From the first day I stepped into the Chevrolet division, in 1969, it was obvious the Vega was in real trouble. General Motors was pinning its image and reputation on this car, and there was practically no interest in it in the division. We were to start building the car in a little more than a year, and nobody wanted anything to do with it. The Vega was an orphan. Chevy's engineering staff was going through the motions of preparing the car for production and that was all. Engineers are a very proud group. They take immense interest and pride in their creations, but they are very disinclined to accept the work of others. This was not their car and they did not want to work on it.
The biggest objection from the division, specifically the engineering staff, was reserved for the Vega engine...The Engineering policy group (went) in favor of the engine pushed by Cole and the corporate staff which featured an aluminum cylinder block with a cast iron head...The corporate engineers went the route of a longer stroke engine which was traditionally less polluting. So while they were using an innovative production process using aluminum, they were relying on an old basic design for the engine. What resulted was a relatively large, noisy, top heavy combination of aluminum and iron which cost far to much to build, looked like it had been taken off a 1920 farm tractor and weighed more than the cast iron engine Chevy had proposed...Chevy engineers were ashamed of the engine.
The most important problem for me with the Vega was to motivate the hell out of the division to get this car into as good shape as we could before introduction. As the Lordstown , Ohio assembly plant was converted to Vega production, we also introduced an intense program for quality control with the target of making the first cars off the assembly line the best quality cars, from a manufacturing standpoint, ever built. As the starting date approached, we put tens of additional inspectors and workers on the line and introduced a computerized quality control program in which each car was inspected as it came off the line and, if necessary, repaired. We also test drove the first 2,000 Vegas built and a sizable proportion of the others thereafter. I was able when the car was introduced to brag that it was the best quality car we'd ever introduced. I'm thankful no one ever asked me if I thought it was the best designed and engineered car ever introduced...Work that was proceeding on the car revealed that the central staff had completely misgauged the weight and cost of the car they designed. As general manager of Chevy, I was called upon to explain the unexplainable. How could we call our car "competitive" when it weighed almost 400 pounds more, and was priced more than $300 above the intended foreign competitor... While I was convinced that we at Chevy were doing our best with the car that was given to us, I was called upon by the corporation to tout the car far beyond my personal convictions about it. This conflict never did resolve itself fully in my mind and was one of the many factors that precipitated my departure from the company...I said with a clear conscience that it was a quality car, which it was because we road tested the first 2,000 cars off the assembly line and spent millions of dollars to reinspect and repair each vehicle. -On a Clear Day you Can See General Motors: John Z. DeLorean's Look Inside the Automotive Giant