Hi Scotty , Do you think perhaps the big 3 and some others may build crappy cars on purpose ? So they breakdown after the warrenty s up and the dealers can make big money replacing parts or just buy a new vechile altogether.
This is a public secret.. Scotty has been talking about this for years now.
Its called planned obsolescence.
Most people replace their vehicles after around 6-8 years. Making vehicles last longer than that is just considered lost revenue to a car manufacturer. And it's not just cars. This is just the way society is going with all goods. The latest generation of people (millennials or whatever) are the biggest consumers in history. But they love blaming everyone else for being "environmentally unfriendly".
Absolutely. If cars don't break down, people don't buy new ones. If people don't buy new ones, companies don't make profits selling cars.
@mountainmanjoe I'll agree that most things in society are pretty much built to wear out and be replaced. But Millenials aren't solely to blame. For example, nearly everyone uses cell phones, batteries, televisions, gaming consoles, etc. which are all built to have a relatively short lifespan and be replaced by the latest and greatest. I believe all of society contributes to these issues.
yup electronics are probably the worst example. Everyone wants the latest and greatest, even if the changes are absurdly trivial.
Yep. It's a well known fact at this points - it ain't just the big three that's all of them.
All car makers play around with reliability, They want to balance between "being considered reasonably reliable" (or what ever else will help them sell more cars - some go for "luxury and "technology") and your car wearing out as fast as possible.
The best example would be Chrysler, their owners (Stellantis) have been doing this for decades!
They do a lot of balancing, making some cars more reliable then others in different markets - for example they choose not to sell their new compact car with the desirable DV6 engine in developed markets - forcing people to settle for the less well built DV5 or pay much more to upgrade to their family sized cars that do offer that engine.
Another example would be that as soon as felt that they're loosing revenue because of poor reliability they immediately bumped up their reliability replacing the EP6C and EP6CDT, with the EP6FDTM - that just lasts sometimes even twice of what the old variant used to last. It's not like they didn't have the technology to make a better engine, they just have been selling their better engines in other less developed markets.
Outside of the US where competition for reliability is way more fierce you start to see other interesting cars. Toyota sells a car called the Toyota Fortuner and Toyota Innova (- similar in size to the RAV4 in size and price, but very different). Both of these use a 2TR (Absolute tank of an engine!) engine instead of the M20A (unexceptional at best) and a regular torque convertor automatic instead of a CVT. those cars can legitimately easily go 250,000 miles.
This ain't just cars, that's how all of the work is nowadays, here's a great video on the topic of "planed obsolesce"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5v8D-alAKE
It’s just not the Big Three, it’s industry-wide. According to automotive research firm iSeeCars.com new cars are kept (by the first owner - whom these carmakers are after) for an average of 8.4 years (here in the US). During that time period, an average of 13,500 miles is driven per year (according to the US DOT), so that is a total of 113,400 miles. Your typical powertrain warranty is 50,000-100,000 miles while Bumper to Bumper is 36,000-60,000 miles. Automakers want you to get a new car every few years, and there is plenty of money to be made by dealers on services/repairs especially out of warranty. While we may not like it, what incentive/motive is there for automakers to make vehicles that last much longer than this without issues cropping up? Especially for luxury automakers who the vast majority of their customers lease and return after 3 years ? If you are on the executive team of a company, you may not last long if you bring up the idea of “Hey, I have a great idea of how to stay in business and increase our stock price. Let’s build a car that will last 300,000 miles and rarely has issues during that time frame.”
Remember, it costs tons of money and resources to build vehicles that will last a long time with minimal issues, and automakers today are under even more pressure to cut costs where they can and have money to invest into EVs and electrified vehicles.
If automakers could design and build cars to explode one day after the warranty expires, they would.
that would be bad press
OK Joe, how about 2 days?
they can't be built SO badly that they get on the news for killing people. Just cheap enough to save money but without cause a fiasco.
Right you are!
Sadly it is. It is greed over customer loyalty. Some companies will go above and beyond to squeeze every single penny out of their customers
Years ago a GM executive was questioned by congress on why a turbine powered car was not under development. The answer was if we make a turbine last 50 thousand miles which is the average life of a piston engine it will last 200 thousand miles. We don't want to make a car that lasts 200 thousand miles.
and yet they did make cars that lasts 200 thousand miles.
The turbine would never have worked anyway.
ya wanna talk crappy cars?
Own an AMC Alliance!
Or a Ford Fairmont
Or a Ford Taurus
Been there, Done that
