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Message: <blockquote data-quote="stutaeng" data-source="post: 25927" data-attributes="member: 6175">I think the late 80s and early 90s was pretty terrible times for GM: their products basically sucked big time. They were essentially atrocious. Japan manufacturing was killing the domestic automobile sales with their superior manufacturing with tighter tolerances (surprisingly, using philosophy they'd learned from some Americans' philosophies).As far as I know GM spent a huge amount of time, money, engineering and R&D into the GMT800. They wanted it to be better than the previous generation of full sized trucks, which was basically 1970/1980s pig technology with lipstick. Then they dropped the LS-based engines into them, which they had been developing in the early 90s for the Corvette (the effect was that the legendary "LS" engine was MASS produced). Combined with the HD truck segment variants with the Duramax/Allison combination and increased technology (Quadrasteer is in this list) of the later GMT800, they basically hit a home run.GM executives probably saw that they had made something that was too good (and probably to expensive to manufacturer), then started "value engineering" stuff, ultimately winding up with a product that was more profitable for them, but not more durable for the consumer...That's my opinion for what it's worth.</blockquote>