2003 Oldsmobile Alero GX review from North America

'Mysterious' leak that caused the fuse panel to corrode and fail repeatedly (took about 10 visits to the dealership to get it fixed). The first time the fuse panel was repaired, I was told that they must have forgotten to put corrosion protection on mine. This started about 5k km in -- whenever the fuse panel failed, I would lose all my gages, the radio, power windows, and a few times, the car would not start (had to be towed).

It ended up being that the glass of the sunroof was slightly misshaped when it was manufactured.

Clutch cable snapped at 50,000 km and clutch could no longer be disengaged. Thankfully I was on a side street.

After owning the Alero for about 5 months, I regretted my decision to trade in my 96 Camry. In 5 years, I never had a day of trouble with the Camry. I had a lot of 'GM Visa' points to use and went back despite swearing that I'd never give GM business again. I wish I didn't have to re-learn the lesson the hard way.

The dealer was pretty rude each of the numerous times the water leak problem was looked at. They didn't believe me, and even went as far as accusing me of not knowing how to close my windows and/or sunroof. I got so few up that each time I had the electrical problems, I took pictures of the water pooled inside the fuse panel. Finally the service manager got the message.

I took a huge loss trading this in on a 1999 Honda, but it was worth it. 2.5 years and 50,000 km later (now at 100k km) the Honda has only had routine maintenance (i.e. oil changes).