Long-Term Road Tests

Maybe it's just a defective cover? Maybe it has nothing to do with a tear in the door panel of another car, or some random individuals broken Bravada? Anybody? No?
 
Nevermind...

Ok, so the Tundra interior might be hated by many, but here's one example of what it won't do.

The plastic housing's unsanded flash sawed it open.
American plastic part design is very rudimentary. Nearly no American design pays attention to edge treatment. Could have made the edge of the plastic base rounded, pointing away from any fabric.

I had that exact same problem in the exact same spot on my '07 Tahoe. I just traded the thing in though, so good riddance.

It looks to me an aweful lot like stress caused that seam to come apart. Notice the line on the fabric where the plastic trim *usually* sits- something has 'pulled' the fabric to expose that, and at the same time stressed the seam, causing to to separate.
 
Not so much a quality issue, as wear and tear (maybe normal, for Edmunds' long-termers).

More than anything, this thread shows how close the quality gap is between most car makers. I think many have forgotten car quality in the 70's-80's. We have a VW that wouldn't start after owning it for 1 week. The dealer gave us his demo until ours could get fixed, and the demo did the same thing. I had a Ford Contour SVT delivered to me with nonfunctional turn signals, and a broken door lock at 150 miles on the odometer.
 
I continued to buy American mostly because the Japanese cars never really appealed to me, and I went in knowing quality was not great. After my 2000 contour SVT began to fall apart I moved to a Chevy Trailblazer SS. I had it for 25K miles and it was back to the dealer only for oil changes and to repair the XM radio antenna which had only become unplugged from the back of the radio. I'll admit the interior was not the most modern looking, but the car held up well, and it was a great experience. I've since moved on to a Silverado Crew cab similar to the Edmunds truck (after my lease expired) and can say the improvement in interior quality is great.
 
So I'm okay nit picking a piece of thread that came undone from a seat, because I'm not dealing with engines that won't start, or thousands of electronic gremlins that can not be fixed.
 
Although the Japanese may be the quality benchmark still, the gap is by a thread.

Hmm, For some reason in my fathers Bravada, the whole transmission needed to be replaced at 78K miles(replaced the trans fluid EVERY 35K), the interior looked great though.
 
So it's the big things with GM's.
 
But the Santa Fe is still going strong, no rattles, the V6 pulls nicely, the transmission still shifts smoothly for the most part. The only problem is the radio goes nuts for a few seconds when you start the car, it works fine after.
With 135K on the clock, something tells me that this 8 year old Fe is still in one piece, the Bravada is sitting in a junk yard somewhere waiting to be stripped.

"both Hyundai and GM vehicles have poor quality"
 
Perhaps but with GM only the small bits fall apart. The rest goes on for decades.
 
With Hyundai, the whole cars falls apart after 5 to 10 years.

umsneeze, the C300 never had a tear in its leather (because it doesn't have real leather) but a small gash in the door padding. And yes, this issue with the Silverado is a quality issue just like the gash in the door padding was a quality issue. Still, the gash was the fault of the driver while this seam tearing is the fault of no one but the manufacturer.
 
Either way, if this is the only real quality lapse with the Silverado than I really can put my confidence back in GM.

If that's poor build quality, then the Mercedes has poor build quality (tear in leather) the BMW 3 they had has bad quality (wearing off of trim on the interior door handle). So it seems GM is in pretty good company then.

both Hyundai and GM vehicles have poor quality

Interesting. If this was a Hyundai product, the comments would be brutal.

Here we go again, heapification in progress.

I'm very positive towards recent GM product ('08 versions of CTS, G8, Vue, Malibu), but I think that's a build quality issue, as the rip is right along the seam. You think something sharp managed to dig in precisely at the seam?

FYI: It's a seam pulling open, not a slash.

I dont think you can chalk that up to build quality, obviously something sharp dug in and tore it open.
 
And Kurt I think it does matter when you're eventually trying to sell the truck.

did it get snagged on something or is that just poor build quality?