Automobiles designed to fail?

Question

One thing I have heard mentioned in the past by mechanics that car's, notably cars that were made in the eighties by american auto makers were engineered....to break down after a certain milelage...usually around 100K miles. Can anyone verfiy this or is this rumor just a product of the piss-poor automobiles produced in that era?

Answer 1

american cars are the wrose to purchase. which is why i only choose to buy foreign cars like toyotas. ill never forget hearing someone telling that there toyota has over 300k miles on it!! after that i was hooked. but yes i do beleive that some car companies so set to have so much life in a car. but it also depends on how well you take care of it. plus it wont last forever, and if it did the car companies would not be staying in business

Answer 2

Well they sort of did that , - though not really intentinally,-(they did plan a "normal life span" that was a little shorter than before).. But this is about the time they started designing with computers, and they left out as much as they could without making the car fail before it got to the showroom! The foreign car competiton was not too great, and american manufacturers were sort of "lazy' in what they "put out" also! The "cheaper" cars were "just that", -- the quality and "longevity" was somewhat compromised!! However there are still millions of "80s" cars still driving around, and these are the ones that were taken car of properly! A "weak" car doesn't allow much "laziness" in maiantainance, - or disreguard for service intervals!!

Don't care for you terminology much, but yes they were a lot less quality than they should have produced!! I have an 81 Ford pu, 81 Mercury wagon, and 83 Chev. pu that still work ok (though the Ford leaves a whole lot to be desired)!

I just read the ones that came in before me. I disagree! They definately could have done better, but they "shot their wad" on making the car look "racy and modern", and disreguarded quality -- turn back 20 to 30 years, the mid 50-s were great quality and the early 60s were the same! Was that purely an accident?? And by the way nobody "scoffs" at the body lines even now!

Answer 3

That's true at that time American cars were designed to last 100,000 miles and sometimes not even that and to fix them yourself was BS.and some of them still are they have fancy screws and bolts so that the home mechanic get frustrated because doesn't have the right tools to do the job himself and
end up taking the car to the dealer where he's going to be charged an arm and a leg that's why Japanese cars where the number one people's choice because they last a long time are reliable don't give you much trouble and very high quality
(if you don't believe me open the hood of a 4 and 6 cylinders
American cars and trucks and most likely you'll find a Japanese
engine in it) that will make you think

Answer 4

The evolution of the internal combustion engine is pretty much complete. The internals do not break any more. Up until the seventies it was common to 'overhaul' an engine at 100k or so. Now most engines will run 'forever'. The problem is the parts. In an effort to keep manufacturing costs down and profits up, cars are designed to be disposable. For people who want to keep their new cars for many miles and years, you're forced to replace timing chains/belts beginning usually around 120k. Other than that, alternators, starters, emissions related products, hoses, belts, radiators, hvac systems will all fail eventually and have to be replaced. I still know people driving Merkur's because they keep on top of them. Others have sent Accords to the boneyard after 150k because their timing belts snapped.

Answer 5

1st there is a thing call designed obsolescence. Refrigerators started this. Early models never broke so manufactures designed a life span in to them. Think about it Refrigerators built in the 50 and earlier are still working but 60, 70 and now most 80's models are broken.

2nd cars have certain amount of this. However you must consider that cars in the 70's broke at about 80k, cars of the 60 went about 60k, cars of the 50's went maybe 40k and on down before repairs became excessive. so these cars may be piss poor by today's standards but they were better than the generation before them.

Many (not all) Asian cars are better not because of ability to make a better car, anyone can do that, Asian companies think many years ahead, 5, 10, 20 years. US companies only care about today's stock prices. CEO's are paid by results today so the rape their companies to post high numbers today, they won't be around in 5 years so why should they care, they have a huge golden parachute. GM is the prime example of this, the CEO blames legacy cost (insurance, payroll, retirement, etc), that's crap. If you look at GM's debt developed over the last 10 years and compare it to the amount paid out in stock dividends in the same time period, Hello it's almost the same. GM financed its dividend payments to its share holders so the upper management could get their huge payouts. US auto manufactures will continue to fail until the measuring stick used to pay upper management is changed.

Answer 6

The quality of automobiles built in the US took a down turn in 1968, it is my belief that this was the beginning of "planned obsolescence". If a car was made that could be repaired by it's owner and the parts were of high quality that would lead to lower sales in the auto industry, so .... Ask yourself this question; what is the increase in mpg on today's cars than it was twenty years ago, very little with the exception of the gas/ electric units that have recently hit the market. WHY?

Answer 7

no, how can you put a timer on metal. in the late 70's and through most of the 80' the economy was down, automakers didnt have the funds to research the technology to produce better fuel systems and had they made a better car the general public may not have been able to afford it. reliable fuel injection wasn't in production until the early 90's.
how do you expect a 2001 chevy malibu to look in 20 years?

Answer 8

Car manufacturers are in the business to make money, not making reliable cars. They need to make the cars reliable enough so the customers will feel like replacing them before it falls apart, but not much longer than that.

They *could* overengineer the car so it lasts several decades, but the cost would be prohibitive, or they won't earn much. Mercedes in the 80's are that way: overengineered beasts that lasts forever. In the 90's they tried cost cutting, quality dropped so fast that they had to merge with Chrysler to survive. (Well, that's one view of it.)

Answer 9

The average automobile is designed to have a "useable service life" of 10 years. If automobiles were designed "perfect", the manufacturers wouldn't be able to stay in business. Think about that.

Answer 10

Yes they are, maybe not fail but wear out. Chrysler actually won an engineering award for designing parts with a specific life to them. In other words, your vehicle is likely to have problems when the warranty runs out.