GM cars are notorious for (sometimes) developing strange problems that would have you think they are possessed with the devil. (Despite post-1990 GM cars being near peers to Japanese cars for reliability overall)
Mechanically they may be reliable, but 90’s GM forgot how to make paint stick to metal and had to pay to repaint a massive number of vehicles that simply pealed if parked outside for too long. How?
And there is absolutely no forgiveness in my soul for the Chevy Citation. I joked when I moved to Seattle that the main problem is since there is no salt, there are still Citations on the road and that is unnatural. Their place in the natural order is the junk yard.
I'd guess both the car and the plane owe their names to the horse.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessna_Citation_family
Those are named after a race horse. Car may also be for the race horse. Or maybe the car’s named after the plane(s).
Sure, the name is derived from "kobold", but that's like saying you should never call anything good "terrific", because it derives from the root "terror". Etymology isn't destiny.
> According to the story, when Chevrolet tried to market the Nova in Spanish-speaking countries, the car reportedly did not sell well because in Spanish, "no va" translates to "doesn't go". This led people to joke that a car named "doesn't go" wouldn’t be a popular choice.
> However, it's important to note that this is largely a myth. In reality, the Chevrolet Nova was relatively successful in Spanish-speaking markets. "Nova" as a word is understood to mean "new star" in Spanish, and it's unlikely Spanish speakers would naturally break up the term into "no" and "va", just like English speakers wouldn't naturally break up "notable" into "no" and "table".
> But the story remains popular as a cautionary tale of the consequences of not considering linguistic and cultural differences when naming products for international markets.
> Are there any good connotations of that word?
You should know what they say about the Mitsubishi Pajero, too!
Doesn't seem to affect sales, though, probably like the Chevy Nova. Those Kia are everywhere.
Of course there are: "a mention of a praiseworthy act or achievement in an official report, especially that of a member of the armed forces in wartime" Don't focus on the North American usage of "a traffic citation". Citation is almost a contranym, which is a word that has at least two meanings that are opposites of each other, i.e. bolt, bound, buckle, cleave, clip, consult, ...
Relatively famous business jet.
This was the fate of many British Leyland cars, even the ones that people genuinely liked such as as the classic Mini and the MGB were practically hygroscopic.
BMW is hyper aggressive about the brand, including going after each and every use of the brand for the original cars, even when used in the context of spare parts.
The first call to GM revealed that it was the acid rain (acid rain in the 1980s was what global warming is today -- the cause of all evil). Exposing my car to rain voided the warranty.
The second call to GM revealed that ultraviolet light destroyed the bond between the paint and the primer. Exposing my car to sunlight voided the warranty.
I spent hours researching this issue through the trade mags and published court filings. Plenty of legal findings about implied warranties of fitness for purpose. Evidently GM had an unpublished policy that it would pay the cost of a repaint to dealers for this situation, and the dealer was expected to provide the work for free.
Of course, the greasy grin of the dealer as he quoted full price while knowing he would collect the same from GM was enough to make me drive the car with no paint for the next 10 years so everyone could see, and recommend nobody purchase any GM product ever again.
I'll say this though: that primer sure prevented rust.
But based on what peeled, I’d say thermal expansion or UV damage were involved. The former could still be the primer’s “fault”.
Could be an older component stopped being available. Like when Apple switched to environmentally friendly lead free solder, but then the NVidia laptop GPUs got so hot they unsoldered themselves.
Dodge Ram Trucks had exactly the same problem. I also have no idea how two different companies with 100 years of history simply forgot how to paint cars.
American carmakers really needed that kick in the ass from Japan. Around 1990 was when my parents went from being protectionist, "buy American" to never buying another domestic car again in their lives. They were angry, angry at the reliability difference and angry knowing that domestic carmakers could have done better but instead relied on people like them to buy the flag.
Granted the traction control and anti-lock brakes occasionally fail to boot up, but it seems to be a pretty good car, but it was close to the top of the line. Gets 27 mpg which is not bad for a big ass car. I like how it has a lot of the feel of a 1970s boat but it has airbags, OBD II and most of the good features of a modern car... And we didn't need to get a loan to afford it. Driving home though I was looking in the mirror and seeing it dwarfed by today's XXL trucks and SUVs.
Like turning on the backup lights in a parking lot when the engine isn't even running.
On Consumer Reports' list of car brands by reliability[0], none of GM's brands even crack the top 10. GMC and Chevy are 20 and 21, respectively, out of 25 brands. (The top 5 include, unsurprisingly, Toyota, Lexus, and Honda—your classic reliable Japanese brands.)
[0] https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-s... (may be paywalled...?)