Cash for Clunkers

[lamont]

[lamont]

[The Tim]

[TJ_98370]

I'm a mechanical engineer by profession and the "old school" mandate with respect to new projects was the KISS principle. KISS meaning "Keep It Simple Stupid". The thinking was that with each additional increment of complexity you sacrificed some reliability.
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Over the last couple of decades, there has developed an ever evolving complexity to everyday consumer products. There is even a term for this phenomenon. It's called "feature creep". It is consumer driven. Joe six-pack is confronted with the choice between buying an electronic gizmo that has 15 buttons and a similar gizmo that has 25 buttons for the same price. The gizmo with 25 buttons has got to be a better value, right? So Joe and all of his buddies buy the 25 button gizmo and before long the 25 button gizmo is the new benchmark for the industry.
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RCC's comment about power windows is a good point. Power windows in new cars are almost a standard feature now days. Within the last month I witnessed two different incidents where the driver of a later model car had to open his door to deal with a situation where normally rolling down the window would have sufficed. Presumably, their power windows did not work. There is a lot less to malfunction with the good old hand crank assembly and it's got to be cheaper too.
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[rose-colored-coolaid]

[WestSideBilly]

[rose-colored-coolaid]

[PublicEnemy#1]

FWIW, Chrysler was using hardened valve seats as far back as 1954, at least, making unleaded vs. leaded a non issue.

Regarding over-engineering... the internal combustion engine is still being used to power 99% of all vehicles on the road today. Seems to be that even a Model T can be run on the road today, so how can its engineering be obsolete or over-engineered?

When gasoline is no longer available and the cars are still around, but can no longer run, then overengineering could be applied.

As long as we run them on gas, they are still viable.

[PublicEnemy#1]

[The Tim]

[PublicEnemy#1]

[TJ_98370]

[The Tim]

Somehow we got way off-topic there to the point where it was no longer even remotely about "The Economy" or even cars, so I split the posts after this to a new thread over in "Everything Else" -

Please feel free to continue the personal responsibility thread there.

[TJ_98370]

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Anyway........
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We made the mistake of telling a few car sales-people that we may be interested in taking advantage of the cash-for-clunkers program. We don't answer the phone anymore. It seems that we had better put a deposit down on the car of our choice before the funding is all gone. Apparently the day the program starts is 24 July, and the funding is expected to last just for "days". It all seems a little desperate to me.
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[PublicEnemy#1]