GM's All Time Favorite Vehicles..

[ozpont]

GM Chooses Its Best-Ever Cars; Money-Making Trucks Noticeably Absent
September 18, 2008

By Bill Visnic DETROIT - As part of its GMnext centennial celebration which concluded this week, General Motors Corp. released a list of its "Top 10 Production Vehicles" from the thousands of models it has developed since the company's inception in 1908.

And the "Like a Rock" crowd won't necessarily be pleased - although GM's full-size pickups often were best-sellers and profits from pickups and SUVs filled the corporate coffers for much of the 1990s and early part of this century, there's nary a truck or SUV on the list.

GM says the choices were selected by company archivists and historians and reviewed by "GM senior leaders." None of them must have been truck guys. Or Camaro guys. Or - okay, you get the idea: the list may be skewed by a kind of historian's mindset, and is unlikely to fully please even the most ardent GM supporter.

The company avoided further controversy by refusing to actually pick a No. 1 model. Instead, it lists the 10 most significant models in chronological order:

• EV1 (1996):
GM's modern-day electric car. Loved by those who leased them, but not so practical with vintage lead-acid batteries that didn't generate much effective driving range. An upgrade to nickel-metal hydride batteries helped, but by then Californy dropped its ridiculous zero-emissions "mandate" and everybody got back to the business of burning gasoline.

GM was burned to the tune of millions of dollars in the course of it all, then in appreciation of its high-tech efforts was scorched all over again by contemporary greenie critics who in hindsight insist it was the General that deliberately deep-sixed the EV1 so it could continue to market gas-guzzlers.

• Pontiac GTO (1964):
Interesting to see that GM historians (and execs, by association) don't think much happened from 1964's GTO until the 1996 EV1...

Apart from the "maverick" input of certifiable goofball John Z. DeLorean, the GTO wasn't really all that significant a car in its own right (in our humble opinion). But the GTO started the '60s muscle-car thing. And should have proved to GM - though it didn't - that the company desperately needed some free-thinker types.

Still does. Drugs and booze optional.
• Chevy Bel Air (1955):
So Doris Day. But first-year sales were 760,000. Try that these days and you'll understand the impact that was the Bel Air.

Okay, so maybe it was still too pedestrian for the likes of Frank Sinatra, but this is the car that embodies the Fifties. And gave the mass market its first GM V8.

• Chevy Corvette (1953):
The car that made Chevy cool and became the showcase for some of the best gee-whiz technology coming from GM labs. Disc brakes, fuel injection, fiberglass and plastics.

Sure, GM made a mockery of the badge in the smog-choked '70s and didn't return to righteousness for another twenty years, but today's 'Vettes are nothing to joke about and the cars from the '60s are some of the most desirable on the planet.

• Saab 92 (1950):
Okay, GM's stretching it here. Yeah, it owns Saab now. But just five years after V-E day when the Saab 92 was launched, the only connection between GM and Sweden probably was some rusty tanks cluttering the Trollhatten town square.

• Opel Olympia (1936):
It's hard to say whether GM's library gang felt it politically correct to include its German Opel division, or whether the historians really think it's significant the Olympia was one of the first production cars to leverage the refinement-improving delights of unitized construction.

But the Olympia was no creampuff: it could hit 60 mph and its 4-cylinder engine developed a decent-for-the-times 24 horsepower.

• Cadillac V-16 (1930):
Ah, now we're into the heavy artillery. Although GM made only about 4,000 of these hulking 4-doors, the top-secret V-16 immediately send many of the industry's luxury marques packing. Most didn't survive the Depression.

The V-16 is the car that probably most helped create the Cadillac brand supremacy that lasted for at least 30 years, finally being challenged by the volume importation of European premium brands such as Mercedes and BMW. And the V-16 was one of the most impressive achievements in Cadillac history - maybe not the most significant, but certainly one of its most prodigious, inspiring a wild but wisely un-produced concept car in 2003.

• LaSalle (1927):
Perhaps a little esoteric for us commoners, but we can understand how GM would consider the LaSalle a watershed: its design was commissioned to the imperious Harley Earl, and that led to Earl's employment by GM and the creation of what is reputed to be the first design studio operated by an automaker. And, of course, began the legend that was Harley Earl.

• Cadillac (1912):
Best known as the first automobile line to feature the Delco-developed self-starter.
Big whup now, almost 100 years later, but the self-starter was the luxury-to-the-masses equivalent of the cell phone: Just four years after the self-starter's introduction, 98 percent of all cars built in North America had one.

The innovation also brought eternal riches and renown to its inventor, Charles "Boss" Kettering. Only GM could have had execs running around with monikers like "Boss."

• Cadillac Model 30 (1910):
The luxury of a fully-enclosed body! A windshield! A roof!
The Model 30 had it goin' in 1910