1974 Buick Lesabre Convertible on 2040-cars

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Texas sues GM, saying it tricked customers into sharing driving data sold to insurers

Texas filed a lawsuit Tuesday against GM over years of alleged abuse of customers' data and trust. New car owners were presented with a "confusing and highly misleading" process that was implied to be for their safety, but "was no more than a deceptively designed sales flow" that surrendered their data for GM to sell. The suit contends that at no point was selling driving data ever even suggested as a possibility, putting GM in violation of the state's consumer protection laws. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is seeking a jury trial and at least $10,000 per offense (every GM car sold in the state since 2015) and a hefty add-on of $250,000 in cases where the victim was over 65. Texas seems to be flying high after a recent $1.4 billion settlement from Meta over other privacy concerns. This may well be a way to solve any pending budgetary issues in the Lone Star State.

Malaise Era Junkyard Gem: 1979 Buick Electra Limited

In the fall of 1973, the Arab members of OPEC shut off the oil taps, and Detroit got busy making many of their full-sized land yachts a lot smaller. By model year 1977, the downsized fifth-generation Buick Electra was ready to go ... just in time for the 1979 Iranian Revolution to squeeze the supply of the black stuff even further. You won't see many of the 1977-85 Electras these days, but I spotted this faded but solid '79 Limited sedan in a Denver self-service yard last week. General Motors must have bought up the entire world's supply of blue velour around this time, because you'll see this stuff in just about every car they made for the following decade or so. By this time, GM was doing a lot of mixing-and-matching with engines from its various divisions, which meant you could buy an Oldsmobile 88 with a Chevrolet 350 V8 engine, a Chevrolet Monza with a Buick 231 V6 engine, or— as in this case— a Buick Electra with an Oldsmobile 350 V8 engine. Do you want to know how many horses this engine delivered to this 3,631-pound car? 155 horsepower out of 5.7 liters of engine displacement. Times were tough during the Malaise Era. Related Video: Featured Gallery Junked 1979 Buick LeSabre in Colorado Junkyard View 20 Photos Buick Automotive History Luxury Classics Sedan malaise era

Lexus tops JD Power Vehicle Dependability Study again, Buick bests Toyota

It shouldn't surprise anyone, but Lexus has once again taken the top spot in JD Power's Vehicle Dependability Study. That'd be the Japanese luxury brand's fourth straight year at the top of table. The big news, though, is the rise of Buick. General Motor's near-premium brand beat out Toyota to take second place, with 110 problems per 100 vehicles compared to Toyota's 111 problems. Lexus owners only reported 89 problems per 100 vehicles. Besides Buick's three-position jump, Scion enjoyed a major improvement, jumping 13 positions from 2014. Ram and Mitsubishi made big gains, as well, moving up 11 and 10 positions, respectively. In terms of individual segments, GM and Toyota both excelled, taking home seven segment awards each. The study wasn't good news for all involved, though. A number of popular automakers finished below the industry average of 147 problems per 100 vehicles, including Subaru, (157PP100), Volkswagen (165PP100), Ford/Hyundai (188PP100 each) and Mini (193PP100). The biggest losers (by a tremendous margin, we might add) were Land Rover and Fiat, recording 258 and 273 problems per 100 vehicles. The next closest brand was Jeep, with 197PP100. While the Vehicle Dependability Study uses the same measurement system as the Initial Quality Survey, the two metrics analyze very different things. The VDS looks at problems experienced by original owners of model year 2012 vehicles over the past 12 months, while the oft-quoted IQS focuses on problems in the first 90 days of new-vehicle ownership. Like the IQS, though, the VDS has a rather broad definition of what a problem is. Because of that, a low score from JD Power is no guarantee of extreme unreliability, so much as just poor design. In this most recent study, the two most reported problems focused on Bluetooth connectivity and the voice-command systems. The former leaves plenty of room for user error due to poor design (particularly true of the Bluetooth systems on the low-scoring Fords, Volkswagens and Subarus), while the second is something JD Power has already confirmed as being universally terrible. That makes means that while these studies are important, they shouldn't be taken as gospel when it comes to automotive reliability. News Source: JD PowerImage Credit: Copyright 2015 Jeremy Korzeniewski / AOL Buick Fiat Ford GM Hyundai Jeep Land Rover Lexus MINI Mitsubishi RAM Scion Subaru Toyota Volkswagen Auto Repair Ownership study