Disheartening what I hear. I just red-lined the Mercury front, new tires, and new shocks for rear. Went with Rock Auto. Went with what had good reviews. Was going to go moog but shipping cost was nuts.
Early eighties when I started out, GM and Ford were junk. 12 month warranty and not much lasted that long. The ball joints in the Trans Am didn't last much past the first year. I remember the night driving back from Iowa and the sway bar links fell off just as getting to the interstate exit to home.
Started out as an alignment mechanic, went to the Moog school. Moog and NAPA we the go to sources.
Early '84 I did a project with Motorola combined with Xerox, Sony and Harvard Business school. It was all about Just In Time processing, quality improvement, Japanese Manufacture System and Quality program.
One of the things talked about was GMs poor quality. These discussion was termed Chevett or Cadillac quality. What GM was good at back then was establishing a technical specification or standard. Parts would be made in large quantities and the parts that met standard went to Cadillac (Fleetwood/DeVille) or Olds (98/88). Parts that didn't meet spec, were sent to the other lines, assembling lower cost vehicles. Parts that terribly failed were sent to re-work.
Sad to think that after all the expense of JIT, ISO9000 and QS9000, we are back to just substandard junk because it's a lower price.