Walter Raulerson

That's a great response as long as the car isn't YOURS

Bill Dearborn

From what I have seen the American Manufacturers do pretty well in the overall car market from a reliability/durability standpoint. I don't know of any manufacturer that covers a repair outside of the warranty period unless they decide to do a Goodwill Warranty replacement and that depends on the individual situation. I don't know if they still do it or not but I personally know that GM has previously had unannounced warranties on various models/engines. Case in point. A friend who I used to car pool to work with had a 1975 Vega with the aluminum engine that went bad so often. One day he called me over to his house and he had pulled the engine and disassembled it to see why it was using so much oil. It was lying on the floor in parts. The cylinder walls had hundreds of vertical grooves on them and it was obvious the block was shot. I told him that I had heard GM was providing warranty coverage for these engines outside of the normal 12 month/12K mile warranty period so he put the parts in a couple of bushel baskets and threw them in the trunk and had the car towed to the local dealer. They replaced the engine under warranty along with a fix that kept the problem from happening again and then told him the two front fenders and front panel between the fenders was covered under another warranty and replaced those parts as well. He pretty much had a new car when he drove it out of the dealership. The Vega was known as being a dog unless you knew about the warranty. Then you could go purchase a used one with a bad engine for a cheap price and have it made good as new by GM. A number of people I knew did this. It was a great way to provide yourself with a cheap winter beater that had a new engine and body panels.

Bill