In what way are those two different things? Surely making cars shoddily is one way of ensuring they will have a short life. But OK, I guess it's possible to make cars other than shoddily yet still have a short life.
Anything which increases the rate at which customers renew their cars must be good news for manufacturers, surely.
They tried that in the 70s. It failed. It faield because in a market of shoddily built cars it only takes one manufacturer to crack and produce decent cars and car buyers vote with their wallets. The US motor industry was slower to realise this than the European motor industry (as were the Brits) hence the Japanese dented but did not destroy the European car makers because the EU makers (other than Renault) faught back by improving quality and maintaining a stylistic advantage over the rice bowls.
In the US they simply kept lashing together cheap cars with poor quality components and now they are going down the tubes, losing sales to better built EU and Japanese vehicles.
You started off claiming that cars are made "Ever more cheaply and shoddily" which is pure bullshit, and the sort of silly comment that could only be made by someone who has never seen a car made before 1990.
Your comment really doesn't warrant a full and detailed analysis because it's so clearly utter, fuckwitted, bollocks.
Doubtless that's true - but you claim (in my view, wrongly) that this is what they're doing. And also claim that a "short life" is in their interest. These two things are not the same.
No - volume of units sold is not the same as profit or enhancing share-holder value. If you buy a duff product, I assume you buy something better next time - even if dearer to buy - in the expectation of lower overall costs. If a manufacturer decides to make a "quality" product, and price it accordingly, they are likely to build market share, enjoy stronger margins and strengthen their bottom line on a sustainable basis.
Think about the car makers who have gone bust in the last decade or two, and try to recall what their reputation for quality was like. And think about, say, Skoda. Surviving and thriving (relatively) as a result of focussing on quality. Ditto the Japanese producers.
You could also try recalling how often you saw cars broken down on the hard shoulder 30+ years ago. That sight's pretty rare these days, IME.
HTH
I disagree re. Renault. Their spares were more expensive than UK cars, but ther rarely needed them, IME.
Renault also deserve heaps of praise for pioneering so many things. E.g. pricing inclusive of all the things the UK used to charge on as extras; introducing hatchbacks; re-introducing FWD; introducing amazingly comfy seats; turbo charging. I think the french tax-payer did a good job for us :-)))
OK, I can relate to that.
And this too.
But your two paragraphs above confirm that there was such a trend, and that in the US it lasted virtually to the present, so how can it be bullshit? And actually you edited out my comma between "cheaply" and "and", which indicated that "ever more" applies only to the "cheaply" and not also to "shoddily". Fair enough, perhaps "shoddily" was a bit too unkind, but cars have been getting cheaper in real terms, i.e. the price to salary ratio has been going down, is that not true?
Do you take me for a youngster? My clock started a lot further back than that. I started driving in the early 70s, so I've seen quite a few cars made before 1990! Just not very recently. :-)
Relatively speaking I'd say it was rather more common in the 70s to come across a 20 year old car than it is now. Admittedly, it was probably less common in the 90s, so I dare say we agree that cars were made more shoddily in the 70s than in the 90s. Perhaps things have improved a bit since then, but I wouldn't like to speculate on how many of this year's cars will still be around in 2029.
You're too kind. I'm almost surprised you managed those few paragraphs of sensible talk up there, but I thank you for them.
Well, leaving aside the small matter that in your view my claim is wrong, I don't understand why they are not the same, or don't fit together as part of the same strategy. If they make them shoddily, and this shortens their life, and if people will as a result buy their next car sooner than otherwise, then their interest is served because it increases their sales per year. Perhaps not individually, taking Mr Firth's point, but at least collectively.
Perhaps you're reading more into the emotive "shoddy" than I intended. The product isn't going to be "duff", it's just not going stay pukka forever. If the customer is dissatisfied because it doesn't last quite as long as he expected, he'll buy his next car from someone else, and I suspect this is likelier than deciding to buy a more expensive car next time, let alone from the same maker. Then he'll find it's just as bad, and might return to the first maker next time.
Perhaps, but at the end of the day the customer will want value for money, and may well be quite happy to pay less for a car which lasts for a period he judges to be just about right, than to pay more for a car built to last longer, if his annualised amortised cost of ownership goes down as a result.
I've not really been following them. Can you run some names by me?
Ah yes, Skoda were brilliant. They made a big thing in their advertising about their *bad* reputation and somehow managed to convice people that their bad reputation was obviously exaggerated and their cars in real life could't possibly be as bad as all that. But in the end they competed on price. They were cheaper to buy new than similar other new cars, I believe. [I've never driven one, the closest I got was buying my 2nd hand, now 8 year old, 206 from a Skoda dealer.]
I'll give you that.
You might want to check your automotive history. For a start, it was the Japanese that included stuff classed as extras.
What FWD and hatchback Renault models are you referring to?
Look at those goalposts move.
BTW, a comma does not perform the function that you seem to imagine it does.
ollocks. All Renaults self destruct around the driver.
More 'ollocks. Renault have stuck on some tat and in doign so they were years behind other European makers. The only marque to continue with the "everything is extra" philosophy was BMW. Even they have stopped.
Absolute drivel. Citroen, Aston Martin, Jensen, Austin all introduced hatchbacks before Renault.
More drivel. It never went away.
More bollocks, Citroen were there long before Renault with Jaguar and Rover both beating Renault by several decades.
No. That was invented by Alfred Büchi in 1905. They were increasingly common in the 1920s and routinelu used in aircraft during WWII. The first use of a turbocharger in a road-goign vehicle was in 1938 and the first manufacturer to fit turbos to production cars was General Motors, in 1962.
A good job at ripping off mugs, yes.
Just answer the question, kiddo. Have cars been getting cheaper or not?
It does when it's what I meant it to. If it doesn't mean the same to you, that's tough.
Its presence or absence should affect the meaning of the phrase, i.e. it must perform *some* function, don't you think? Hence "ever more cheaply and shoddily" ought *not* to mean exactly the same as "ever more cheaply, and shoddily". The version without the comma would clearly mean that the "ever more" applies to both "cheaply" and "shoddily", but the version with it, I claim, can mean something more like "shoddily and ever more cheaply".
But hey, let's not get sidetracked. If I originally put it in only by accident, don't expect me to own up.
Fleet life for a car is about 3 years, so about 1/5th to 1/7th of total life. Less if person that had it moves on to a new firm or gets push, then it's up for sale. It's the cheapest 3 years of a cars life, no MOT, no major services, all none wear repairs done under warranty. Low costs, fleet sale discounts and tax offset a lot of the deprecation. What it has done is push makers into 3 year warranty and may have allowed many makers to reduce durability of cars. Sometimes they come unstuck like Ford did on Mondeo Diesel cam belts, 60K mile change in the book, just what fleet demanded so 2nd owner gets the nice big bill and suffers downtime for changing it. Then they started failing, revised to 45K miles and then 35K.
Vans and commercial vehicles have a longer fleet life.
Oh look, it's Humpty Dumpty.
And the Japs agreed to quotas/ European content. Renault presumably fought back by buying Nissan?
I don't dispute that - and their paintwork was brill compared with ours.
But my comment, as you will see, was specifically about the European makers. I was disagreeing with the claim that Renault didn't fight back. And specifically, by the early 70s they were including all kinds of things in the standard price. I know, cos I was buying at the time and did my homework. I accept that some luxury cars may have offered the same at that time, but we're talking here about the mass (allegedly "shoddy") market.
4 (the first 5 door hatch) and later (esp. significant for being a larger car) the 16 (sloping hatch). Of course, the mini also had FWD, but launched at the same time as R4.< snip >
I understand your arguments, but my experience (I always buy young, high-mileage ex-fleet cars at auction) is that the 3 years I then hold them incurs an average cost of less then 1k per year - including all maintenance / service / repairs / MOT as well as depreciation. Cleary, YMMV :-)))
I suspect you understand perfectly.
As previosuly, higher unit sales doesn't necessarily serve the maker's interest.
What do you mean by "more expensive". Are you including maintenance and repairs?
He may - because the first maker has learned its lesson and raised quality and value for money.
You're forgetting depreciation. In the mass market we're discussing, it correlates with reliability / repair costs.
Nearly all BL's marques for starters...! Ditto Rootes group.
Only to the extent that price is always an issue with everything. Much more significantly, they turned around their business through R+D, updated technology, new plantys and, of course, their purchase by VW (or should that be Porsche :-)).
No - they were cheaper because they weren't very good or exciting.
The fuzz drive them round here !!
Thanks.
I'd forgotten about the Renault 4.
Well I had several - and none of them did. I recall a 12TS which I confess had little value by the time I had clocked up 120k miles - but I still found a buyer!
I don't consider radio, HRW, in-car heater, etc to be "tat" (we're talking late 60s / early 70s, right?). Admittedly, cloth seats were extra then - even for Renault..
I can't claim to recall all main-land europe specs from nearly 40 years ago, but for sure the British made mass-market cars were the ones lagging behind in those days.
I woudn't classify AML or Jenson as mass market! And what Austin was a Hatch back? Perhaps we need to distinguish between estate and hatch.
So who kept making them, in the 50s and 60s, and succesfully selling into the mass market?
Again, you seem fixed on the up-market cars. Your "several decades" claim suggests you're talking Jag and Rover on the 30s and 40s. I'm far too young to be familiar with those!
Just a couple of US-market sports cars? Sounds like we're at cross-purposes.
It was Renault's F1 success with turbos which got the euro-market to grasp the potential.
Some would say that the Citroen Traction was the first 5 door hatch.
My experience has been that Renault drivers fool themselves about the unreliability of the damn things. I've witness the disintegration of:
Renault 4 Renault 5 Renault Clio Renault 14 Renault Fuego Renault 21
And the respective owners continued to insist these were "reliable" cars despite them being hauled in for repairs every single month of their life. The 21 was most impressive. Everythign inside fell off over a period of 18 months. The driver wanted another one, the fleet manager refused to have another one in the fleet.
Why confine yourself to the 50s/60s? Renault have been building s**te cars before and after those dates. And I think you will find that heaters were standard in most cars in the 1950s, not an optional extra. HRW was also common and I refuse to believe that Renault were the first to include any of these as standard.
You keep saying this, I can't see a shred of proof to support your statement.
You didn't stipulate "mass market", you're simply moing goalposts (again).
A40.
Or arse and elbow?
Triumph, BMC (Austin, Morris, Wolseley, Riley, Vanden Plas).
I see you're trying to weasel in that "mass market" again. The front wheel drive BMC models outsold Renault in huge numbers in the UK.
Citroen were not "up-market". Again, you seem to be tryng to rig the vote.
So what? You were talking in absolutes.
No. The Cutlass and the Corvair were not sports cars they were saloons.
Your attempt to slide out by pointing at the US market is noted, you placed no restriction on your previous claims you claimed that Renault were the first to use turbos. They weren't, they weren't even the first to use turbos on competition cars.
Sounds like you're trying to do anything you can to make your initial collection of howlers and errors sound less like Renault fanboid trash.
No it wasn't.
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