Wiper blades on 2002 Malibu

[rouser]

Greetings:

My sister purchased a used 2002 Malibu as a GM program car around nine months ago. I had the car to look it over and to make sure the car would pass our annual state inspection. I had checked the tires, exhaust, lights, brake fluid, etc when I came to the wiper blades on the vehicle.

I discovered that the wiper blades were dry-rotted and needed replacing in order to pass the state inspection. I got my measuring tape to measure the length of the wiper blades and discovered something very odd.

One wiper was a 19" Narrow width blade while the other blade was a 22" Regular width blade.

I thought this as wierd that one would be narrow and the other one wide. I was used to different lengths as her previous car (Ford / Mazda Escort) had different lengths but the same narrow width.

So I went down to the Auto Zone and started looking in the ANCO wiper blade cross-reference guide to see what they specified as replacement blades because I started to think that possibly someone had replaced the wiper arm assembly with the wrong wiper arm. However, when I got to the Malibu section in the ANCO wiper blade cross-reference guide, they specified a 19" Narrow width blade and a 22" Regular width blade.

WIERD!!!!!!

WHY GM WHY!!!!!!! specify two different blade widths. I could have understood two different lengths with the same width because I could have bought one pack of the longer length and cut down one blade to the shorter length. But to specify two different widths and be forced to buy two different packages to just change the wiper blades.

Bonehead move, Shame on you GM. I love GM but it's such idiotic stuff like this that really bothers me.