Re: What do you think of Armor All?
In 1998 I custom ordered a brand new Camaro with tan leather interior and T-top roof. One day early in its life, a plastic bag with oil bottles (plastic quarts) was set on the passenger seat. A 10 minute drive home and the bag is removed only to find the blue lettering from the company logo is on the seat. Apparently something was on the outside of the bag (motor oil, maybe brake fluid, who knows..) that bled the ink off the bag into the leather seat. I freaked! Tried all sorts of cleaners, but did not want to rub the surface coating off the leather. Ended up with a baby blue stain covering about a 10" wide circle on the seat.
A few days later the car was in the parking lot at work (large lot, few hundred cars) with the T-tops off. When I came out after work, the sun had bleached the stain 100% gone. No kidding. 100% gone. Could not even see a shadow.
And that is the power of the sun.
Don't read further if you don't want my take on Consumer Reports.
BTW, I ran that '98 to 160K miles. Not once did I have to bring it in for warranty work (unless a recall was issued). Car ran like a top, handled fabulous. I kept the entire car 100% stock, not changing anything, even the exhaust because it had a great optional performance system in stainless. Also, because it was a custom order, I got everything the way I wanted it, so I had no incentive to modify. I did do all regular maint, and that included regular breaks, tires, and one clutch. If you look at Consumer Reports for that year Camaro/firebird you will see they are scored low. I believe that Consumer Reports deliberately under rated and down graded American cars of that time purposely. There is no way I can have 100% perfect failure rate, and they rate the car overall at below average.
I sold the car to a guy at work for his son. At that time, there was no rust or dents. Most of the body panels except rear fenders and hood were fiberglass (FRP) like the Vettes of that era. For the next 4 or 5 years, he would always mention what a great buy that car was because it just ran and ran and always looked good (it was bright red). His son sold the car and that was the last I heard of it.
On a second note, the great performance and bullit proof performance of that 98 Camaro is why I bought a used 98 Firebird last year. The (bright red) Firebird had 27K miles and today it has just over 50K miles. I have replaced a number of suspension parts for performance reasons, and also installed an aftermarket exhaust, trans oil cooler, reprogrammed the computer, and installed a posi with steeper gears. Other than that, the car remains stock. There was one failure in the alternator. I replaced it with a new Delco (not reman) and all has been fine since. Again, 12 years later, a 1998 product is performing above average.
I really believe that most of the poor ratings of these classic American performance cars is just because they get ABUSED.
Please excuse my rant.
