Quote:
Originally Posted by Cephas
I got bad news for ya'... Co-developed platforms are basically where everything is going. It's already been this way for some time. Yamaha building motors for Volvo, Volvo building motors for Ford, Subaru building a motor (and most of the rest of the car) for Toyota, Toyota slapping a body kit on a Z4 and calling it a Supra... Lots of economic reasons for this, and it won't slow down as long as car companies continue to take financial interests in each other.
That said, the FA20 hasn't been that bad, after the early model year woes were over. Nothing like the trail of disaster that, say, Nissan's QR25DE motor was, at significantly lower power numbers. The boxer is unlikely to be as rock-solid as some of Toyota's native power plants, sure. But it also makes a lot more juice, sounds loads better, and lowers the CG of the car as an added bonus.
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The co designed and built specialty cars go back a long long way. Joint ventures are often the only way things got built. As surprising number of cars over the decades used a different companies engines or chassis but unless you followed those models you never even knew.
Hell, at some points they even made whole new companies just to do joint ventures.
The FA20 is a great little engine but so many just hate it and want something else because... well in many cases just because it is a boxer.
As you said there were some brief and limited problems but those are what people remember not the majority that never complained because they had no issues.
Back to DSM as another example of that phenomenon. They had one engine for two model years that might have crank walk issues but if you listen to the internet it was every engine they every made that was going to self destruct. The reality was it was somewhere in the hundreds but it is such a common myth it is meme worthy.
