>>Must remember - open a business selling rubbish products that continually need repairs, establish a good customer base with people coming back to buy more and more of these rubbish products - huge profits from repairs, spare parts and all the new customers as the business builds up on the back of word of mouth recommendations for the rubbish products (but excellent spares and repairs)<<
As I say it works for VW (and others) in this country.
Otherwise please explain why the top 10 selling vehicles in this country never feature in the top 10 customer satisafction survey scores ?
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>>make loads of money serving and replacing cambelts etc.....then you will choose to have a VW dealership for example.>>
That's a remarkably bizarre piece of business logic...:-)
I was being a little sarcastic with my opinion of VW dealers - mainly from the continued list of complaints I hear from friends and family who continually are having warranty work completd (when they can the dealer to agree) or repairs at some of the most expensive labour rates in the local area.
Also you have to remember that VW UK have gone all out for the Company car market in the last few years with huge service intervals (that are as expensive as normal intervals elsewhere) followed by big bills when the poor paying punter picks up a so called 3 year old fully serviced vehicle. My logic was mainly dictated by comments on this forum.
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You can't stop progress, and I for one wouldn't want to. If ever anyone says to me "They don't make cars like they used to." my reply is "Thank goodness for that."
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L\'escargot.
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Off course that is correct - cars have to improve to remain competitive (apologies stunorthants because we are moving away from your initial question - so tell me to stop if you want).
My argument is the manner in which makers try and improve. VW have tried to move themselves upmarket - mainly as a result of the threat from MB and BMW moving down market with the A class etc. IMO they did this by leveraging technologies that were initially designed for Audi - the gamble paid of at first because it did not dent Audi's character much, although now people are asking why buy an Audi when a Skoda is practically the same car. As a result if they can afford it they buy BMW instead of Audi - market figures reveal this.
The thing is VW could not afford to use all the technology at it's true cost or they would price themslevs out of the market - so this was done at A cost. In doing so they set peoples expectations, charged a premium but then let them down. If you review any of the auto studies on the internet it will demonstrate that in terms of cost of ownership versus PRODUCT QUALITY, VW sits high (cost) in a mass market segment with makers such as Nissan and Subaru and Cheverolet for product quality. Where as companies such as Honda, Toyota and to an extent Volvo produce higher Product Quality vehicles with lower overall cost of ownership.
(No doubt people will disagree with thsi as I was recently reading another article that discussed how 'pre-programmed' people are when it comes to car brands.)
NB: - these are facts derived from auto and marketing studies on the internet explained in my terms to simplfy
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>>for example.>>
It wouldn't have mattered which manufacturer you named - the logic would never, ever have impressed your bank manager...:-)
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What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
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I think if the figures of privately bought new cars as opposed to all new car orders ( including fleet purchases ) were compared, I think the sales figures would reflect the better cars.
Ford and Vauxhall only sell so many cars because they sell to hire car firms etc at huge discounts.
Oh and on my shelf life comments earlier - If you bought 4 cars in 1990, say a Ford Sierra, Renault 21, Mercedes 190 and a Toyota Carina, did 250,000 miles in each car, which cars would you expect to still be running original engines, gearboxes and most other main components?
Id bet first on the Mercedes, second on the Toyota. And yet when new they were all about the same size with similar specs ( if not price ).
The reason is that neither the Ford nor the Renault were expected to last that long, whereas the Merc and Toyota were engineered to last far longer.
Mercedes may have lost their way recently ( thankyou America! ) but back then, if it needed 3 bolts, Mercedes used 5 and it shows by how many 190's you can still find for sale in good working order, whereas, try find a high mileage Renault 21 that you would want to rely on!
Toyota is proof if any that you can make durable and reliable cars and still make a profit, so there is no reason that Ford or Vauxhall cant, they just wont because thats not how they do business.
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Oh and on my shelf life comments earlier - If you bought 4 cars in 1990, say a Ford Sierra, Renault 21, Mercedes 190 and a Toyota Carina, did 250,000 miles in each car, which cars would you expect to still be running original engines, gearboxes and most other main components?
How many people want a car to last 250,000 miles? And how many people want a 16 year old car? I want to keep up with modern styling, performance, technology and goodies. The rate of progress of car design is such that I wouldn't want to be driving around now in a 1990s car. Compared with a 2006 car a 1990 car is old hat in every respect. As an example, in a 2006 car you can corner at speeds that would have you off the road in a 1990 car.
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L\'escargot.
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Safety is a good example of this as well.
I remeber watching 5th gear (I know - I was bored) and they crashed a new design espace into a 15 or 20 year old one. The results were disturbing if you were in the older a car.
Hot knife through butter was the term used I think.
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Rover were developing a camless version of the K Series, using computer controlled valves IIRC.
The rest is history but the Chinese may pick up and run with it.
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Cambelts were introduced to be quieter than chains, but more importantly, as run of the mill engines became more powerful, to more precisely, and for longer, maintain timing over the stretchy chains. Clearly work has been done with chains of late and manufacturers are returning to the longer lived chain system.
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Some cars don't mind if the cambelt snaps, as the valves don't reach the pistons.
why can't they all be like that (or at least the petrols)? No engineer worth his salt would allow such a common a single point of failure to destroy an engine unless it's part of his brief.
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The independent round the corner was rebuilding an Alfa 156 V6 engine the other day.
He said the owner had left the belts in too long and one had snapped, lunching a bank of cylinders. He spoke highly of Alfa 4-cylinder engines (chain cam) which he said were bulletproof. He was doing the job for £2.5k, more or less the value of the car. I imagine an Alfa main dealer would charge more.
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He's not the brightest independant then!
V6 engines are much rarer than the 4 for cambelt failure. £2.5K is a rip off it should be much cheaper than that.
4 pot Alfa's haven't had cam chains since early 1996 when they went 16V.
If people think cam chains don't fail thn they are living in cloud cuckoo land. I've done quite a few over the years & they are major amounts of work, fair more than a cam belt. Ask someone with a V6 Sharalaxy, they break cam chains between 70 & 100K miles & cost massive amounts of money to fix.
Given a belt costs £20-£30 & costs around £150 to change then over the 2-3 years it takes to cover 40K or so then the aggregated costs are minimal.
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He's not the brightest independant then!
£2.5K is a rip off it should be much cheaper than that. 4 pot Alfa's haven't had cam chains since early 1996 when they went 16V.
I don't know if he's the brightest, but he makes sense to me, does a very good job and never ever rips anyone off.
An engine rebuild costs what it costs - depends on what new parts are needed and how much they cost, surely? But perhaps I misunderstood him on the subject of 4 cylinder Alfa engines. I didn't know they had gone over to belts with the advent of 4-valve head. So perhaps he just meant they are easier to change, therefore more likely to be changed.
Chains fail of course, but they tend to get quite noisy first, giving warning that they need changing. Belts just go without warning.
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Some cars don't mind if the cambelt snaps, as the valves don't reach the pistons. why can't they all be like that (or at least the petrols)? No engineer worth his salt would allow such a common a single point of failure to destroy an engine unless it's part of his brief.
Something to do with very high compression, deep-breathing efficient modern engines with shaped pistons and four inclined valves, surely?
Bring back side-valves that can never touch pistons!
And with them, bring back 1.5 litre cars that put out 32 BHP and do 18 mpg.
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When are we going to get pnumatically operated valves as seen in F1 for the last 20 years? I mean it only took about 7-8 years before semi-automatic gearboxes started catching on in road cars.
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Some early OHC cars, like Bentleys, had a camshaft driven by a vertical shaft and 45 degree bevel gears.
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And a fine clamour they made.
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If you think bevel gear drive to the cams is noisy, have a listen to an engine with a spur gear train to the cams. I think some Honda V4 motorcycle engines have this, and some racing engines. Is the V8 Cosworth one of these?
They really are noisy, with a high pitched thrashing sound that is hard to damp out.
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Early Porsche flat-four competition engines had spur gears I believe, and were noisy in this way as well as very expensive to repair.
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No engineer worth his salt would allow such a common a single point of failure to destroy an engine unless it's part of his brief.
You're surely not suggesting that some engines are deliberately designed so that belt failure results in damage to other parts? Failure of many things in a car (and in most types of mechanical designs) will result in secondary associated failures.
Pistons touching valves following belt failure is purely the result of having large valve openings in the pursuit of improved engine running characteristics. The benefit to the many that don't fail far outweighs the detriment to the few that do fail.
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L\'escargot.
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When are we going to get pnumatically operated valves as seen in F1 for the last 20 years?
Never I hope. Whats the single most common failures of F1 cars?
Hydraulics and pnumatics.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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My complaint over cam belt changes is that it involves considerable expense on the 2 cars I have.
Both are "engine out" change belt, put engine back - the belts were in the order of £50 (from memory) the in-out part cost £300 on 1 and £200 on the other.
In moving to cam belts could some thought not have been put into reducing the cost of cambelt changes. In some cars a cambelt change is a few nuts and bolts and 30 minutes labour.
Mind you £300 engine in/out seems a bargain compared to some VWs where the bumper comes off to change a headlamp bulb @a cost of £100+.
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I know it's vital that cambelts need to be fitted properly but it strikes me that manufacturers could do more to make the changing thereof much easier, with an easy locking tool so anyone capable of renewing a set of brake pads could do a cambelt with confidence.
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