Detroit?

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I remember seeing the horrible quality of American cars in the late 70's and early 80's. An example would be the Chevy Vega, which actually had a good start in it's model life, but was plagued with problems later on. My neighbor bought a '77 wagon and within a year, the paint was peeling off in large sheets and to make matters worse, the bearings in the engine were failing. He spent a great deal of time at the dealer trying to get it warranty repaired, but had little success. Eventually it threw a rod on the freeway and he just left it there...he was so disgusted. That was less than 3 years after he bought it...
 
Quality problems still exist today. While engines are longer lived, the cars themselves fall apart. While not exactly US made, a friend of mine bought a BMW brand new and within 2 years the windshield moulding had rotted. They wanted $1800 to fix. This was 3 years ago. He let it go and bought a Mustang.
 

That's usual for a BMW. It must have been a rogue car or older than 'brand new' after shipping and storage in damp conditions.
BMW's are not associated with rusting here, they are not perfect mind with electrical issues and some cylinder head problems.
 
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If you want to see a long slow slide into oblivion look no further than British Leyland and the British motorcycle industry, oh yes and ship building, steel making .....
Quite depressing.
 
A story about the Vega's design and development process. I hope this is apocryphal, but...

During the Vega's development, cars were driven around a test track. If parts failed too soon, they were beefed up, and if the predicted failure time was too long, they were shaved down or they used lower strength materials or cheaper processing. Design life was 50,000 miles, and the goal was to get the car, like the one-horse shay, to collapse into a pile of powder at 50,000.0001 miles. Ford, with the Pinto did not do anything quite so obvious, but the engineers at Ford officially told management that the Pinto's gas tank would burst in a minor rear-end collision, and the likelihood of a serious fire was quite high. The managers decided that the cost -- about $5 -- too much: it would be cheaper to deal with the wrongful death lawsuits.
 
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The irony of the Pinto and it's fuel tank, was that the placement was no different than the Maverick (Comet)/Mustang (Falcon) and no more susceptible to bursting into flames than most other cars in a comparable collision. The media hype that revolved around that was similiar to Nader's crusade againt the Corvair in it's mythical rollover abilities...which in all my years turning wrenches, had never seen.
 
Njaco said:
really, is anything made of quality anymore? Not many things I have found....
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No, not for joe public... Some are better than others but, most have flaws. look at JD Power.
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The only 'quality'motorcycles I have seen are specials like Rickman and Dresda. They use the best components available, but they were niche market machines.
 
GrauGeist said:
A friend of mine years ago, had a MG. He loved that little car but used to say terrible things about the English and their wiring.

Of course, the wiring on my '79 BMW 320i was not much better...
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The MG, Jaguar, Triumph sports cars were a lost opportunity in America. They simply were not built well enough.
 

Nader was a technological illiterate. But then so was much of his readership/membership. He had a drawing in the book showing the swing axle dropping to 38 degrees ( if memory serves) but it would only do that if the shock absorber snapped in half or broke free of it's mount on either end. Something he failed to mention. What he also failed to mention was (or was fooled by a Ford Falcon propaganda film) was that by the time a Corvair reached enough speed to leave the curve traveling backwards, it competitors had already plowed straight off the curve going forward at a lower speed.

Since the media of the time (and even now) barely had/has enough mechanical know-how to plug in an electric type writer ( or their cell phones). See the great "unintended acceleration by Audi's" fiasco.
 
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