Originally Posted by FRiSson
I think what you are forgetting is that automotive engineering has changed radically over the past 20 years. Automakers, lead by the Japanese, have figured out the difference between robustness and resilience. Robustness was the traditional path. You made an object heavier and stronger than it needed to be in order to resist powerful forces. That's why you find 1950's car fenders in junkyards with very little wear, just surfaces pits and pockets of rust. The irony is that robustness is not the ideal quality in a mobile object that endures millions of stress events in its lifetime. The reason is two-fold, you want an object to absorb and distribute stress, not concentrate force and become brittle. Secondly, there is a cost, both in resources and in wear in making an complex, mobile object more robust than it needs to be.
Then, starting in the 1980's with the gas crisis, car makers suddenly had to get the weight out of vehicles while simultaneously cutting emissions and keeping prices low in a highly inflationary environment. The results were bad, cheaper lighter parts, and new poorly-tested fastener systems frequently failed prematurely. This damaged the public's perception of light cars and nearly ruined the American auto industry.
However, the Japanese learned smarter. They built plenty of shoddy cars at first, but they looked at what went wrong. The result was that they figured out how to make cars last by building in resiliency. The result is that parts flex, attachments seem simplistic and flimsy, but in reality, they hold up for a really long time. The plastics and fasteners can take a lot of abuse and the lightweight sheet metal actually lasts, even when it has taken some dents and creases. The result is cars that are lightweight and resilient. That is why there are so many Camrys with their lightweight metal, cheap fasteners and huge expanses of plastic, still on the road. The Europeans have not learned the lesson as well. Their cars, while generally well-constructed have gained huge amounts of weight and complexity. A smallish BMW now weighs as much as one of the iron behemoths that Detroit made by the millions in the 60's and 70's. Now they are trying to cut weight by adding lightweight steel, aluminum and carbon fiber. But this just adds to the costs of the vehicles.
So, don't make the mistake of feeling flex and give in a vehicle and deciding that it is cheap and poorly made. In fact, it reflects decades of smart quality engineering, that has created cars with greater resilience and longevity with cheaper, simpler assembly, more easily replaced parts, and that are much more economical to operate.
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