Have you ever scrapped a car? What finally killed it?

General Discussion
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So does that mean you work for Ford? You owned a Jag, so I am making a guess!

I used to work for GM years ago. I’ve owned a number of Fords because the first new car I bought from GM was a turd. A polished turd, for sure, but a turd. None of my Fords were scrapped, all but one, a van hit by a tree, were sold with pretty much everything working and running well. All but one was sold because they were looking and feeling old - interior, rattles, shakes and such. My 07 Mustang was sold because I wanted one with the 4 valve V8.

Also owned a Honda that was as nice when I sold it at 108K miles as the day I bought it with 60K miles. I replaced the convertible top (at 16 years!)and a map sensor. Every other service was maintenance or mods I wanted to make.

Owned a number of GM’s. Still own 2 with more than 100K and no major repairs. The best car I ever bought new was a '92 Saturn SC2.

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I’m only going to say this about the American vs Japanese debate. How often do you see an old Japanese car or truck being restored and used as a daily driver/show vehicle?

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There is no doubt the Toyotas last longer. I get stats from vehicle research companies all the time and the Toyotas seem to top all the longevity lists. My first car was the only one I ever scrapped. My parents bought it for me for $200 in 1984. It was a 1969 Plymouth Fury III. It had so many issues I don’t know where to even begin, but what finally killed it were frozen axle or wheel bearings that made the rear tires lock up (and then skid). I called a tow truck and it went to the scrap yard and I got a few bucks for it. It took me a while to figure out why the axle or bearings did that. I finally figured out it was caused by my sliding the car sideways into a curb in a parking lot doing snow donuts a few weeks earlier. I figure I knocked a cap off something with grease inside and it took a while to lock up when the grease ran out.

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I realize that more '60s and '70s American cars are restoration projects, but 80’s and '90s Japanese cars are a huge market for racing, weekend specialty cars, showcars and even daily drivers. Not just NSX-type cars either. Acura Integras, Toyota Supras and other cars are a big deal now. There are also some amazing older Japanese cars as well. Here is one that I found special enough to submit a story to CarTalk.

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I would guess that the overall greatest cause for cars to be scrapped is collisions and poor maintenance. These days an 8 year old car with 100,000 miles and exploded air bags is junk as is a car of similar age and miles with a laundry list of minor ailments that result from sludge, in the engine and/or transmission which is usually found on a car that also has metal to metal on one or more brakes, worn out ball joints and a set of jumper cables on the front seat.

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Toyota Land Cruisers, Supras, RWD Celicas. Toyota GT2000’s sell for over a million bucks!

Early Honda CRX’s, First NSX’s

Nissan/Datsun 510’s, 240/260 Z cars.

First Gen Mazda RX7’s, last gen RX7 turbos.

Subaru early WRX’s, Mitsu Lancer Evo’s

Lots of restorers choosing Japanese products.

27

I scrapped a 68 mercury cougar XR7, broke my heart, rusted brake lines, quarter panels eaten by rust, needed my ranchero more, for firewood as my only heat was a wood burning stove. So the Rancero engine died, put the cougar engine in it, put the ranchero engine in the trunk of the cougar, and called the scrapper, $100 plus free tow away.

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The reasons why are complicated. What follows is a very truncated version of how Japan developed into a world-class manufacturer, one that the U.S. manufacturers eventually had to learn from and try to catch up to.

After WWII Japan was in ruins and had to rebuild from scratch. Japan’s culture is very community centered. They believed that everything was for their communities and country, nothing was focused on their individual needs.

That turned out to be a perfect breeding ground for an industrial philosophy that centered on the process of developing products rather than the parts or the individuals. As it happens, there was a statistician from the United States who was promoting a theory that abnormal variation in the production processes was much better than manufacturing to the “tolerances” that we in the U.S. considered sacrosanct. His theories were not well received by U.S. manufacturers, but he was welcomed in Japan. His theories, called “statistical process control”, are essentially basic applied statistics, applied to variations in manufacturing processes.

His theories were followed with and supplemented by theories developed by the Japanese that focused on things like design approaches that reduce variables. One is to design using fewer parts. If a machine can be designed using 250 parts instead of 2,000, that greatly reduces the opportunity for imperfections, as well as reducing procurement costs, inventory costs, throughput. It has other benefits, but you get the idea. The approach is to do things like design substructures, coverings, etc. such that they assemble without the need of countless screws, washers, and nuts. Much of that is accomplished by designing parts to perform more than one function. Fore example, a housing can include in its casting/molding mounting posts, mounting surfaces, etc. rather than having each be a separate part that has to be assembled. My memory for names is terrible, but I seem to remember that the philosophy was developed by Taguchi.

I’m offering a very simplified sketch of why Japan beat out pants off on quality. Basically, the confluence of culture, need, and opportunity became a breeding ground for better design and manufacturing philosophies. The U.S. eventually began to try to emulate the Japanese systems, but IMHO their success was limited, marginal, and spotty. Senior managers here attempted to make the lower levels employ the philosophies by having engineers teach them the actions rather than the philosophies. I’m not sure the U.S. culture can accept societal focus rather than hardware focus.

I hope this helps. The subject is a complicated one.

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29

We don’t live in Japan. We grew up relishing GM, Chrysler, and Ford vehicles. So that’s what we restore. Restoration is largely about refreshing memories. Those three comprise a huge portion of our memories.

In addition, the Japanese vehicles began to flood the country as Unibodies, many with transverse-mounted powertrains and FWD. The U.S. cars being restored as show cars are largely body-on-frame vehicles. One can do far more to personalize body-on-frame RWD cars with significant changes (like bigger engines, updated powertrains and suspensions, etc.) than one can with unibodied FWD cars.

There is, however, a subculture that restores foreign cars and “shows” them. But the bulk of what we restore and the bulk of what we turn into hot rods go back before the influx of Japanese cars. With the exception of VW Beetles. Even up here in my little town in NH there are a half-dozen restored air-cooled Beetles, and even a few Myers Manxes. These, of course, aren’t Japanese. :smile:

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  • late 70’s VW Rabbit for cooling system problems , likely head gasket,
  • early 80’s Subaru sedan, carburetor/fuel supply problems.
31

My dad used to haul hogs to market in the back of the '49 Chevy 3/4 ton pickup, and he never bothered to wash out the bed. Hog manure is really corrosive, especially in the rust belt (Iowa). By the time he gave the truck to me in 1968, you could see what was being hauled through the sides of the box. Soon thereafter, the whole bed just sort of fell off. I attached a tail light to the frame (a '49 needed only one tail light to be legal) but the cops seemed to think it needed fenders or at least mud flaps. Dad said it was embarrassing so I retired it.

It ran GREAT but if I drove it on the highway flat out (the only speed I knew at 16) it would suck a lot of oil out of the engine because it had a road draft tube for crankcase ventilation. I’ll bet there are a few on this forum who remember what a road draft tube was. That truck also had its starter button on the floorboard and vacuum actuated wipers. It was a great truck.

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For the number of old Beetles that were sold here, not many survive. I guess that you see more of them because they were so good on snow and ice but except for the occasional dune buggy, you don’t see them around here.

The only Japanese vehicles that anyone seems to be interested in are those that can be made into drifters like the AE86 Corollas and 240 SX’s. There was interest at one time for those old Supra’s with the in line 6 that could be turbo charged and nitro up to around 1200 HP but that seems to have waned.

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I’ve really only scrapped one car and that was a Subaru. At 300k miles the front differential started going out and while I could have fixed it as I have the expertise to do so, I had no inclination for taking it on as it’s a complex procedure and I had bigger fish to fry. Everything else I sold as a fixer-upper or whatever. Nothing has ever gone to the boneyard other than the Subaru.

My old '87 Mercury Sable was disposed of but only because of sheer boredom and the fact that it’s one of the most uncool cars on the planet.
It was still running and driving well when I sold it cheap just to be rid of it at 410k miles.

I take care of my cars so they get driven to oblivion and back; and the back to oblivion again… :slight_smile:

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I got some interesting feedback from a friend who has a licensed backyard garage. He has worked on hundreds (thousands??) of long out-of-warranty imports and domestics. I asked him my question. His answer was simple: Hondas/Toyotas last longer because their owners want them to. He says he has no problem convincing a 120,000-mile Civic owner to flush coolant, replace timing belts, clean power steering systems, replace suspension bushings, etc. Whatever the manual suggests. They are happy to invest $1200 to keep the car going because they expect them to last. He says that the same experience with a Ford Focus or Chevy Cruze results in disgust from the owner and a pledge to never buy Ford/Chevy again. He sees no significant difference in the mechanicals of the cars themselves.

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Dr. Demmings A brilliant guy that US car makers ignored until they found out the Japanese revere him!

Spot on, even to the correct spelling. He developed a method called Robust Engineering. It builds on Demming’s statistical process control and applies it to the design process. It is about finding the parameters with the greatest affect on key measures of quality.

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Here is your man: W. Edwards Deming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming

I got to attend one of his classes via video just before he died. In my experience the US OEMs loved the statistical process control elements of the Deming philosophy. They weren’t so aligned with the more human elements such as “assume everyone is doing their best” and “eliminate all annual performance reviews”. I do think that Toyota, in particular, bought into the whole shebang and used it to great advantage.

He was a true visionary and his philosophy still makes sense 25 years after his death.

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That’s an accomplishment for me! My memory for names is absolutely abysmal.

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@Manolito. I remember road draft tubes well. I think it was 1963 that it was eliminated and vehicles wento positive crankcase ventilation. It may have been earlier in California. Road draft tubes were great for assessing the health of an engine on a used car. Drive the car long enough to warm up the engine. If it smoked excessively out the tube, the compression was weak.

39

Man, is that ever true.
Japanese new hires at every level were required to spend a year at each of various levels below them before finally learning the job they were hired for. They learned what actually went on below their position and how people work and interact. U.S. manufacturers were (and I suspect still are) loaded with managers with newly-minted degrees who have no clue what the people below them do.

Their culture also required them to live for the company and put their families second. This has serious negative implications that would not be accepted by U.S. employees, but the thread is about why Japan beat our pants off, not about Japan’s societal problems, so I won’t go down that road.

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When Japan first sent their cars to the US their domestic market was protected. At 100,000km their cars were required to be mechanically recertified and most weren’t. Instead they were loaded up and sold in mainland Asia. To buy an American car the customer had to order and prepay the entire price including shipping and on arrival each car was required to be mechanically certified at a substantial cost. Japanese industry was closely regulated and protected then and still is to some degree. Honda was nearly stopped from sending cars to the US in the beginning. Tokyo felt that Datsun and Toyota were filling the market here.