..blah, blah per Daniel J. Stern

You miss the entire point of this failure mode, Dan.  The objective should
be design and fabrication perfection; ie, prevention of such failure modes,
so detection of these malfunctions need not be made by owners or users.

Certain advances in design and construction were made in tires, for
example.  Have you noticed how rare it is to have a flat these days with
tubeless tires?  With tubes, flats were commonplace.  No car company would
think of using tubes, even if tubes cost half as much as tubeless, which
they don't.

But since I have identified the problem of head gasket failure and given
the world the solution to same, have you seen progress in that direction?
Even by supposedly world reknown German "craftsmen" and "engineers" there
has not been one iota of progress towards a failsafe head design.

To reinterate: No water or oil should go through any openings in the head
gasket.  The only holes in the head gasket should be cylinder bore holes
and cylinder bolt holes.  Instead, the block and head should be two
separate, closed systems for coolant.  The radiator, pump and thermostat
all stay the same as it is now.  But, water does not flow vertically from
block to head.  Instead, the coolant flows from the front to the rear of
the block, exits the block and enters an external manifold.  Therein, it
traverses vertically to the rear of the head whereby it begins its
horizontal flow forward and exits to continue its cycle round and round.
To facilitate even cooling and distribution, so-called "water distribution"
tubes can be used.  Oil is likewise transferred via an external manifold.
The manifold would be a dual, cooland/oil manifold of cast aluminum.  There
are no flexible lines to leak or go bad.  This arrangement may require a
certain amount of h.p. derating, but it is well worth it in terms of
reliability.

Using the above design specification, head gaskets would still "fail"
occasionally, but the consequences would be trivial.  As you observe, head
gasket failure today in 99.99% of the cases is a slow leak of gas pressure.
Such a slow leak of gas would in no way be noticed in the above design as
such gas would merely pass harmlessly to another cylinder or to the
atmosphere.  It is the small gas leak into the water jacket (or oil
gallery) that causes the damage to today's cars.

As for me, I will not buy any new car which has a tell tale chip in it
design to reveal to the police all the information needed to put you in
prison.  This concludes my eludicating presentation for today, Daniel.