GM has long been the king of wrong designs. Until they started making the 6, Chevy didn't bother with a valve cover. One of the early 4's had the water jacket brazed onto the inner block casting. That got recalled, a rare event back then.
In the 40's and early 50's, Buick used batteries made with the cells end to end (long skinny and HEAVY) battery sitting on the frame inside the right front fender. You had to use a special made GM supplied lifting strap to fish them out. Acid leaks (common on old style batteries) would dissolve the frame rail.
Up until around 1950, Chevy fed oil to the rocker arms through a pipe cast through the water jacket. This would eventually rust through and start mixing oil and water in both the crankcase and cooling system. That made a gawdawful mess to try to clean out. The fix was simple enough, we would put a cap on both ends of the through tube and run a piece of tubing direct to the head like they should have done.
