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On 10 Jan 2004 at 22:07, John Jaranson wrote: > The vast majority of people buying new > cars are not buying them because they wore out their last new car. I don't think this has changed at all. There has always been a portion of our population who always bought new cars, and a different portion who bought their used castoffs. The same people still buy new cars, but the used car people now have a different problem, because the used cars are not as durable as they used to be. Part of this is probably due to the fact that I think the trend has been for new car buyers to hold on to their "new" cars longer. This ages the fleet of available used cars. > I think it is time for a little dose of reality. I put this together a > few years ago when we had a similar discussion. > Why are the base models of > most manufacturer's making better than 120 h?....because the consumers > (at least in America) demand it. What is "120 h?" > And corrosion resistance is significantly better. Ford tests > everything to 10 years/100,000 miles for corrosion, as do most of the > rest of the auto manufacturer's. The improvement is not only in > materials but also in design. Including inner fender splash shields So they're still doing this. I agree that this is good. I was just worried that cost pressure had caused them to cut back. > Being in the auto industry I thought it would be interesting to do a > little comparison. I took my 1968 Road & Track road test of the 69 > Squareback and compared it with the 2000 Ford Focus wagon. Here are > the tabulated results. > > Ford VW > Item Focus Wagon Squareback > Year of Production 2000 1968 > Ave. Household Income $48,816 (1) $8,632 > Price as Tested $17,815 $2,771 > Price/Income (%) 36% 32% Interesting! > Cupholders 3 0 Sorry, but you'll NEVER get me to agree that cupholders are a legitimate criteria for choosing a car. ;-) The increase in tuneup interval can be placed in a very few changes: hydraulic lifters, electronic ignition, and EFI. Anyone here got extensive experience with hydraulic lifter in our VW engines? I can vouch for the fact that EFI and electronic ignition can make our cars almost tuneup-free. If we had hydraulic lifters and oil filters we wouldn't have to do anything other than change the oil periodically. You don't even HAVE to have the filter, but it makes the engine last longer and spreads out the oil change interval. -- ******************************* Jim Adney, jadney@vwtype3.org Madison, Wisconsin, USA ******************************* ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ List info at http://www.vwtype3.org/list | mailto:gregm@vwtype3.org