I had a 1998 Olds Intrigue that shut off th engine if it thought you were out of oil. In my case I was taking a ramp from I-290 East in Amherst to I-990 North at about 85 mph and had all the oil plastered against the right side of the pan. If they were going to make a car that shut off the engine in that situation, they should have put baffles in the oil pan.
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That must be a common problem w/engineering teams. In high tech, projects tend to be scheduled to last about 6 month, but usually run 9 - 12 months in practice.
Reminds me, one time there were four projects all scheduled by the Engineering VP to take 6 months, running concurrently. I said, sorry, 6 not possible, but should be doable in 8. The other project teams agreed to the 6 month estimate. Mine went according to plan, took 8 months . In trying to hurry the process, making unrealistic assumptions etc, the other 3 teams tied themselves in a big knot, and ended up taking 12 months, lots of screaming from marketing. Youād think Iād get a 4 month vacation for hitting the target schedule, but no, on to the next project ā¦ lol ā¦
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Yes, it is very common. We tend to under estimate the time required. But you canāt assume;
Today, I Shall Invent!
Ideas donāt work that way.
Another classic failure is the GM Diesel. There is a guy in my town who owns 3-4 of these and collects them. He has reworked all the shortcomings besides the complete lack of power. Once fixed, he says they are very solid, reliable, and simple but have NO POWER although the mileage is good.
He said one time a big jacked up truck decided to randomly āroll coalā on him as he was driving a āgrandma car.ā So he pulled up next to that truck, put it in neutral, and floored it, returning the favor. The guy in the truck looked completely shocked.
Yeah, diesels without turbos are epically slow. I was going down the freeway, a Mercedes 190D pulled on doing about 35 as he merged. I passed, drove another 3 miles, and he finally caught up and passed me. Took him a while to get up to speedā¦
Iāve heard 190D acceleration described as glacial.
Yeah, I guess you can burn the used cooking oil, transmission fluid, or whatever in these as well as the GM models due to their extreme simplicity. This has to be filtered of course. The guy with the GMās takes in all kinds of old fluids people are wanting to get rid of to mix with the Diesel from the gas station. He runs it through some type of gravity filter and adds a few gallons each time and has not experienced any problems. He told me that most of these GMs were bought with blown head gaskets and then he studs the block and does other mods to fix the initial shortcomings. He also says that some of the later models were pretty good as far as reliability is concerned but the noise, smoke, and lack of acceleration coupled with the disaster of the earlier models doomed Diesel for GM and the US public for decades.
You typically used a calendar rather than a stopwatch to measure acceleration in those cars.
Actually . . . 240D acceleration is glacial 
I drove a few Eldorado and Toronado diesels back in the day. They werenāt exactly quickā¦ but then most cars werenāt so quick in 1980. 0-60 in 10 seconds was considered āfastā. These cars would move OK.