Interesting post, Dagosa. I remember the Porsche 914 which was based on a Volkswagen, used many VW parts, with the VW parts numbers GROUND OFF and Porsche parts (with Porsche prices) packed with them. Smart independent mechanics used VW parts with VW prices. Likewise many Acura and Honda parts are the same, and Toyota and Lexus as well. But their prices differ.
Consumer Reports also tested a number of small cars side by side; Gremlin, Datsun, Pinto, Corolla and rated the Gremlin the BEST!!! The competitors were not great cars and did not ride well. CR could not forcast that all of them had crappy quality, but the Gremlin would hold together the longest because of its sturdy powertrain.
The official definiton of quality is “Fitness for Use”, use being what the product is aimed at. A taxi has to be reliable and durable, much more so than a Rolls Royce, which gets few miles put on and is constantly fussed over.
The Ford Maverick and Mercury Comet were very marginally designed cars, with poor rust protection, flimsy heater cores and radiators, sleazy seats and a host of other corner cutting design items. I had a Mercury Comet and even the iginiton key (cheap aluminum) broke off on a holiday trip in Duluth, Minnesota on a holiday weekend with Ford dealers parts guys on strike. We spent 4 days in Duluth and really got to know the place!
One of the most reliable, if you can believe it for the just 4 years I owned it was a Ford Granada. A carb. spacer kept loosening every 3 months like clock work. I had to remove the entire carb, turn upside down, just to get to the screws. Finally said to heck with it, and though lock tight might have been enough, I also dimpled the threads as well. An otherwise decent car and that one item ( and maybe a couple more) made me loose confidence in how the rest was engineered and put together…
The automobile of today is where it is due to both the eveolution of technology and the adoption of technology from manufacture to manufacture. A very good example is KIA. Technology is proprietary when it has to be but “off the shelf” when possible.
I do notice that today a manufacture will not stick with a bad or problematic design and simply apply "band-aids (CIS fuel injection is an example)
Dagosa; I also owned a Ford Granada, a 1976 with the Windsor 351 V8. This car had great bucket seats, that’s about the only thing good about it. It also had good acceleration.
The drive train had a built-in natural vibration,remedied by a bolt-on weight that constituted Ford “fix”. We had this car till 108,000 miles and the following went wrong:
The air injector pipes rusted out, resulting in exhaust gasses being released under the hood. We fixed that by removing the whole sytem, since the replacement parts on the dealer’s shelf were already rusting as well.
The car’s driveability was terrible, frequent stalling. We removed the catalyitc converter to make it run better.
The rear leaf spring s broke!!
The A/C pump packed it in at 90,000 miles ; we disconnected it.
The body rusted out so badly that I could not jack it up to change a tire; the jack simply disappearded into the body.
The power windows started squealing at about 85,000 miles caused by rust inside the doors.
The power steering unit packed it in at 75,000 miles and I repaced it with a rebuilt unit from Midas.
The turn signal lever snapped when I accidentally hit it with my knee; did not even have a sore knee.
You get the picture. These are all items that should not happen at that low mileage. I agree, however, if you owned a Granada of that year with no options whatever, and a 250 cubic inch 6, and lived in Arizona you would probably have a reliable car. Mine was cobbled together from the cheapest parts and many were mismatched!
P.S. The heater core also packed it in at about 60,000 miles and cost an arm and a leg to replace, necessitating the complete removal of the dashboard. All these breakdowns occurred while the car was being maintained by the book, and then some.
Don’t give too much credit to the 250 cubic inch 6. These engines had trouble with valve stem seals. I had a 1971 Ford Maverick with this engine. It used a quart of oil every 300 miles until I had these seals replaced. I was then able to get about 12-1500 miles a quart. The engine would start reliably–I even managed to start it after it sat overnight and the temperature dropped to -22 degrees.
I guess the only “good” engine for that car (1976 Granada) must have been the 302 basic V8. The 351 Windsor was a truck engine not too suitable to modifying to meet the emission requirements; hence the smog pump.
I had a 1971 Mercury Comet, similar to the Maverick, with a 200 cubic inch 6. That was a good little engine, and it never used oil. Gave the car to my mother-in-law at 50,000 miles, who drove it for 4 more years. The body was no great shakes, and eventually rusted through.
The Mavericks and Comets were really built to a price–no glove compartment–just a package shelf, an interior that made a school bus seem luxurious and a ride rather like a wheel barrow. I was driving a good distance every weekend when I owned my Maverick. The car was cheap to run–I traded the Maverick when I found I was spending more on Preparation-H due to the Maverick’s hard ride than I was spending on upkeep on the car.
These cars had the worst standard seats I have ever encountered in a motor vehicle, and that includes school busses and miltary Jeeps. Later on they offered the Luxury Decore Option (LDO) which had leather buckets seats. These were considerably better.
I gave the car away before getting to the Preparation H stage. Agree, it was a terrible highway car.
My mother in law bought a special after market cushion and covered the front seat with a thick sheepskin. That at least made it drivable.
I also owned a Ford Granada, a 1976 with the Windsor 351 V8. This car had great bucket seats, that’s about the only thing good about it. It also had good acceleration.
I’m relieve to hear I did dump it early enough after just 4 years and 40k miles (50 total)
I put it in Uncle Henrys" local sales mag. For two months with NO calls. I finally got one inquiry from a gentleman who drove up/down from Calais in an older Granada and was as happy to get it; as I was to sell it. So, there were at least two “fairly” reliable Granadas in all of this state, and perhaps the only two. It was a 250-6 with NO options Doc. Had similar driveability problem that friend mechanic lead me to frequent problems with Granadas with an air leak at carb spacer…ran great as long as I kept it tight.
Ford still hadn`t fixed this problem by 1986… I could get the carb off my 86 Mustang and tighten the screws on the spacer, and get it all back together… in about 15 minutes.
Where I live you see lots of old cars out on the road, just today I saw a 73 camaro, two 73-79 f series trucks and a 68 el camino ss just in 15 min of driving. I didn’t see any imports older than 1980. I have seen many of the 70’s era f-series going strong at 350,000 + miles on the chassy (Most of the time someone do a rebild somewhere in the middle, but still) I think its really more the style of the car decides its fate. Who wants to fix of a 76 vega?
The world is flattening, but it was pretty flat before.
That’s AMAZING it went over ten years with the same design flaw carb, great info…and why they also used the PINTo based engine, (and still do ?) in the Ranger
I do notice that today a manufacture will not stick with a bad or problematic design and simply apply "band-aids (CIS fuel injection is an example)
What do you mean by TODAY…If you mean within the last 4 years…then maybe…but not before that…For over 10 years GM had MAJOR problems with their intake manifolds. They kept the same design for over a decade. They also had MAJOR problems with their trucks ball-joints…Again…well over a decade. Last I knew they were still having these problems with the same basic design up until 2004 or 2005.
The only 70s and 80s Volvos and Mercedeses that are still running are the ones that either were comparatively defect-free, or those that had owners tenacious enough to fix every problem that arose. You cannot look at a small sample of 30 year old cars and use that to judge the quality of the brand, or even the quality of the brand 30 years ago. I assure you, every Pinto or Mustang II that is still running has either been fixed, or was better than average to begin with…that a few are in good running order now doesn’t mean that most of them weren’t crap when they were new…or that they weren’t worse than the Volvos and Mercs of the time.
Those days aren’t over, because they never existed to begin with.
Oh, and they made those London cabs in roughly the same body style for decades. Most of them probably aren’t as old as you think.
Also Subaru and head gaskets. Rather than reengineering the heads and/or block to get the same reliability in the 2.5s as they had in the 2.2s, they just kept fiddling around with coolant and different gasket designs until they found one that worked. In the mean time, they spent 7 years selling 2.5 liter engines that are prone to blowing gaskets.
Right…I also think people suffer from "the older we are, the better we were syndrome"
In this case, the better the cars were, baseball players and life in general. Of course all those that died in those unsafe, and less reliable cars aren’t around to argue the other point of view.