Rod, that’s an excellent question. And that balance of where one man’s individual freedom of expression begins to supercede another man’s right to not be endangered lies with each individual state to determine. The feds regulate the manufacturers via the Interstate Commerce clause, but once the vehicles get into the hands of the consumer the states take over.
What’s right is that it’s up to the states. What’s wrong is that most states don’t address the issue. Some have no inspection requirements at all, others are rediculous about it. But I maintain that leaving it in the hands of teh states is the correct and constitutional thing to do.
Let’s see, I paid about $11,000 for my Corolla in the early 90’s. So a Corolla now should cost – if it was the same price, except adjusted for inflation – about $18,000.
You’re ignoring variable cost productivity. The variable costs of a product in production should go DOWN over time so you can’t just adjust for inflation and call it a day. Some of the larger companies I worked for mandated 10% VCP YOY for fielded products.
Your comparison is also confounded by the addition of improved or additional technology as well as fundamental changes to the platform over such a long time frame. The Corolla of 2013 bears little more in common than the same name to the one built in 1990s.
It is true that the manufacturer has established a sweet spot for marketing the product and so costs must come in line with sell price and profitability requirements. They can’t just keep adding on doodads that increase sell price and expect to retain the consumer base…in order to stay in the sweet spot, they have to offset those additions with productivity gains in either material or labor…
TT, the model doesn’t apply as directly to an industry as heavily burdened by constantly tightening and constantly multiplying mandated requirements. It still applies, because a Corolla built using 1976 technology to meet 2013 mandates would probably cost $40,000, but it isn;t as clear. The forces that would drive costs down over time can only mitigate the expanding costs of neverending new mandates.
Whoops! I just realized that this is exactly what you said. In short, I agree absolutely.
@OP : These recalls IMO point to a reliability issue with Chrysler’s programmers, not their cars.