Locate an Auto Repair Shop in Cumberland, Rhode Island

Interesting.... I have to say... his latest columns for C&D were uniformly terrible.. (I'll cut him some slack, since he is/was 80 yrs old) Didn't realize he was from Burnside, KY... (that's near Somerset and Lake Cumberland). That is one small hick place to get your start..

uplanderguy: True, but look inside a Pinto, Gremlin, Datsun B210, or Corolla of the same year and see what you got. Compare steering wheels too. That's all I'm saying. Point taken with the Gremlin - although I do like the Levi's editions - but the Pinto was FAR better than the Vega in this regard. My friend's mother had a well-optioned 1972 Pinto Runabout that was replaced by a V-6 1977 Pinto hatchback, and my aunt had a basic 1977 Pinto sedan (no hatchback). Their interiors were far better finished and constructed than any Vega interior. uplanderguy: And the engine warranty in '76 and '77 on Vega was as long as Ford and some of the others give you today. That's because GM had to offer this warranty to get anyone to even consider buying the car! The Vega had a terrible reputation by 1976, which is why GM was forced to offer this warranty. I've always said that the Vega did as much for Toyota, Honda and Nissan than they did for themselves.

uplanderguy: But, being Benz, of course, it seems like their reputation took no hit. I can't buy that. The slide in quality was reflected in survey results published in Consumer Reports and widely reported in the media. Mercedes-Benz has lost the reputation for rock-solid reliability and build quality it enjoyed through the mid-1990s. The main reason Lexus hasn't completely eaten its lunch is that a Lexus looks a like an overgrown Toyota, while a Mercedes looks like a...Mercedes. Plus, the performance and styling of the vehicles are still excellent. But even people I know who aren't that much into cars are wary of Mercedes reliability (actually, they are concerned about European cars in general). It helps that many of these cars are leased as opposed to being bought outright. Many people lease them, and turn them in as soon as the lease is up. People forget that Cadillac didn't implode over night. It had been sliding for years (since 1971, in my estimation) when the you-know-what really hit the fan in the early 1980s with the diesels, V4-6-8 engines, early versions of the 4100 V-8, and overly drastic downsizing. Not only was the reliability really bad, but the performance was pathetic, and workmanship wasn't much better than what you got in an Oldsmobile or Buick. And when a 1986 Eldorado or Seville looks like a gilded Oldsmobile Cutlass Calais...well, that is the final blow. Mercedes shot itself in the foot; GM shot Cadillac right in the heart, and then ran over the barely breathing corpse for good measure. Quite frankly, it's a miracle that Cadillac is still alive and able to build upon the foundation provided by the CTS and Escalade.

You're right - Studebaker didn't go bankrupt in the 1960s. It simply stopped making cars at South Bend in December 1963. This resulted in plenty of stories about Studebaker shutting down its main U.S. assembly plant, which gave most people the impression that the company was quitting the passenger car business completely. But Studebaker simply said that it was going to build all of its cars in Canada, and there would no major changes in the cars from this point forward. Sales dwindled to nothing, which meant that Studebaker didn't have to pay anything to the dealers, as it was still technically in the car business. It's just that few people wanted them, since they bore the "orphan" stigma, and there were no major styling changes after the 1964 model year. (And the 1964 models were hardly on the cutting edge of automotive style.) The dealers left the company on their own. They really couldn't sue Studebaker - the company was still making cars, and would happily supply the dealers with all of the cars that they wanted. The Studebaker name disappeared for good in the late 1970s, if I recall correctly. The difference between GM and Studebaker is that Studebaker left the U.S. auto market when car sales were booming - 1965 set a sales record for that time, and sales were also very good in 1963 and 1964. Studebaker just didn't share in the good times. GM went bust when car sales began tanking, even though GM had been losing money at an alarming rate since about 2001. It couldn't make money when car sales were very high, so a downturn in the market was enough to push GM over the edge.

The bullet-nose models came out in 1950. The V-8 debuted for 1951. The old plant was still in the middle of South Bend as late as 2000. I've read that the city has started to demolish parts of it.