In Minnesota it was a common site to see the front fenders on Hondas and Toyotas flapping in the breeze after the rust attacked them for a few years. Guess they didn’t use salt in Japan.
Some people who have college degrees or some kind of management positions seem to resent paying service people. My brother faces this problem in his plumbing business. What is interesting is that my brother has a Ph.D. in English, a law degree and has been a practicing attorney and ten years ago to run his own business. At any rate, I was with him when he received a call and the person asked about his rates. My brother explained the charge for a service call and that it would include one hour of labor. He then gave his hourly charge if the repair took more than an hour. The caller was indignant–said that he had an MBA, was a manager and didn’t make that kind of money. My brother then said, “I have a Ph.D. and have been a college professor. I have a law degree and have been an attorney. I am now in the plumbing business and this is what I charge. You have three choices: 1) pay my rates; 2) call and see if you can find a cheaper plumber; 3) do it yourself. You have 30 seconds to make up your mind as I have another call coming in”.
I think people with this attitude toward tradesmen should do the jobs themselves. In my case, I can do some mechanical work, but I’m not skilled at it and it takes me a long time. In my case, take the flat rate manual and multiply the hours for a particular job by at least 4 and that is how long it would take me to do the work.
The ones complaining about the labor costs often take matters into their own hands, either by screwing it up themselves, or by taking it to some shop where the inept hacks working there don’t have a clue where to begin
I’ve often seen the results of botched repair attempts by guys who shouldn’t be allowed to hold a wrench.
@db4690–I grew up in a household where money was tight and we had to tackle a lot of jobs ourselves. I gained an appreciation for the work electricians do. When I was 16, we found out that the wiring in our house wasn’t safe. There were open splices all over the attic. Estimates to rewire were between $350 and $400 dollars. My dad came home with a copy of the code and a how-to manual and said he and I would do the job. Translation–I would do the job. I would run the wiring for a circuit while he was at work. When he came home, he would “test” my work. He would screw in the fuse and if it didn’t blow, the circuit was fine. The worst part of the job was setting the junction boxes. The old farmhouse had oak beams. I would have to drill a pilot hole to secure the boxes. My dad thought that wire nuts weren’t good–I had to twist the wires together in the box, coat them with flux, heat and solder the joints, wrap them first with rubber electrician’s tape and then with plastic tape. It was also 100 degrees in the attic and it had blown-in fiber glass insulation. It probably took me 10 times longer than a professional electrician, but it did pass inspection and the house is still standing–hasn’t burned down after 55 years.
I got a mowing job when I was in high school for a mechanic who had his house and garage on the same property. He paid me better than any other mowing job I had. What was even better was that after I finished the yard, I would go in and watch him work. He would explain to me what he was doing. The pay was great–the knowledge I gained was invaluable.
There is absolutely nothing in the world wrong with someone being a DIYer and trying to save money.
The problem occurs when someone butchers something up, has the car towed to the dealer, and then complains because it’s going to cost X dollars to straighten out what the car owner or half a dozen buddies/other shops screwed up. That’s not an uncommon scenario.
A guy brought a Subaru into the shop once for a subtle engine thump, which turned out to be a center main bearing. Not liking the price, he left.
A few weeks later a guy who ran an independent shop half a mile away brings a Subaru lower end into the shop for us to fix. It was the lower end from the guy who had turned us down.
Unfortunately, there was no hope for the lower end now because the case halves were ruined. The shop could not figure out how to split the block and swore they had removed all of the bolts but they missed the one bolt that is buried way out of sight.
The beating they inflicted with a hammer and large screwdriver in an attempt to separate the cases pretty much made them scrap aluminum.
“Who remembers Honda’s beginnings in the US?”
I actually have more vivid memories of Datsun’s beginnings in the US.
When I was in high school (circa…early-mid '60s) there was a short commercial every morning on the regional AM radio station that my parents used to listen to. The slogan for Datsun was, “It runs on a key and small change”. The only dealership was in far-away Newark (a fairly major city at that time), and so I didn’t get to see a Datsun for several years, despite my curiosity about a car that needed only a key…and small change…to operate.
A few years later, a Datsun dealership opened in the town adjacent to where we lived, and my brother wound up buying a new 1968 Datsun SPL-311, which was essentially a clone of an MG, albeit at a much lower price. Well, to make a long story short, that Datsun was an absolute piece of crap, and, since the dealership was actually a used car lot run by guys with broken noses, and wearing shiny suits, there was no chance of warranty work to rectify the myriad problems with that car.
The Datsun agency’s “service department” consisted of one old man who washed the cars and cleaned them up for delivery. If someone brought a car in for warranty-related work, the Datsun agency would take it to the Gulf gas station about a block away, where the staff had no service manuals or specialized tools for Datsuns, and apparently also had no interest in doing anything more involved than oil changes on these tinny little pieces of Japanese crap.
The guys in the shiny suits actually used to tell complaining customers in no uncertain terms that it was not in your best interests to bring the car back to them again. If you don’t know what I am referring to, view a few old episodes of The Sopranos for an illustration of the customer service techniques of the guys at the Datsun dealership.
To make a long story short, once the car was no longer able to pass NJ’s safety inspection (after only 3 years) and after seriously considering pushing the car off a cliff and/or setting fire to it in order to collect the insurance value, my brother actually found somebody who was willing to buy this rolling disaster area, despite full disclosure. (Since the buyer was the father of our next-door neighbor, it was vital that we be totally honest about the car’s problems)
I have no idea about what the buyer did with a car that was unable to pass the state safety inspection, but he bought it–warts and all. Anyway, to make a long story short, I think that Nissan would like to forget the abysmal quality products that they foisted on the American public in their early days in this country, and they should certainly be ashamed of both the poor quality of their cars and the reality that they gave dealership franchises to ANYONE who wanted one.
Being an early adopter is NOT always a good thing . . .
We also can look at hyundais start in this country, Remember the 86 excel? We have come a long way.
“Remember the 86 excel? We have come a long way.”
And, before that, there was the Hyundai Pony. While the Pony was not sold in the US, some Canadian Ponies did wind up in the US, and they were just as pathetic as the Excels.
On the topic of the early US models of both the Yugo and the Hyundai Excel, I vividly recall the road test report that Consumer Reports published regarding these two cars, shortly after they were offered for sale in the US.
Based on both the horrendous assembly quality and the really awful performance/driving dynamics of those two vehicles, CR advised that people would be better-off buying a well-maintained 2-3 year old used car from an established manufacturer, rather than buying a new Yugo or a new Hyundai.
Check this out.
“top speed was 92mph with acceleration 0-60mph in 15.3 seconds”
“notorious for poor quality”
Sounds like it should have been named toothless nag instead
I love the Yugo story. They have the nerve to buy the cheapest car around and then complain it isn’t a Caddy! That is just like my people who buy the cheapo computers. The eMachines and Acer brands are the Yugos of the computer world. You pretty much buy them to have them recycled properly. The power supplies seem designed to self destruct like 2 weeks or a month after the factory warranty is up. It usually takes most of the rest of the computer along with it.
I also see the people who call to “shop around” for the cheapest repair rates. These are the people I try to run off as they are not going to be good customers. I like the comment about the plumbing business above. When they start asking me if they can get it done for less, I start telling them all the other things that could be wrong, even before I see the computer. I charge $35 upfront which runs off the real bad ones fast. I was left with repaired non-paid jobs before I did that. I figure people willing to pay a small sum will at least come back to pickup the finished product.
There used to be a computer place that claimed to be able to repair ANY computer problem for $50. People would call me and ask if I matched their prices. I told them no because they wouldn’t be happy with the finished product. I often got people who had spent $50 to have their computers repaired their two weeks later. They used the cheapest parts and seemed to do $50 worth of work, then stopped, no matter if the computer was working or not. Basically, I saw a lot of computers destroyed by this place or people who had to have the job done twice. In the end, they went out of business. I still see rig jobs come in from that place over a year later. IT is amazing some of these held on for as long as they did.
There are other people who call and tell you they are on a “fixed income” in the first sentence. This is a code word that they basically want their computer fixed for nothing or next to nothing. They almost always have a low-end unit that wasn’t worth what they paid for it and will need more in repairs than they are willing to pay.
Anyway, I like to tell people that the cheap computers cost more in the long run. Not that some of the cheap cars today are bad, BUT people who do not maintain them to save money will end up paying more in the long run.
I figure there is a good reason these kinds of people end up in the situations they do. It doesn’t matter if it is a computer, car, or a lawn mower… The same thing applies…
@ok4450 The local Yugo dealer here was also the Rolls Royce dealer in the late '80s. One guy I used to know sold cars for him. He once negotiated the sale of a Rolls by throwing in a Yugo for the maid to drive. Neither brand is sold locally any more.
I actually owned an '87 Yugo. I bought it slightly used in late '87. I drove it all that winter. Got about 35 MPG. The only part I had to replace was the plastic gear for the rear wiper. The blade froze to the glass. The gear stripped immediately when I turned it on. Apparently it happened a lot. They had the gear in stock. All in all, it wasn’t too bad a car. Keep in mind I’ve owned my MGA for 44 years.
@db4690 Yes, early Honda Civic had good engines but bad bodies. A colleague bought one for his wife in the 70s. They lived around the Great lakes, and the salt corroded even the front door hinges so that the driver’s door literally fell off!. However Honda had the remarkable capability to LEARN and kept improving their cars.
I have actually heard some say that the Yugo wasn’t all that bad while others tell about EVERYTHING going wrong. I guess it just depends on how much vodka they drank on the assembly line that day. What do they drink in Yugoslavia? It might not be vodka but was just saying. Anyway, the early Hondas and other Japanese cars were pretty sad but they were capitalists and knew what it took to sell good cars in the USA. The eastern bloc did not.
I have also heard that some of the French cars from back in the day were pretty sad.
I’m not sure how reliable the Yugo was. I only knew one person who owned one. One of the major problems they had was parts. Not too many companies were making after market parts for them. This included things like air-filters. So everything was through the dealer. I’ve heard of people waiting weeks just to get a brake caliper. If you got in a accident…it could take months to get all the parts to put it back together.
@MGMcAnick, a dealer in OK City used a Subaru franchise as a means of coaxing buyers onto the lot. They were a Lincoln/BMW/Rolls Royce dealer also.
When a potential car buyer entered the lot to look at a Subaru the sales people would then work on trying to get them to upgrade their purchase.
Unfortunately for the dealer, they did not know that Subaru on occasion sends undercover people around to check for practices like this and they got caught. The dealer was given a warning.
Due to the amount of money involved, the dealer continued this practice and got caught again. That led to loss of their Subaru franchise.
A Subaru dealer I worked for also got caught doing something similar. In this case the salesman was trying to steer the undercover buyer into a late model used car instead of a new Subaru and was referring to a new Subaru as a “tin can POS”; which did not go over too well… 
@MikeIn NH The Yugo was a poorly Communist (Yugoslavia) built version of an unreliable Italian Fiat car. You can’t get much lower.
In our town a shyster named “Happy Howard” sold them with as little service as possible.
We regarded it as the first bio-degradable care, and body and mechanicals expired after 3 or 4 years. Happy Howard’s place is now a Harley Davidson Accessory shop.
I think the Chevy Chevette was basically an American Yugo. Several people I have talked to said it was junk. Others tell me it was fine for what it was but it was a cheap car.
My dad’s work had them as work cars. My dad choose to drive his personal car for work rather than to risk a breakdown in one of these. I am not sure if they weren’t maintained well but they always ran like crap and had check engine lights or some other indicator one. Did they even have check engine lights back then?