Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

Re:Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Re... by vorpalhex on Monday November 11, 2019 @04:16PM (#21509000)

At one point when my father was restoring a Mk 3 Supra, I got a look at the traction control boards since he had pulled one out to fix it. I was surprised at the lack of surface mount components, only to have my father point out the board had been made in 1989...

The Supra was a fundamentally ahead of its time design. Not without flaws but definitely pushing into new territory.

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Re:Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Re... by cr0sh on Monday November 11, 2019 @04:34PM (#21509157)

Maybe I misunderstand what you meant - but there were SMT components in 1989; indeed, some of the earliest examples of SMT can be found far earlier (late 1960s for example).

The reason it was likely thru-hole construction probably had more to do with reliability, as SMT work is more prone to damage from vibration (mainly), unless properly potted or conformal coated (and there may have been issues as to why they couldn't do that, either).

That said, consumer-level use of SMT components didn't really start until the early 1990s - but examples of earlier use do exist (for instance, one of my floppy drives off my first computer in 1986-ish had SMT components on the controller board - but it was still mostly thru-hole construction).

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