If you have come here because you bought a Chevy S-10, all I can do is to give you my condolensces and sympathy. If you are the guy who I told not to buy the vehicle, all I can say is YOU STUPID FREAKING MAROON!!!

Here is what happened:

On April 16, 1999, I bought a new Chevrolet S-10 half ton pickup from Courtesy Chevrolet in San Jose. I had previously looked at the Toyota Tacoma, and while it seemed to be a much better truck, their base model just didn't fit me whatsoever. So, to make proud my autoworker relatives in Detroit, I bypassed economic Darwinism and bought American. I gave my totally reliable Datsun pickup with 300,000 miles to an old friend, and I gave my totally reliable Volkswagen Jetta (also with 300,000 miles) to Catholic Charities. Big, big, mistake.

The story really begins on the drive home from the dealership. Somebody cut me off on the freeway big time. I pushed the huge horn button, and no sound. Oh, no big deal, or so I thought. When I signaled to exit the freeway, the blinker flashed at twice its normal rate. When I moderately applied the brakes, the ABS system activated for no apparent reason. And when I hit a good sized bump in the road, there was an annoying rattle in the dash. Well, any new car just off the lot is going to have a few bugs, but I figured that these could be resolved at the first service. By then, the driver's door panel was coming off, there was a tinny rattle near the left kick panel, and the windshield washers usually would not work.

The mechanics at the dealer seemed pretty sharp, but they were only human. Each visit to the dealer resulted in a few problems being fixed, and on occasion, one or more being created. The service advisors soon learned that this truck was a loser, and they got heartburn when they saw me coming, though they remained polite. It would have been funny had it not been for two serious issues: the ABS was crazy, and sometimes the truck would not start.

The ABS problems manifested themselves in three different ways: At first, it was the mere annoyance of having the system activate at random times when the brakes were applied, sometimes this happened when the braking was so light as to be nearly non-existant. After a few months, this turned into a more distressing problem and that was having the system come and go during very heavy braking. It has happened to us all; we are on the freeway and all is well, and then somebody slams on their brakes, and we all must react in kind. This particular failure would occasionally result in having the rear wheels lock up under heavy braking, resulting in the rear end of the vehicle wanting to switch places with the front end. The bean counters at GM eliminated the proportioning valve so as to save half a dollar per vehicle, so the ABS could not be disabled. (Probably the same idiots who made the accelerator cable non- adjustable. There was a huge and growing amount of slop in the cable, and one could only open the throttle about three-fourths of the way. The dealer said that the only solution would be to shift the engine on its mounts.) And then came the complete and total failure mentioned later.

There were also three different starting problems, not including the failure of the ignition switch which sidelined the vehicle for nine days. The most common happened on average about once a week, and that was turning the key, and having absolutely nothing happen. Once in a while it would turn over, but never fire. The third problem was that of a delay between turning the key to the start position, and having anything happen. And then there was that darn stuck ignition switch. It would occasionally get stuck in either the 'on' or the 'off' position, but with enough fiddling (on one occasion it took ten minutes), it would become unstuck. There was one service advisor who didn't believe me until it happened to him while I was standing there. Eventually, the switch totally failed, but its replacement worked only marginally better.

There were a raft of other problems (mostly electrical in nature), but owing to their intermittent nature, it was difficult for the mechanics to find them. A couple of the rattles I found and fixed myself; one was a twelve inch long zip tie hanging by its head from a wiring harness into a inner and outer fender cavity, and the other was a dime in a unibody channel under the rubber floor matting. A few of the non-electrical items were just lame brains in assembly; a missing cable guide for the emergency brake cable resulted in the cable rubbing on the undercoating until it wore through to the bare metal and squeaked strangely, and missing clips caused the grill to be in the wrong place.

Even though the mechanics could find and fix some of the bugs, the truck's health continued to worsen. An intermittent rogue electrical load appeared that would draw about a half an amp from the battery. If I didn't drive the truck for half a week, the battery would be totally drained. The horn, windshield washers, and turn signals continued to operate intermittently. When I had the mechanics go after the rattles, more rattles appeared. I was getting good at push starting the beast, but this routine began to wear on friends and family.

I started to wonder if perhaps my dealer's mechanics were not all that I thought of them, so I went to another, very reputable Chevy dealer in another town. I told them the whole story, hoping that they would bad-mouth my dealer, and take my wretched truck under their wing. Instead, they said that these S-10s had some horrific electrical gremlins, and that they would appreciate it if I did not dump this heap on their doorstep.

I also tried the Customer Assistance folks at GM, and they were completely hopeless. In some cases, they were worse than worthless, such as the woman who insisted that ABS equipped vehicles are supposed to have their rear wheels lock up. These people were losers. Another told me that I had "an unrealistic expectation of quality." Finally, after speaking with about eight different people, I found one guy who had his head screwed on straight. He was very knowledgable as well as honest, and he gave me some great advice. I asked him to look into something for me, and he promised to get back to me within a few days. When he didn't call me back after a couple of weeks, I called back and attempted to track him down. I finally reached a supervisor who told me that he was "no longer with the company."

Then came the fateful night that put me over the edge. I was coming home from work very late, and approached an intersection that I knew well rather abruptly. I pressed on the brake pedal, and NOTHING! I pressed harder, and nothing. Remembering what one of the service advisors told me, I pressed as hard as I could on that stupid pedal. NOTHING! I had already gone through the intersection at 25 miles an hour when something clicked in my brain and I applied the emergency brake and came to a noisy stop. Thank God nobody had been in that intersection; during the morning, those crosswalks are filled with school children. I called the Chevy 800 number, and told them about my deathtrap. A tow truck arrived within an hour, and the driver noticed that I had pressed the brake pedal so hard that it was still about a third of the way to the floor. He towed the truck back to the dealer, and I left them a message to the effect that I would not take this truck back (this was its seventh visit for the brakes) until they found the problem and fixed it. By this time, they were loathe to work on the vehicle, and after it had sat there for a couple of weeks, GM corporate told them not to waste any more time working on it.

This state of affairs was totally unacceptable: I had purchased a brand new vehicle and not only had it never worked properly or safely, GM was refusing to make any effort to correct the problems. I found a sympathetic ear in the dealer's sales department, and he gave me the same advice as the one capable person at the Customer Assistance Center: bring in the Better Business Bureau for arbitration.

I didn't know what to expect from the BBB, but they had a rather lengthy process that would filter out nuisance cases. It would take almost two months, but I had no other avenue other than threatening to sue the dealer, or parking the truck near the dealership with big "Courtesy Lemon" signs. I went the BBB route, click here to see the letter that I wrote to them just a couple of weeks before the total failure of the vehicle's braking system.

Here was my list of fixed problems in chronological order:

And my list of major problems:

And my list of minor problems:

I was advised to withhold from the BBB my list of defects that are apparently faulty design and cannot be easily fixed:

The BBB process is long and thorough. They have volunteer counsel who do their own research, and then arrange an arbitration hearing in which the sucker (me) and the company (GM) representative present their respective sides of the case. I arrived at the hearing on time, but wet from having ridden my motorcycle. The arbitrator was very fair, and did not let either me or the GM rep get out of line. It took nearly two hours for him to collect our testimony, and he showed no surprise when the GM rep said that I was on my own with this loser truck. At the conclusion of the hearing, I really didn't know where I stood, but he told us that he would make his decision in five days.

After six days had elapsed, I was wondering if I would have to call the BBB to learn the status of my case. As I was putting on my motorcycle jacket to go to work, I heard my fax machine come to life. I collected the fax, and found that the case had been decided in my favor! Hooray, there really is a God afterall! While they denied me re-imbursement for the improvements that I had made to the vehicle, I did get to keep the $1500 rebate.

It took a while for them to get a check to me, and I had to pick it up at the dealer. They made sure that the vehicle was indeed empty, and I was surprised to see that it had been in a premium parking spot on their lot for the whole two months. I was glad to say "good riddance" to the wretched heap, though I'm still getting the run-around on getting the stereo returned to me. (Update: I had to pay them thirty dollars labor to have it removed, and I got it back three months later, but it was damaged.)

I asked a number of GM and dealership employees what happens to such pathetic vehicles, and everyone has given me a different answer. I have heard that the vehicle gets destroyed, and I have heard that it gets parted out, and any safety related items are scrapped. One person told me that GM cooperates with the BBB because they would rather buy back the vehicle under such terms than do it via the lemon law because it allows them to re-sell the vehicle without having to disclose its defects (as well as helping to lower their lemon stats). YIKES! Anybody want to buy a used Chevy?...