If you haven't been paying attention to the news recently, General Motors is in quite a lot of trouble after issuing a recall of over millions of different vehicles for problems like power steering failures, ignition switch failures, and a few other problems that caused a few deaths. With the government looking at how GM could not know about these problems, it seems that the Detroit automaker may not be able to survive this by asking for another bailout.
At least they did manage to pay back the government before all those recalls happened. But once the situation is over, it's highly unlikely that anyone will ever trust GM with making cars that don't have huge problems. That's a real shame because despite the huge mount of bad cars that GM built, they did make a few cars that were really great. Some may have bad reputations, and some have lasted for generations. Either way, here are five of the great cars that the Detroit automaker did right.
Pontiac Fiero - Debuting in 1984, the Fiero didn't actually go or handle like a sports car should. There was also the tenedency for the engine to catch fire. But as the years went on, a V6 was offered as well as a manual transmission. Even the steering and handling was fixed, right before GM decided to stop making it in 1988.
Pontiac Firebird - Spanning 35 years and four generations, the Firebird became one of GM's more popular muscle cars. It even became in famous in both Smokey and the Bandit and Knight Rider. Sadly in 2002, the Firebird was discontinued and the entire Pontiac brand was discontinued after the 2009 bankruptcy of GM.
Cadillac CTS-V - In the old days, Cadillacs were merely slow, bad handling limos for old people. No one would ever think that a Cadillac would hold it's own against cars from Europe. But the CTS-V should Europe that America can build cars that can actually handle. Going around Germany's Nurburgring in under eight minutes, the CTS-V became one of the first American cars to do that.
Chevrolet Corvette - Spanning over 60 years, the Corvette is older than the Ford Mustang. There may have been a few quality problems in the past, but the Corvette was still a pretty car that went really fast. It even could outrun much more expensive and powerful cars in a straight line. Now with the new Stingray, GM showed that they could build a real sports car if they really wanted to.
Chevrolet Corvair - Sure, it may have been brought down by a book, but this car became the Porsche 911 before the Porsche 911 even existed. While it was said that it could oversteer and cause a crash, the 911 and the Volskwagen Beetle had the same type of design and could oversteer exactly the same. But despite it's bad reputation, it still drove like a fun car.
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