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Thursday, August 05, 2010

GM's European "Lifetime" Warranty

In Europe, GM is going to offer a "lifetime" warranty on its Opel and Vauxhall brands.  Except that lifetime is limited to 100,000 miles (160,000km).

Which begs the question, are EU GM cars only designed for a 100,000mi service life?

If I was GM, I'd stay away from marketing hyperbole.  Either make it unlimited miles, or don't call it lifetime  

3 comments:

Bart Weisser said...

We saw it on the news (in Europe) yesterday. 160000 km seems long enough. It's about 8 - 9 years. However, our 20-year-old car has only 160000 km on it. So that 160000 km "lifetime warranty" isn't so far fetched. I doubt most European cars would reach that level, but statistically, there are always those couple odd-balls that manage to run smoothly long after their supposed life expectancy.

Anonymous said...

It depends. Once upon a time, Scandinavian countries charged 100% purchase tax on new vehicles, so Volvos and Saabs were built to last a long time. Back then Italians drove on average a bit less than 6,000 miles annually, so Fiats and Alfas fell apart around the 60,000 mile mark.
Germans on the other hand drove 12-14 thousand miles a year, and most German vehicles were built for longer life, with Autobahn capabilities. While French drivers drove little more than Italians, but on bad roads, so nice riding Renaults and Peugeots and Citroens were less durable than the Germans.
Different markets within Europe still have different expectations and average miles/kms driven annually.

Anonymous said...

Could be like the fORD 100K powertrain warranty that only covered the diesel engine. Then the transmissions popped at 40K.