When we asked to speak with someone higher up, we were told that we could not speak with anyone and if we wanted to proceed we needed to write a letter. This decision came from the District manager, whose name we were denied, and we are also being denied access to any and all of the records that General Motors was given. We simply received a phone call saying that we were denied of any assistance. We were then told that we would have a three way conversation with GM, Elhart and ourselves to talk about what they discovered and see if we were eligible for any assistance. This is not suppose to happen on vehicles with 78,000 miles on them. After a few more conversations with GM and Elhart Pontiac, Holland Michigan, we were told to continue to move forward with having the car repaired and to bring the transmission out to Elhart.Ĭustomer Service, at Elhart, found that a clip or a bearing had come loose and that is what caused the damage. We contacted GM to register our complaint. We immediately had the process stopped, until we could find out more information. When we told them that it was in the process of being fixed they basically told us there was nothing they could do for us because we did not bring the vehicle to them first. We called Pontiac Elhart to find out if Pontiac had a longer warranty on the transmission and they told us to bring the vehicle to them. Our 2003 Honda Civic has twice as many miles on it without any costly repairs. The cost $2500.00 on a car that we thought we could depend on. We had the vehicle towed to the closet transmission repair and they found that the transmission had such severe damage that it could not be rebuilt. A clip or bearing came loose and caused irreplaceable damage. I don’t think a manual transmission is available on a Ford F-150 pickup truck any more.We have a 2004 Pontiac Vibe that has approximately 78,000 miles on it and a few weeks ago our transmission went out. My guess is that even today, the manual transmission on many low end cars may be a step-child. These transmissions have a floor shift and were designed for the powerful engines. Of course, the heavy duty 4 speed transmissions of the 1960s and later are a different story. One popular item back in the 1960s was a floor shift conversion kit because the column shift linkages were so bad. When Pontiac introduced the manual transmisson for its 1948 model, 80% of the 1948 Pontiacs sold had the GM Hydramatic automatic transmission. The manufacturers were pushing automatic transmissions. On the other hand, my 1947 Pontiac, 1948 Dodge and 1954 Buick manual transmissions shifted very smoothly. In many cars, including my 1955 Pontiac and 1965 Rambler, the column shift linkages were terrible. The transmissions were designed in the late 1930s and hadn’t been improved for the more powerful engines. Many cars from the late 1950s through the mid 1960s had three speed manual transmissions that were troublesome. I suspect that since most cars are equipped with the automatic transmission, the manual transmission cars are omitted from the transmission category. As I remember the questionaire that I fill out from CR, the questionaire does ask whether or not the car has an automatic transmission. There used to be a category titled “Clutch” that isn’t there any more. Get a copy today.Ĭonsumer Reports hasn’t split out manual transmissions from automatic transmissions for at least ten years. I love the magazine, available everywhere magazines are sold. I have been a Subscriber for many decades. Of participants in the survey, could the folks with automatics and no major problems in that pool have blurred or skewed the entire category so that the number with manual transmissions and trouble was rendered less significant ? I don’t see any break-out of manual transmissions from the category "transmission." What’s your theory on why the repairs don’t seem to fix the problems ? What number of the owners of those vehicles took place in the survey ? What percentage of Vibes had manual transmissions compred with automatic transmissions ? Were there, in fact, 50,000 03-Vibes with manual transmissions sold ? Where are you getting these numbers from ? Would a 0.2% failure rate even register in Consumer Reports stats? " " If 0.2% of the 50,000 owners have this problem, and 25% of those 100 owners get on the internet and make a lot of noise…
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |