Yeah... Well, my Chevrolet Suburban is a piece of crap.
1. The spare tire ended up seized to the vehicle due to poor design allowing road salt to corrode and rust the fasteners. CowGirl was stuck by the side of the road with kids in the vehicle and a tow truck driver that spent over an hour trying to get the spare off. He eventually gave up. Good thing it was summer so they didn't freeze to death.
2. I've had my brakes done every year. They get a horrible warp in them constantly, and I've had five brake jobs in four years. The dealership keeps asking me how we drive, and I keep saying normal. Seriously, this is the only car I've ever had where the rotors even warp to begin with, leave be within a year of getting them installed. But you know, it's my fault, not the shoddy design on GM brakes (go ahead, look up the class action lawsuits against Chevrolet for their brakes).
3. My power seat has never worked quite right, even after having it serviced three times. GM can't do electrical worth beans.
4. I've had my brakes actually freeze shut the first year we owned it. Of course, you get it towed on a dolly to the dealership, then they bring it inside and let it sit to warm up so they don't freeze their hands working on it, then the brakes work fine. It's weird seeing a Suburban with its rear tires not moving and its front tires doing all the work, given that a Suburban is a rear-wheel-drive / four-wheel-drive vehicle.
5. When a few light bulbs in the dash stopped working, the ones illuminating the heater controls, they couldn't replace the light bulbs. The design is so bad they had to replace the entire heater control box, something like twelve hundred dollars according to the bill. Good thing that got done under warranty.
6. Constant rattling from the pedal assembly during driving. Now, I have a movable pedal assembly so that the gas and brake pedals can be moved closer or further away from the driver for more comfortable driving (a boon with CowGirl and I being a foot apart in height), and I know that assembly needs to be movable. But really, does it have to rattle? Apparently, it does.
7. Chevrolet dealerships don't even follow the manufacturer's guidelines for servicing. One time I phoned up the dealership and asked for the 100k service. They said, "What?". So I read them all the things that are supposed to happen at 100k from the book, and they said it'd be about two thousand dollars. TWO THOUSAND for a SERVICE. Then they suggested I just do their $99 annual inspection and see if that found any problems. Compare that to my Suzuki experience, where they knew exactly what needed to be done with each service and actually had a price posted for each of the different services, depending on the time it would take to do the service!
And after all that I still love driving it, especially in these conditions, especially filled with people and their gear.
And I'm not bitching about my Volvo not being ready for winter because I knew it wasn't ready - it needs the block heater plug fixed, new tires, and hatch supports. But at the moment we're spending more than we make, as CowGirl is going back to school and not working for that time.
