RCR: 1990 Chevrolet Lumina

[kevm14]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8RODLugezas

[kevm14]

Lol. He had a Saab so he looked to 90s GM iron for something reliable. And ended up liking it.

Now that doesn't sound familiar at all...

[kevm14]

I didn't realize the W-body was known for a large investment and poor returns. I guess that explains why in 2013, you could still buy a W-body Impala (which came with a 3.6L DI V6 with over 300hp and a 6-speed auto).

I struggled with the comment that the Lumina was the first W-body sedan. So to Wiki:

The W-body was an automobile platform from General Motors which underpinned mid-size cars with front-wheel drive. The platform, originally code named GM10, began in 1982 under Chairman Roger B. Smith and debuted in 1988 with the Pontiac Grand Prix, the Buick Regal, and the Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme coupés. Sedans followed for 1990. The engineering work was done by Chevrolet-Pontiac-Canada (CPC) group; also known as the small car division.

The platform cost $7 billion to develop and was to replace all midsize cars produced by Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and Buick. The plan was huge in scope, calling for seven plants that would each assemble 250,000 of the cars, or 21% of the total U.S. car market.[1] It was badly executed from the start, but GM’s 1984 reorganization, combined with changing market dynamics wrought havoc with the program and it never recovered. By 1989, the year before the last of the original GM10's were launched, GM was losing $2000 on every one of the cars it produced.[2]

LOL. Nice job RCR, quoting the first two paragraphs of the W-body wiki page. I think that $2000 loss thing definitely needs to be qualified. But I wonder if that means they cheapened the car. It probably does.

I also didn't realize the W-body was as "new" as it was. Coupes in 1988 and sedans in 1990. I always thought (and have said) that the W-body dated back to like 1984 or something. There are, of course, GM FWD platforms that are as old as I am remembering. And those are:
- H-body, debuting for 1986. This is the LeSabre/Bonneville platform. It is larger than the W-body. And apparently a little older. Also more premium, as it never had anything but 4-speed automatics.
- C-body, debuting for 1985 as a mostly Cadillac platform (like the incredibly common DeVille of the era), but also shared with the Buick Park Ave and Olds 98.
- K-body, which was basically just the Seville from 1980 through 1997 (and for some reason the mid 90s Sedan DeVille).
- A-body, which will be very familiar as the 1982 Celebrity/Pontiac 6000/Olds Cutlass Ciera/Buick Century. They did sell a ton of these and this did actually beat the Taurus to market by a lot.

Clearly the W-body was the lowest of these aside from the A-body, so you'd think it would have been designed to sell at the lowest price of all of these - not sure where the $2000 comes from (maybe transaction prices - couldn't compete with the Taurus/Sable?). In any event, it is clear why they were trying to consolidate FWD platforms.

On the A-body, this is interesting:

The A-body began to be phased out in favor of the GM W platform beginning in 1990, although production did not end for the platform until 1996 due to popularity of the remaining models.

It's like W-body was supposed to replace it, yet they ran the platform all the way to 1996 in the Olds Ciera which, again, was incredibly popular (fleets).

[Bob]

Those losses per car numbers are so subjective because they really depend how you allocate your development costs. It reminds me of the article that claimed the Volt cost $80k per car to make from a few years back.

[kevm14]

Well, hang on a sec. There is no way someone was making the calculation based on a $7B R&D figure - the numbers would be orders of magnitude off from the $2k per car that was quoted, especially in the first model year. More likely, the actual materials and labor used to produce the car was more than they were selling them for.

Or, the truth is somewhere between. Maybe they calculated the $7B as amortized over some standard platform lifecycle and using those numbers, they arrived at $2k when also accounting for the materials and labor to build the cars. We refer to this as non-recurring and recurring cost in my line of work...

[Bob]

Losing money based purely on direct material cost would be just plain bad, but I can see it happening in the auto industry, especially during that era.

[kevm14]

Yes I was thinking the same thing. It would be like saying, I had totally free R&D and I'm still not making money on this product.

[kevm14]

Wow, the Lumina gets not one, not two but THREE RCR videos.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6PkxPJ_01I
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=imVX-kvDG ... nRQw%3D%3D

[kevm14]

Honestly half the "weird" stuff on this car isn't really weird at all.

- The hazard switch. This goes back to the 1970s and Saginaw steering columns. My Caprice has a different switch but the same general location. For this to be perplexing you'd literally have to not have been in a GM car from the 70s through the 90s. And probably into the 2000s.

- The GM unistalk. This has been normal since the mid-80s or so. The unistalk wasn't abandoned until into the 2000s to my knowledge. Neither my CTS-V nor SRX have a unistalk. To clarify, the GM unistalk had turn signals, high beams, cruise control AND wipers all on the same stalk. My Caprice has this and it works just fine. It obviously has intermittent wiper control and even a setting for mist (turn back momentarily and it does a single wipe cycle, which I use all the time, like if something splashes on the window).

- The interior light detent on the dimmer control. I mainly see this come from import car owning people. But my Caprice, Ranger, Ram and even SRX are just like this. CTS-V, too, but the control is overhead for some reason. Anyway, it's not odd at all. It's actually a "premium" feature. The standard for imports was just a manual switch on the dome light that only controlled the dome light. That's lame. The detent on the dimmer controls ALL interior lighting, in one central place. How is that not better?

And their total perplexity of the OBD-I port...seriously guys. Don't act like you were born in the mid 90s and have never seen anything older than 1996.

GM has had this 12-pin OBD port since the early 80s. And used it through 1995. The number of cars with that port is in the multi-millions.

[kevm14]

Notice that it doesn't drive badly and spins tire with 3 people in it. Which is why a 3.1L and 4-speed in something like a Corsica was well regarded among teenagers in northern New England in the 90s. You could do a lot worse.