Indeed, problems like that seem to keep coming back in the automotive
industry.  Volvo had problems with it's aluminum block straight-6
engines when that design was released in the mid-1990s.

Sure seems that way.

Indeed.  There was a time in the post-WWII where GM was one of the best
engineering and manufacturing companies in the world.

Hyundai is on the right track with long standard warranties.  By taking
on a long warranty they take on the costs associated with engineering
and manufacturing problems.  That way the costs are born by the people
who were responsible for the problems in the first place.

Most of the repairs (excepting normal wear items) which are needed by
any modern properly maintained vehicle in the 37k-100k mile time frame
are a result of poor engineering and/or poor manufacturing controls.
Honda and most auto makers sidesteps this basic fact by putting those
costs onto the customer.  The customer didn't make the mistakes.
Managers, engineers and/or factory workers caused most of the problems,
yet the customer is one stuck paying the bill.  Of course customers get
very angry about this.

GM lost it's way first and foremost by getting arrogant; and secondarily
by letting the finance people have the upper hand on most internal
decisions.  Honda is in great danger of making that same kind of
long-term mistakes.

One of the crazy things in the modern world is that most companies spend
massive fortunes on advertising to gain customers, but then treat the
customers like dog-doo once said same customer have put their money on
the table.  I would love to see an automobile company have the guts to
cut it's advertising budget as needed to fund an immediate increase of
the warranty period for all customers, INCLUDING THOSE WHO HAD ALREADY
BOUGHT A CAR.   Imagine the positive buzz if Honda announced tomorrow
that effectively immediately all Honda car purchases would be covered by
a five year, 75k mile comprehensive warranty and that in order to fund
the slight increase in costs to Honda from this change they would be
reducing television advertising buys slightly to cover the potential costs.

If one is to believe Honda's hype/image, this increased warranty period
should cost the company almost nothing.

John

Since I work as a mechanical engineer myself, I can tell you from first hand
experience that the majority of the quality problems with *our* products are
indeed due to our accountants preventing us from spending the appropriate
amount of funds for better materials and tooling. It is VERY difficult to
deal with this on a daily basis as an engineer. Just this week I did some
extensive analysis on a product of ours and clearly demonstrated that it is
HIGHLY likely to fail in the real-world application. Mainly due to the fact
that my superiors insist on using a "cheap material" to help increase the
profit margin on the product. So when customers start returning these parts
I am DEFINITELY going to say 'I told you so!!!' Funny how we don't have the
money to do things right the first time, but we've somehow got the money to
do things over, and over and OVER in order to straighten out the screw ups
that COULD have been prevented up front. It's just insanity the way that a
lot of companies operate.

It's true that Honda is on course to become another GM if they don't wake up
and change their business model in a very timely fashion.

Ron M.