1999 GMC Jimmy SLT review from North America

2000 Driver's side seat heater stopped working: Dealer unable to fix after 3 attempts. Have given up on this feature.

2002 Entire front end fried: Wheel bearings and ball joints on both sides. ~$2500. Its not like I take the vehicle to monster truck rallies or abuse it in any way.

2003 Transmission seal blew out: Part cost $3. Labour ~$600. Transmission mechanic reported that he has seen many 1999 GM vehicles with this problem. Apparently GM decided to use an aluminum seal to save money. The new part is Teflon.

2004 Cooling system failure: Fitting on engine cracked. Took 2 days for dealer to find a new part. ~$800.

2004 Power mirrors stop working: Fortunately they can be manually adjusted. Have given up on this feature.

2005 Transmission oil cooling lines ruptured: ~$600.

2005 Engine leaks oil: About 1 liter every 6 weeks. Dealer wants $700 to repair. Seeing as that will buy about 150 bottles of oil it has not been repaired.

2006 Cooling system failure: Seal inside engine gave way. Dealer wants ~$1800 to fix. The part is about $18, but the engine needs to be pretty much disassembled to change it. 2 bottles of stop-leak seems to have fixed it - though it needs anti-freeze from time to time.

2006 Ignition key cannot be removed: God knows what this will cost so I decided to just lock the car leaving the key in the ignition and use a spare key. GM has thought of this and the car drains the battery overnight and cannot be started the next day. Installed a power cut off switch on the battery.

In the beginning the Jimmy was great. It is powerful and comfortable. However over time it has shown itself to be poorly engineered and quite simply costs too much to own.

The engineers at GM have designed in luxury features like self-dimming mirrors and cut corners on things like transmission and cooling system seals. They clearly value flashy features, but do not seem to have a clue about reliability. Other manufacturers have been putting cooling systems on motors for a hundred years – but GMC is still working on the problem.

I have owned a number of GM vehicles in the past and have been pleased, but genuinely feel ripped off by this one. It’s a lemon. The engineers at GMC can pat themselves on the back for shaving a few pennies off the cost of vehicles by putting in cheap transmission seals, cheap cooling system seals, flimsy wheel bearings and such - but they have lost a loyal customer. I will never by a GM product again.