Back quite some years ago I bought a new Corvette from a Chevy dealer. It had an unusual 5 yr 50,000 warrantee. After about a year I was driving on the freeway and heard a noise from under the hood. I didn’t know what it was, but it sounded like the valve pushrods were making excessive noise. I was near a Chevrolet dealer in Monterey Park where I lived so I pulled off and drove there. I didn’t notice anything wrong driving there, but wanted to be sure everything was OK.

I don’t remember how many miles the car had on it, but it had to be less than 25,000 miles. Probably much less. I asked the dealer to check out the car and call me and I would determine if I wanted them to fix it if there was anything wrong. They never called. I called them everyday for over two weeks and always the same answer - that they were still trying to find out what was wrong. It was a real inconvenience to me as I was going to school and working so I really needed my car.

Finally I was fed up with their same lame excuses so I went there to get my car and take it somewhere else. When I arrived there ( I didn’t tell them I was coming) I found the hood open and the intake manifold off. Possibly an hour’s worth of work at max. I was furious and had them put it back on so I could take my car to another Chevy dealer to have it checked out. They did reluctantly. However the car would not start and they could not get it started. I was really upset and called a tow truck and had them tow it to another Chevy dealer a few miles away in Alhambra.

To make a long story short they eventually “fixed” it. I never got a clear answer what was wrong, if anything, but they charged me $600+ and told me the factory warrantee would not cover it. I never found out exactly what was wrong so I contacted GM to find out why the warrantee did not cover their work. I was told I had to work it out between dealers because each dealer claimed the other caused the problem. I tried, but to no avail. Sure enough the second dealer who fixed it claimed the first dealer messed it up. The first dealer claimed the second dealer messed it up. The dealer who supposedly fixed my car would not give me a refund. My Corvette never ran right after that. In fact, because of that, I checked out the spark plugs as soon as I got home and noticed they had put in old plugs when I had just installed new cooler plugs a couple of weeks before I had driven to that first dealer. This made me even more upset, knowing they put in old plugs in my car and never really explained what they did to my car.

After a few more months or so I finally decided to let my brother trade in that Vette for a new car for him. That way it was easy to get rid of it. It never ran well after it was returned from the Chevy dealer who supposedly fixed it. I had another older 63 Stingray Corvette that I eventually kept for another 9 years. I never had any problems with that one.

General Motors lost a good customer. I had bought several new cars from them and had intended to buy more. It never happened. Over the years I did buy some used GM cars, but never one from a dealer and never a new GM built car since then. If GM had at least honored their warrantee or given me some satisfaction they could have had my business for years. It was not the car, but the idea of cheating me and the manufacture not giving me any satisfaction. I currently have a Corvette now and I have no qualms about the car.

I wonder if thats how GM or their dealers operate now. If so, no wonder GM is going down the tubes. I lost my confidence with them many years ago.