A Letter to General Motors
A Letter to General Motors
Concerning its Over-Designed, Over-Engineered, and Over-Priced Pickup Trucks
Dear GM:
My 22-year-old Silverado has been a pretty good truck. It’s got the 305 under the hood, which goes and goes and goes provided I have it hooked up to an IV drip filled with 5W-30 full synthetic motor oil. The blue smoke it blows when I crank it up is more amusing than annoying. The truck’s got close to 280,000 miles on it, which is typical of the vehicles I own.
I very much appreciate that I’ve been able to do many of the routine repairs my truck has needed. Off the top of my head I can recall replacing, in recent years, the alternator, the starter, the water pump, the tailgate latch (x3), the front passenger-side door latch, brake pads, plugs, plug wires, and coils. I appreciate that, 22 years ago, the engineers had not entirely forgotten about accessibility. I don’t blame them for my not being able to change out the four-wheel-drive actuator when it went bad about 10,000 miles ago. That’s above my pay grade and exceeds my capabilities, not to mention my tools and work space.
The radio won’t shut off, but that’s not really a problem. I just turn the volume all the way down. I could get another one at a local salvage yard, but what would be the point of that? You don’t get your grandma a facelift for her 100th birthday.
The check engine light has been on since I don’t know when, but check engine lights, like tire pressure lights (also on), are, in my view, about as trustworthy as all of our major institutions, up to and including the New York Times and the federal government. I ignore the lights and the institutions and encourage others to do the same.
My fuel line sprang a leak a few years ago—right at a bend in the line, of course—so I very carefully sawed the line in two places about ten inches apart (please, God! No sparks!) and spliced the line with a high-pressure flexible fuel hose held in place with high-pressure clamps. No problems since. I don’t begrudge the repair. Fuel lines and brake lines, like all sublunary things, are mutable. I myself am mutable.
This reminds me. I should probably replace that section of flexible hose. It too breaks down over time, though my general rule is that if you go looking for trouble you’ll find it. So try not to go looking if you can help it.
Sometimes my fuel gauge stops working, and so I have to set the trip odometer to keep track of miles and make sure I don’t run out of gas. But, as like as not, the offending gremlin that causes this problem will, in short order, lose interest and take a vacation, whereupon the fuel gauge will start working again. Mostly it works. I’m grateful for this. I like it when things that are supposed to work work.
As much as I like the ignition system on this truck, I like the drivetrain even more. This is one good drivetrain. Don’t make it worse by trying to improve it.
All in all I’m happy with my Silverado. I’m still driving it. I trust it to get me to my cabin and the trout streams nearby. I trust it to haul my livestock trailer when it’s time to take my lambs and hogs to slaughter.
But because you have refused to fix the rust problems in your products—and I don’t only mean the rocker panels on your pickups—I’m going to have to replace this truck pretty soon. I suppose I should mention in passing that this Silverado replaced an ’83 Dodge Ram (4-speed manual with the old slant six) that I sold sometime around its 33rd birthday. (I paid $2,600 for it in ’88 and got $1,300 for it in 2016.) It wasn’t the truck this Silverado is, but, you know, 33 > 22, and I’d be surprised if I can get $1,300 for the Silverado. Because of the rust problem you’ve refuse to fix there isn’t as much of it as there used to be.
So I wonder if I could make a request or two, because as I look around for my truck’s successor, all I see are overdesigned trucks that cost way too much money. These trucks are loaded with accessories that I’m pretty sure no one actually wants, no one actually asked for, and no one can actually work on. I certainly don’t want them. My old Dodge had an engine cavity I could crawl into and take a nap in. That’s a feature many of us might pay extra for by now, what with all the unnecessary stuff that’s crammed under the hoods these days.
Of a dashboard I ask very little. I want a speedometer, an odometer, and a tachometer. I want a temperature gauge (not a light), a gas gauge, and an oil pressure gauge. I also welcome something telling me that a little more than 12 volts are being returned to my battery as I drive the truck. But you can keep your tire-pressure lights and censors. Admit it: those censors were a terrible idea from the start. I say nothing of what a scam the whole Tire Pressure Monitoring System is. Ninety-nine per cent of the time a tire-pressure light goes on the tires are fine and the censors are failing. And why wouldn’t they, given the harsh environment these delicate, useless, but of course expensive devices have to survive in? You know how we survived before they were invented? They weren’t necessary; no one needed them. That’s how. This is a lesson you might have learned from cell phones, DoorDash, TikTok, and “martinis” made with vodka.
Same goes for your fasten seat-belt lights. I know whether I’m wearing my seatbelt. Mostly I’m not, and it’s no one’s business but my own that I’m not.
If you insist on putting an AM-FM radio in the dash, fine. But I cannot take seriously anything named Sirius—unless it’s the actual star in Canis Major—so please eliminate that from the list of things you intend to charge me for.
I have some trailers that I haul behind my truck, but I have a technology for backing the truck up to these trailers when it’s time to join the two together. That technology is called human know-how. Skill. So you can keep your back-up cameras. I think that, in general, it is a bad idea to have a TV screen on the dash. I marvel that your engineers and lawyers do not agree.
As for the whole dash: hinge it at the bottom and put some wing nuts on the top. When the heater core goes out, I’ll just loosen the wing nuts, fold the dash down, and quickly replace the broken part. This removing the whole dash to get to the heater core looks like a scheme to separate a man from his money.
Please bring back the triangular vent windows in front. Don’t give them electric motors. I can manipulate the latches with a technology known as my hand. The vent windows, when partially opened, are good for drawing cigar smoke away from me and out the window, to be enjoyed by motorists behind me who have the good sense to drive with their windows down. Vent windows are also good, when fully open, for sending outside air directly at me. Those vents under the dash that also did this? I like those too. They cool a man’s sweaty crotch on hot summer days. While you’re down there (under the dash, not in the sweaty crotch zone) you can install the old dimmer switch, which was operated by the driver’s left foot. These, when they failed, were easy to replace. The ones on the steering column are not.
Don’t give me the expensive option of high beams that turn off automatically when another vehicle is approaching me in the oncoming lane. I know how to dim my high beams.
Same goes for cruise. No real pickup truck driver wants radar-activated cruise control. He is not wearing work boots and headed toward a dive bar because he is incapable of performing basic tasks.
The motors in your electric windows are famous for failing. Make better ones or give me crank windows.
I don’t mind the feature that gives me the outdoor temperature. That’s actually useful. But I’m pretty good at detecting wet or snowy conditions, so don’t give me any dashboard indicators that do nothing more that reveal what is obvious to anyone equipped with the normal sense-perceptions. I have two eyes in my head. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be driving a GM pickup truck. I wouldn’t be driving any kind of pickup truck.
When I was talking about the vent windows that are good at drawing cigar smoke away I almost forgot to say that I would like you to reinstate the ash tray and lighter. I understand that you get brownie points for having a design that is implicitly anti-tobacco; it all but announces “we don’t make vehicles for people on the wrong side of smoking history.” But this is a pickup we’re talking about. Save brownie points for those overdesigned and overengineered suburban tanks that self-righteous anti-smoking soccer moms drive.
I’m a Michigander and I have had some experience with heated seats. But heated seats, like heated mirrors, rank right down there with wipers on headlamp covers: needless features needlessly expensive and just sitting there waiting to rob me when repair time comes around. The first time I sat in a vehicle with heated seats I thought I’d pissed myself. And heated steering wheels? Are you kidding me? Are you trying to produce generations of men as effeminate as the French? Keep all those heaters. Just give me the normal heater that warms the cab and clears the windshield.
Now most vehicles I have owned have been manuals. I figure if I’m going to drive I should have something to do while doing it. I know the manual Silverado is a rarity, and I suppose I’m okay with having a full-size pickup with an automatic transmission—though I would fully accept the offer to pay less for a truck that has a manual transmission. But self-driving trucks? What’s the point? Do not charge me for this completely useless feature. No one—and I mean no one—asked for this. You people just dumped this gee-whizzery on us so that we would marvel at your cleverness. The fact of the matter is that we had no choice but to take it. And then no one stood up on his hind legs and fought back.
I’m standing up on my hind legs and fighting back. If I’m going to drive, I’m going to drive.
I don’t want anyone in the hidden chambers of the truck talking to me. I don’t want anyone saying to me, “Please fasten driver’s seatbelt.” I especially don’t want this occult voice sounding like someone else’s wife. I can find actual humans willing to talk to me—so long as I am willing to talk to them—but inasmuch as I am taciturn by nature and value that virtue in others, I expect my pickup trucks to be possessed by the blessed spirits of deaf mutes, not by the demoniac ha’nts of meddlesome women.
I will apply the brakes when the situation calls for applying the brakes. Don’t design a truck to do that for me and then charge me for the unnecessary “safety” feature.
Fix the rust problem. It is true that men are enslaved to their pickup trucks and therefore beholden to you. It is true that they will keep buying pickups. You know this. You’ve known this for a long time. Probably most men know that you know. But I think you’d earn a lot of good will by making chasses and bodies that withstand the corruption of moth and rust. If we’re going to store up for ourselves some treasures on earth, and apparently we are, we’d prefer that they not be mass producers of ferric oxide. You know you can do something about the rust problem. We know you know. We know why you refuse. So how about a notification on the MSRP sticker: “This truck will begin to rust out in about five minutes. The discount for the rusting-out version of the Silverado is $20,000.”
What happened to chrome trim? Bring it back.
There are colors proper to pickups. Yellow is not one of them.
If you capitulate to all the smartphone addicts out there the way, years ago, you capitulated to all the soft drink drinkers out there, that’s your business. But I will not pay extra for a phone holder to hold a phone I don’t have. I have a land line at my house, and I eat and drink the civilized way: at a table in a house, in the presence of other people who agree that neither the phone nor the “dining experience” should be “mobile.”
Mind you, I don’t object to the cup holder qua cup holder. Beer cans fit in them snugly. But I draw the line at anything having to do with the smartphone.
What I am asking for, and what I think millions of others are asking for, is a pickup truck with the improvements in ignition, engine, and drivetrain design up to about the year 2004 or 2005, put into a truck from the 1970s. Is that so difficult to do? If you give us this truck, we promise not to sponsor a return of the wide lapel, the porn-star mustache, mullets on men or big hair on women, disco, pet rocks, or 55 mph speed limits. We’ll be pretty much like we are now, except a lot happier. We’ll be happier because you will have listened to us instead of shouted at us.
Jason Peters joined Hillsdale’s faculty in the fall of 2021 after spending 25 years at Augustana College, where he was Dorothy J. Parkander Professor in Literature.
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