Switch My Soul to Ajax

[sinibar]

Why is it that firms stop making stuff that was actually good? Two cases in point.

1) The Nokia 6310 and 6310i GSM Cell / Mobile phones. OK, so they were fairly large by modern standards but they had a 3 week standby time, excellent reception and they worked practically anywhere in the world. The business world ran by this phone, when Nokia

Comments

[sinibar]

I s'pose visibility in the Metro was good - there was very little metalwork to get in the way! That does annoy me about modern cars, mine isn't too bad but I'm still bobbing around like an idiot when approaching a roundabout to try and see through a large chunk of steel.
It's also made cars significantly heavier and heavy is bad in every respect.

The Metro though had a number of other problems aside from the fact that its engine was at least 50 years old. I've not owned one but I've known plenty of people who have and not one has been impressed. The top complaint is that over 50mph handling became rather more of a series of negotiations than instructions.

Yes, I too have some sympathy with car manufacturers and their employers, new cars do need to be made but I do think a lot of new cars are - or were - bought unnecessarily. Most modern cars can last what, 20 years before they become uneconomical to repair? Much more if you're a reasonable mechanic yourself.

I think the idea of a new car as a status symbol has far too much weight - I think it should be a good car.

Spending time in places like India and Egypt has taught me a lot. In India they don't throw anything away until its totally u/s and they recycle practically everything. Not because of any environmental consciousness, but because it makes economic sense for them.
Hopefully the credit crunch will bring a little more of that attitude to us. My hope is not strong though after I heard someone complaining on Radio 1 (yes, I know), that free loft insulation wasn't any good to her, what she really needed was money off her bills.

[sinibar]

Duh... "car manufacturers and their employees, not employers"

[edwards]

I think the car can be a status symbol in the choice of car. A good inverse snobbery thing; my car (list price. *ahem*) cost as much as a Jaguar XF or mid-range BMW 5 series, but most people - probably the same people that had I got the Range Rover Sport or Jaguar XF would be cooing over it - don't even register what it is. It's a big ol' lump of grey. However, it does almost everything I want (I don't have a sunroof as that would have meant either having 20,000 miles on the car instead of 15, or actually paying that list price) and I like it. For me, if I see someone driving an old CX, or a DS, or even something like a well-maintained 1980s BMW 6 or Mercedes Coupe - that's more of a status symbol than a brand new Range Rover. Partly because it suggests they've chosen the car they want, and partly because I know running a car like that costs a hell of a lot more than contract hiring a new Range Rover.

Car manufacturers should have increased their prices in line with environmental considerations, material costs and most importantly of all, labour and pension costs. They watched their balance sheets increase with the overall valuation of assets and "future worth", and I don't think at any point an accountant said "Why not actually work out the cost of the car IN TOTAL. Marketing, development, every employee, materials, shipping, the lot - and then stick some profit on - and THEN sell it". No-one dared, because every firm was hoping that sheer volume would eventually pay off. I guess it's another flavour of "the long tail" - sell few, make each one pay.

I believe that the make each one pay philosophy would also bring more variation and individuality to the market; bolder decisions would be made in car design. I don't believe that it is coincidence that Citroén's cars have become progressively less inventive since becoming Peugeot's lesser brand, or that SAABs cars have become dull and backwards since becoming part of GM (GM are the subject of many rants, though, including their decision to drop the U-platform spaceframe & plastic Saturns at a time when that construction would make brilliantly light and effective hybrids. Instead they shove a barely useful "hybrid" drivetrain in a steel-bodied SUV).

Environmentalists in the media have done much harm by painting the car as the root of all evils. It's made car buyers defensive, and that's a lot of people to make defensive. People don't want to feel guilty about their choice, but they do want to feel GOOD about it, and there's no reason why they can't enjoy "status" from that; the problem is that the environmental lobby isn't particularly car-savvy on the whole, and doesn't seem to grasp that actually, someone who is encouraged to buy a new BMW Bluewhatevetheirpee-powereddieselis can - if they plan to keep the car for a long time - be entirely justified in enjoying the status of their new car. It should last the owner a decade and will use very little fuel relatively, and has low emissions.

The battle to reduce car use with the stick has been lost, because Beeching removed the infrastructure and the Government needs the tax revenue. The carrot to reduce the environmental impact of transport is really to reward responsible use of all available transport mechanisms; if that means encouraging the great aspirational classes that actually, the smug superiority of having a car one registration year newer than next door is outweighed by the smug superiority of having a car which has had a lesser environmental impact then so be it.

Incidentally, I think the most responsible thing this Government could do in this regard is ditch age-related plates. Even with my awareness, I still find the "aging" plate to be something I notice, which is why my car has an inexpensive but appropriate "cherished" (or whatever bollocks the DVLA is selling them as now) plate - the model of car and my initials.

[edwards]

I've owned or driven several Metros, and I'm firmly of the opinion that the A-series engined models were good handling cars, but powered by a pensionable engine that should have been used as a boat anchor before it even got to sniff the prototypes. The Rover 100 is an astonishingly good car, though - I think that anyone who has had handling trouble over 50mph has been doing it wrong, as the internet is fond of saying - either in terms of maintaining the car (they need to have the suspension at the correct ride height, for example - a £10 operation) or driving. I've thrashed a 1.1 Rover Metro a couple of times at illegal speeds and found it one of the most stable and comfortable cars of that size I've ever driven.

This isn't to say that it's flawless - the driving position, inherited from the old model and compromised by sharing seat frames with the larger Rovers, the body engineering around the windscreen and doors, and the rust prevention were all areas that needed improvement. But overall the K-series Rover Metro/100 is a very underrated car.

I can't even tell where my C6's flank is on roundabouts. I sort of float around them in a vague direction if there aren't any line markings because the huge pillars and apparent distance from seat to door makes judging where the wheels are near impossible. Driving in mirror-to-mirror London traffic is downright terrifying. And I have on several occasions had to stop and go "where'd that van go" when approaching roundabouts; the pillars are huge.

Modern cars... I'd say 12 years before they're uneconomical to repair by most people's standards. At that stage you're really looking at engine wear, body wear from use (few cars rust now, but that's few, not "no"), suspension and braking system wear - and British roads are horrible in terms of salt damage. But uneconomical is a funny concept with cars, because you could buy a new car for £99/month. My old Volvo 850 cost me £1,500 in two months - £500 for the car, £250 for tyres, £250 for a wheelbearing, a bunch of other stuff - and then the clutch started to go. It was 12 years old. It also looked like crap, the front wings were rotten and I'd swapped one for a purple one. It was worrying to drive and potentially dangerous at one point - and yeah, that's 2 months for that. The flipside is that our MX5 has done nearly 2 years for about the same amount of money and hasn't needed a thing doing, and it's now 17 years old.

If used cars were worth more, though - if access to a new car were not so easy - then I'd say 20 years would be feasible.

The thing is, in 1989 terms a car was an expensive purchase still. £15,000 got you a Golf GTI Convertible when £40,000 probably got you a 3-bedroom house. By 2004, the three bedroom house was £160,000, but the nearest equivalent to that Golf was not only heavier, better equipped, more technically advanced and shipped from further away, it cost the same amount.

(Sorry, my reply was epic and I needed to do two posts!).