher-end vehicles and materials are an easy lever to cut costs.
Is that math?
Brian told me there would be no math on this blog!
Every supplier gets a beatdown from OEMs or Tier 1s to find ways to cut costs. Some engineering departments will trade-off quality, some won't, but the pressure to cut remains. It's one reason my spouse (quality engineer) got out of automotive.
But yes, I'd say that each brand has to figure out how much their target demographic cares about interiors (like Nickel does in the post below) and adjust their approach accordingly.
Totally agree. It's all about the dollars. They are trying to keep their profit margins healthy so if they provide premium materials and they can't charge more for it as a feature, and they must price the car in line with competitors, they lose money on the every transaction. The auto business is really, really difficult to be profitable.
I'm gonna say that people will pay a higher MSRP for foreign cars so they can afford to upgrade the interior materials accordingly.
I'm pretty sure newer model Escalade owners are primarily interested in looking good to outsiders in the school pickup / dropoff line and the Starbucks drive-thru so it makes sense that GM wouldn't focus on the interior.
I was in an Uber the other day and talking to the driver about cars. He was driving a 2016 CR-V, but told me that what he really wanted was an Escalade. I asked him why and he laughed and said he didn't know, it just looked good. Curb appeal is the *only* reason to buy an Escalade.
My father has an XT5 and the interiors are great. Definitely better than my Acura RX interior.
To each their own I guess
I've never seen the inside of a general manager, I'd defer to the MGoSurgeons on this one
I drive an Aviator, the interior is awesome.
what's even funnier is that a Cadillac ad is running on these thread
It’s because GM shares as many parts as possible with their cheap modes to keep costs down. Cadillacs used to be the exception but not anymore. This is how they killed Saab after acquiring it (and Pontiac and pretty much every other brand).
BMWs and Mercedes will also share parts in their lineups but since all they make is high-end stuff, they can really focus on that. They have scales of economy working in their favor. For a Cadillac to match German luxury quality, they would have to spend much more.
You mention Lexus as being a step up but I disagree with that. They have the same problem as GM: a Lexus is a Toyota with lipstick on it. The Germans have everyone beat by a large margin.
Agreed re: the lower level Lexus, but I had a chance to ride in an LS and it was legitimately nice - a little dated, because it was a 2018 design and 5 years is an eternity in interiors these days - but not obviously from the Toyota catalog and expensive-feeling materials.
I have a Denali duramax. I love my interior. It's on the same level as my old BMW but not as nice as the wife's old Lexus or range rover which seems fitting.
Lifted, chipped, and with radar deflecting skin around it. It is one cool truck.
Username doesn’t check out.
I never said they were in my possession legally.
I do not have experience with car interiors, but I used to be an automotive paint chemist specifically supporting GM plants and I may be able to offer some insight that you can speculate on. Keep in mind I haven't worked for that supplier in over 5 years, so the culture at GM may have changed since then.
1. GM will have you run every test under the sun, whether it's relevant or not, because that's how it's always been done. Product changes and improvements can be slow because much of your time and energy is wrapped up in extraneous testing (though I will say this is better than the Tesla philosophy which doesn't care enough about quality/safety). Example: on some vehicles, the windshield urethane bead does not come into contact with painted parts, but you still must pass adhesion requirements. This isn't difficult, but the samples are a pain in the ass to produce and they make you send out to a particular lab to run the test which costs time and money.
2. Cutting costs is very important to GM, same with any other OEM, but they're particularly silly about it in my experience. An example I recall is that we were not meeting the appearance specification for our clearcoat because the plant decided to save money by reducing the film thickness below the minimum spec that they wrote to reduce material consumption. This ended in a stalemate where the vertical painted parts on a line of their luxury sports cars looked way worse than it needed to, but they saved a couple of bucks per unit.
German esthetics. They're just different than American or Japanese (or now Korean) esthetics. Even Volkswagens have a refined simplicity that I haven't found in non-German cars. I would guess some people prefer Japanese or American over German. I personally like the German thing.
Wendy - I've definitely been partial to European cars for the vast majority of my adult life. And, of the three cars we have today - two are German. I like the functionality - and, in a way - simplicity of the design. In an Audi - the MMI interface helps control a LOT - and, I like how its designed.
And - if you're a fan of all wheel drive - the Audi Quattro and Subaru drivetrains are the best in the market.
maybe because they lack
March 16th, 2023 at 10:35 PM ^
In my mind, I remembered Ricardo Montalban saying "rich" Corinthian leather.
see the Chameleon XLE
