Safe Speed Forums

Hey, don't knock Clio reliability!

My 3.5 year old one's been completely reliable....apart from the alarm, the (very expensive) damper failure, the crumbly front brake discs, the passenger seat tilt/slide mechanism (twice), the boot mechanism, the temperature sensor...

(But it very reliably does 0-60 in 6.5, so I don't care!)

I think it would be truer to say "if products are made more expensive to maintain AND NEW PRODUCTS ARE MADE BETTER VALUE, they're more likely to be thrown away! New car prices have been falling for a good while now (relative to average earings). That's what killed Reliant off. They were cheap cars that poor people could afford - especially those who had never taken a car test but held a bike licence. Towards the end of the company's life, however, they were being SUBSTANTIALLY undercut by base model hatchbacks. People started saying "...but I could get a "proper" car for less than that"! Then the only punters they had left were those who didn't have a car licence - and eventually they all died off! If you want people to maintain their cars longer, you can either reduce the cost of keping them on the road OR increase the cost of replacing the car OR both.


I wouldn't be so sure about that! A couple of years ago, my wife's car had done about 80,000 and all it's suspension bushes were stuffed. I bought "pattern" replacements for about half the price of genuine ones and they lasted about 15,000 miles. Now her current car has 90k on it and they same thing has happened but I reckon I'll be cashing out on genuine ones this time as it's a pig of a job and I don't want to have to do it again in the car's life! If mechanical components were THAT easy to reverse-engineer or if OEM parts were THAT over-priced, we'd see half-price pattern ones that were every bit as good. By and large, that's NOT my experience of pattern parts! Don't get me wrong, I DO think that genuine parts are over-priced a lot of the time, but I don't think the differences are as dramatic as the price tag suggests.

I see...

...so had it been a car made in the "good old days" it would be a crispy brown pile of scrap now! Lucky these modern cars last so much better or it wouldn't still be here for you to moan about!

...and yet...

One of the biggest selling points for the new low energy light bulbs is their (supposed!) longevity!

Some tyre manufacturers choose to market their tyres on the strength of their claimed longevity!

I went to a run-flat tyre launch a few years ago and the manufacturer's rep told me that one of the main effects of developing these was that car manufacturers would only buy four per car instead of five!

Companies will regularly (apparently) shoot themselves in the foot in order to try and secure a potential advantage over a rival by having a better product. Durability is just one part of "better" - not everyone focuses on durability because they don't see enough of a demand for it.

I think the ways of the world might be a bit more complex than you imagine...!

That's the joy of t'internet. I drive a Mk2 Golf and the forums will give you all the info you'll ever need regarding pattern parts. Some are the equal of OEM, some are okay and some are plain cr*p. And you're right about pricing. I pretty much always get a price from VW because if there's only a few quid in it then the VW dealer is nearer for a start. That said for every item with a small difference in price there's one where the OEM is three and four times as expensive - and we're not talking about £5 items here.

Barkstar

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Yes. You have finally nailed the problem. At present, new products appear more valuable due to artificially reducing maintainability and by lobbying for scrapage subsidies and other marketing fixes. The goal is to make new products truly better value, on their own merits, not by market fixing. That is done by engineers, not by marketeers.

In what way is this "artificial"?

Of course the design of a new vehicle is always going to be a trade-off between low cost and maintainability. It is the work of the engineers to find the best compromise, and given that most modern cars are now viably reaching 100-200k miles compared to 50-80k miles 30 years ago, as well as being substantially cheaper and more reliable, you'd have to say they are compromising pretty well.

Of course they could engineer cars to be much easier to maintain, and to use "off the shelf" components everywhere so that (say) a clutch change would cost £10 in spares and take half an hour; but the problem is that you'd have to pay far more for the new car and accept lots of other compromises along the way such as increased weight / lower performance / reduced safety / reduced performance. Given that most cars nowadays are unlikely to have more than 1 clutch change during their life, and plenty of them none at all, then is that a reasonable compromise?

And of course it self regulates. If manufacturers swing too far the other way, so that their vehicles become completely impossible to maintain, then their residual values will plummet and folk won't buy them new because of the depreciation. So it is clearly in the interests of the manufacturer to make cars reasonably easy to maintain whilst keeping them affordable; and the ones with the best engineers will usually be the most successful.

As Nevil Shute said:

"An engineer is a man who can make for ten bob, what any bloody fool can make for a pound!"

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And the anonymous reply to that: "An engineer is a man who can make for a quid what any bloody fool thinks he can make for ten bob.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

By "artificial", I refer to the "product of human endeavour". That is to say, a scheme or plan to reduce maintainability. We acknowledge that the scheme exists, calling it a "trade-off between low cost and maintainability." I'd be hard placed to fault that component.

But there is also the temptation to reduce maintainability without significant cost savings, in order to deliberately reduce the lifetime of a product, and enhance the perceived value of a newer product. That can be combined with other measures, like the scrapage subsidy, and overly-strict checks etc.

That is wasteful, cynical and ultimately adds cost to the consumer, due to unnecessarily expensive failures and faults. Surely you hate getting ripped off, JT?

It seems strange and naive now, but until a couple of years ago, people actually believed that free market economics were self regulating!

But in the car sales market residual value is paramount, and that clearly depends on the lifetime of the product. Cars that last longer are worth more used, and therefore can command a higher value new. In a market as competitive as the car one it would be commercial suicide to deliberately reduce the used values of your designs.

This is borne out by rational, objective observation of the car market over the last 30 years ago. It's hard to think of any way in which older cars were actually better, rose tinted glasses or not. I would say that newer cars:

are cheaper
are faster
are more economical
are more reliable
are more comfortable
are safer
last longer
require less servicing
cost less to maintain & repair, over the same life cycle

I suppose you could argue that old cars looked better or had more character, but in all honesty that is very subjective, and it could clearly be argued that manufacturers design the looks of their cars in order to appeal to the majoroty of customers, so in that sense you would have to say that modern cars look "better" too.

I see this as a pretty amazing engineering achievement, not least when much of it has been achieved despite counter productive government meddling, eg imposition of catalytic convertors etc.

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By and large they are, as long as the public has proper access to the right information in order to make balanced decisions. Good job we have the internet!

So what further regulation would you introduce to the car industry in order to "improve" it?

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Yes, it would be interesting to find how many of the current car bosses have engineering qualifications, eh? None of those "top bankers" hauled in front the MPs yesterday had a single banking qualification amongst them... I'll do a check on this.

The goal is to have the industry embrace open design principles, to avoid vertical lock-in.
So let us make taxpayer funded purchases that favour those manufacturers who can present
evidence that they are actively pursuing open design principles that allow third-party
vendors to compete on price and quality.

This would include all public sector fleet buying (you know, NHS, coppers, army,
authorities etc.).

Of course, this would not just include cars - all equipment would be subject to the same
procurement rules. Makers could choose to ignore the rules, and suffer a penalty.

The idea is to measure the maintainability, and purchase in accordance with that,
which seems completely fair to me.

PS: that's just one idea for providing "performance feedback" to makers. There
are many others.

I was actually meaning could you give examples of parts that could reasonably be standardised (that aren't already) without adversely affecting the product or the viability of the manufacturer.

As to your public sector "rules", I would suggest that this process already happens, to a degree. For instance the Police switched to buying silver BMWs from white Rovers simply because of their better residuals. The colour makes them sell on more easily, and BMW have a reputation for excellent longevity due to their good engineering practices. If they were to cynically "de-engineer" their vehicles to shorten their lives in the way that you suggest then in time they would lose all their secondhand premium and the likes of the Police would stop buying them.

Something similar happened to Mercedes about 5-10 years ago. They reduced their engineering standards to make the sale of new cars more competitive and within a few years the problems with reliability ruined their residual values. It seems that they are now fighting a long slow uphill battle to recover their former good name for quality. To me this proves that what you are suggesting is commonplace is actually totally counter-productive to the long terrm profitability of a motor manufacturer, and therefore not something they would deliberately do.

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Oh, and let's not forget "greener" too! - both in terms of running and manufacturing!

YUP! And if that's what "getting ripped-off" means - I can't get enough of it!

No, YOUR goal is to have the industry embrace open design principles, to avoid vertical lock-in! The vast majority of the buying public sem quite happy with the way things are, thank you very much! Clearly they DON'T believe that the penalties of standardisation and "open" design are woth the advantages (which, I don't for a moment dispute, by the way, I just don't want to pay that price in terms of slowing down innovation).



So, you want the taxpayer to embrace your principles but you, yourself, drive the very type of car that has resulted from all the processes you so deplore?!

I've got a better idea! How about EVERYONE who wants that type of car goes out and buys them (or as close as they can get to them) so that the manufacturers get a TRUE indication of what the market wants - and everyone who's happy with things as they are, carries on as normal?

Oh, hang on a minute! That's what already happens!

Look! The mechanisms for regulating this are all there already! Back in the 50s, 60s and 70s Citroen built cars that were considered innovative. Up to a point, (front wheel drive, disc brakes, unitary construction, collapsible steering column, load-sensing rear brakes etc etc) these proved to be what the public wanted and the company did well. Indeed, many of these features have been pretty much universally adopted. Beyond that point, they went too far (in the opinion of the MAJORITY of the buying public) and they developed a reputation for poor maintainability, their fortunes faltered, and they were swallowed up by Peugeot.

Lancia and Alfa in the 80s built cars that rusted prematurely. They developed a poor reputation for durability, public stopped buying them. Lancia still don't sell in the UK as a result.

THE SYSTEM WORKS! The problem is that the equilibrium doesn't happen to be where YOU want it to be!

The cost and durability attributes are basically not true - service costs are rising at > 15% per annum, which is my point.
None of the others need be traded-off. Cheap-to-keep-running cars can remain cheap, fast, more reliable etc.

That's not strictly correct. The Met, for example, having chosen the Beemers as their new traf pol std vehicle discovered they weren't available in white. It was impractical to have them resprayed so you now see Met Beemers in several colours. I know this because a mate is a Sgt in traffic down there.

As for residuals, I'm not convinced that 1. resell value is given any much consideration when equipping the plod and 2. once the plod has had it it's low end auction fodder anyway.

Barkstar

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The difference between intelligence and stupidity is that intelligence has limits.

settle down everyone.... i have found the answer:

http://www.tuk-tuk.co.uk/

fill ya boots