granted the 99-04 grand am's and alero's were a poor design, thats why they discontinued them so quickly. but to pick one gm car and say that the entire product family is horrible is a gross overstatement. i personally own three gm vehicles that all have over 180,000 miles on them and they run so strong i have no plans on replacing them. and from my personal and professional experience GM vehicles do require less maintenence than the majority. look at some of the other manufactorers: chrysler; major transmission issues with vehicles from the early nineties to early 2000's, the 2.7 motor is notoriours for breaking down(i have shops that do rebuilds on 7-9 a month), the track bar in the dodge trucks go out quite frequently on 98% of them. Ford; dont even get me started on ford, the explorer from conception in 94 to in my opinion 2004 was one of the most failure and accident prone vehicles ive ever seen, the focus for the first 2 or 3 years had flaws that would allow it to catch on fire for no reason. i could go on and on about each manufactor, so dont say because GM designs "crappy" vehicles thats why they are failing and that their vehicles are not reliable at all

GM's problems do not stem from poor vehicle design or poor vehicle maitenence but rather competition from mainly the asian market. look at the trends over the last 10 years and you will see a rise in asian vehicles in the US not because of build quality but because of improved fuel mileage over competing US models, lower costs which are generally associated with lower governmental regulations and non-unionized work forces. It's a major advantage when a car manufactoror doesn't have a union telling them how to run their business and forcing them to improve wages and offer more money every year.

It all boils down to over diversification and too much power and hunger from the unions