I was told today at my local dealership, that a lot of the modules on the 2001 Deville'* are no longer available. Are they serious? The car is 12 years old and I can't get parts for it. If this is true no wonder the American car companies are losing to the Japanese. I have a 1990 Nissan 300zx and I can go to the local Nissan dealer and buy everything I need to build one rom scratch.

the gm dealers are a bad joke. you dont want to buy anything from them anyway their prices are ridiculas. on parts that commonly fail aftermarket companies like dorman or wells or delphi make stuff. if its not a common failure item you can go to a junk yard

In reality American old vehicle parts are very difficult to find from dealers but on the other hand old Japanese vehicle parts available at any local dealer but why this is happening? For American car parts every time we have to go to junkyards?

I manage service parts operations for a large supplier of vehicle interiors, and as part of my job I interface with the service organizations for pretty much every car manufacturer in the world. I can tell you with absolute certainty GM'* retention policy is 15 years past end of production, meaning, they expect suppliers to provide service parts for 15 years after the vehicle stops being produced. This is as long as, or longer than, any other vehicle manufacturer.

You should be able to purchase replacement parts from GM for a 2001 vehicle for another 3 years. On the other hand, why would you want to? There are so many other lower cost alternatives out there.

ANNNNNK!!!! Wrong answer 2kg4u. The reason why an individual would want to is because they like the vehicle they have no matter what the age which brings up my question...

I have a 1990 Cadillac Sedan Deville 4.5L V8 with a defective Air Deflector Valve which I also have been told is discontinued. Why can't a 2013 Air Deflector Valve be adapted? If my Pappy, who was mechanic (old school), were still alive I'm sure he would find a way.

I call it planned obsolesence which translates into greed.

Even if its discontinued the dealer should be able to find out if another dealer has one in inventory and will sell it to him.



Try this if you have a part number; Welcome to the part locator

I'm retired, but I work part-time at a Ford/Chrysler dealership (the owner is a close friend, so I do it more as a favor than anything else...). Some of the time, I work in the parts department. I also worked in the parts department of a Chevrolet dealership many years ago. So - what I'm saying here comes from a lot of time spent on the other side of the counter.

If GM is asking for 15 years from its suppliers, that'* fantastic from my perspective. My experience is that Ford runs an 11 year cycle. Chrysler'* is longer, but I don't think it goes to 15 years - maybe 13. I'm almost certain that Ford auctions it'* old parts as the cycles close, because they seem to 'disappear' off the inventory shortly after 11 years. I'm not defending the Big-3, but I will say that keeping parts (no matter how old) in stock in warehouses is a very expensive undertaking. You're tying up capital that could be used elsewhere.

You also have to understand the how-and-why of dealership parts departments. The dealers and manufacturers don't really give a hoot about people who own their older cars. The main reason-for-being for dealership parts departments is to supply parts to the technicians in the service department. A distant second-in-importance job for parts departments is the business of keeping wholesale customers (body shops, large independent garages, etc.) happy. Retail sales to over-the-counter (OTC) customers are generally considered a pain-in-the-neck. Every minute you spend on the phone with someone who is trying to fix an old car is a minute taken away from your 'real' job - supplying parts to the techs who are fixing the 0-5 year old cars of the customers who trade regularly. Besides that, the OTC sales take up a LOT of time. Most of the people who call or walk in don't know how to exactly describe the part they need and rarely have the VIN with them. My guess would be that it takes at least three times as long to sell the average OTC part as it does to get the right part to a technician. And, in the end, many OTC customers walk away when they hear the dealership'* price (after taking up a considerable amount of the parts department'* time).

Sorry for being long-winded, but I thought I'd let you know what the view is like from the other side of the fence...

Dave B.

Well said Dave B. I've spent most of my career at the dealer also. Many of the door modules and interior parts are dealer only and yes it'* a bitch to find parts for a car more than ten years old. I do remember my parts guy at the Cadillac dealer I worked for used a program called GM obsolete which would go through the inventory of all the dealers across the country and he was successful on many occasions finding what the customer needed for their old car. As far as what JW said about the dealer costing too much I would say not always. When ever I'm on the hunt for a part I always include the dealer on my price matching and I would say more than 30% of the time they are competitive with their pricing.

I saw this on a GM dealer forum a while back.

To add to that last post good parts counter men are becoming a thing of the past. I can remember walking into a parts house a asking for a set of small block VC gaskets and without a flinch the parts guy would ask if you wanted cork or rubber gaskets and didn't need to look anything up. Now days if you walk into a parts place and just say small block VC gaskets the 19yr old pimple faced kid behind the counter just stares at you like you have spiders crawling out of your eye sockets and turns to his computer and always comes back with "year make and model" with no clue of what your needing.