Re:Demon-Haunted World
by selimthegrim on Tuesday September 05, 2017 @09:59PM
(#15180623)
I present to you - Mercedes-Benz - http://thegarage.jalopnik.com/for-the-love-of-god-dont-ever-...
Re:Demon-Haunted World
by function_seven on Tuesday September 05, 2017 @10:41PM
(#15180813)
There are a lot of examples like this. That timing gear in your linked article is one example. The rear emblem (and trunk key cover) on a 90’s Nissan Altima is another one. They have all fallen off by now. Crappy pot metal?
Either way, it wasn’t intentionally designed to do that. There was no engineer that said, “Hey, let’s juice our parts revenue in 5 years by making this hinge really weak.”
EDIT: Thanks for that article, though. I could see myself getting suckered into a good deal on a Benz. Now I know why the price is so low.
There’s no way in hell car companies are purposely under-engineering things to cause them to break. That damages the brand reputation, and will drive the next sale to a competitor.
Yes, they make engineering tradeoffs. No, they don’t design a part with the specific intention that it will fail earlier than a comparable (cost-wise) design would.