Toyota builds cars that will last only 3-5 years?

 

When I invest in a company, I want the largest return as possible. I don't care how they do it, as long as it's legal. Please note that I pay taxes on the profits I earn even if it’s an overseas company.

When I purchase a product for my use, I buy the best that is available for my money. If it’s an American company own product, that’s a good thing. If it’s an American made product, that’s good too. Taxes are paid for the profit, the product and by the labor force.

 

the point is that if you go to junk yard and take the differential from 12-15 y.o. vehicle and it is able to make another 150K, it is a waste. Happen often with Ford.

Ideally, the vehicle should be (1) reliable for the "projected lifetime", so does not require new parts or maintainance (except consumables); (2) at the end of "projected lifetime" whole vehicle should just all fall apart.
The marketing department should set the "projected lifetime", at 150K, or 250K, or whatever (or duration of warranty ); and engineers should design the vehicle as cheap to make as possible but also as close to those two criteria’s as possible.

Those are rules of game automakers are playing for last 80 years; some are more, and some are less successfull at that.

den25

 

Yes but what are you refering to, Toyota? or Ford?

Fords Car division and light suv division has nothing on Toyota's in terms of build quality and lifetime.

You are right, however, some auto manufacturers do have different standards. Toyota does not have to pay there workers nearly as much money, and there overseas manufacturing is much cheaper so they dont have to skimp out on design as much. This trend has held true since the 70's.

 

I am referring to Ford. See the example of Crown Vic above, not attractive on civil market but good for cops/taxi

den25

 

Marauder sales are nil, as they stopped making them for the 05 model year.

 

Ford can avoid UAW contracts by moving production to Mexico. Most Japanese and European companies moving production here are building plants in right to work states and not dealing at all with the UAW.

 

A right to work state does not mean you can't be unionized. And the reason they moved here is to avoid paying duty on there imports.

 

well, all right. They WERE steadily declining. This was an attempt to make the aging Crown Vic platform more attractive for civil market and did not work out.

So how are the sales of Crown Vic then? Who buying them?

den25.

 

I think it is fleet only

 

But most of those plants are not unionized.

 

No, it's not fleet only. Wait until PolarBear posts the sales for the month and click on the Ford link.

 

OK- All well and good but back to the point of this thread: Will Toyota's entry into the heavy light truck market improve Ford's build quality?

What is the life expectancy of the trucks we buy? No, I am not asking a bunch of wackos to post how many miles they have on their 350 DRW Powerstroke, used only to carry a lunch pail and a thermos with oil changes every Sunday. I don’t care how many miles your truck has- we have a ½ dozen in various configurations I know how miles the Ford Truck is good for.

My question is: What is Ford’s target life expectancy? What is Toyota’s? What is the D/C Dodge? How about the Mercedes Sprinter van? Has Ford changed their engineered life expectancy to meet the durability of other brands- perceived or otherwise? Did the advent of high-mileage diesels cause the manufactures to build better (longer life) trucks around those engines?

This month’s issue of “Diesel Power” reports that Nissan may be using the same 4.5l V-6 Powerstroke current used in the Ford Medium Duty LCF truck and International Medium Duty trucks in the Nissan full size truck. According to the magazine, the International V-6 was “initially slated to go into the ’04 F-150.” I’ll post more about the possible Nissan (and not Ford) V-6 Powerstroke on a new forum- But my point is relevant to this forum in that this appears to be an example where Ford could have brought innovation to the light truck market- (Can you imagine the fuel economy a light truck with 4.5 liter diesel could return?) and passed. Now it appears that another more innovative manufacturer has the opportunity to bring a good idea to market. How many consumers would think twice about a new F-150 if they could buy another American-made truck with an International diesel? My bet is more than few. Consider this: 250 hp and 450 ft-lb. of torque is more than the original 7.3 Powerstroke motor! And if it was geared properly, the weekend recreators could pull anything faster than they ought to and with a truck that could be geared for, ohh, I dunno, 27+MPG sound crazy?

And last weekend I inspected a new full size GM truck more closely. Because I have been ranting about build quality and because I have been impressed by both the GM Canyon initial build quality (and the clean under hood engineering) and the Dodge manufacturing quality, I thought I would take a new look at the big GM truck.

I expected improvement of the caliber that would make this Ford supporter shudder. What I found were miles of caulk laid out in 1” beads. The bed looked like they got the panels with in eyesight of each other, yelled “closed enough” and started pumping caulk. If you contrast this shoddy build quality with the tight fit and consistent lines of the current Dodge trucks, I would say GM has some room to improve.

No, I am not saying that panel gaps and body build quality are the single barometer of truck quality. Sure, a John Deer Sound Guard cab door doesn’t close like a Porsche 911 door. But when comparing apples to apples, I believe that a manufacturer which takes the time to sweat the small details like panel gaps and frame paint, is more likely to have gotten the big things right- like computer control modules and durability testing. When I look at the work I do- I can spot a clean tight job a mile away- And the crew that did it always seems to get the rest of the details right. But when you spot cheap work on site, you can always find other problems deeper inside that cheap work.

Perhaps it is time for both of the big 2 to focus come energy on their big trucks before they lose this market as well. Perhaps it is time to spend more resources on improving initial build quality, engineering to longer life expectancies and bringing innovative new configurations (like small diesels) to market. Because even if Ford and GM fail to do the above, it looks like a couple of major manufactures are doing so already.


Meanwhile, I salute Ford for things like bringing back a true Dana 60 front end. I think that it is because Ford has the best truck components that we keep coming back.


-Mike

 

the projected lifetime info is not easy to find. I spend an hour on the web but did not find anything reasonable. It would cool thought to compare!

While searching, find some interesting article about reliability of cars older then 3 years on CNN website thought:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/AUTOS/01/23/american_cars/

what interesting, the results of J.D. Power and Associates survey are contrary to Consumer Report surveys praising japanese brands as usual (surprise !!!)

http://money.cnn.com/2004/11/08/pf/a...o_reliability/

Shortly, the luxery american brands went up in J.D. survey compare to Consumer Reports while japanese brands went all the way down (except Toyota and Honda are still above Ford but well below Lincoln). And no, Acura and Infinity is not much better then Honda and Toyota.

I know, it is not always correct to compare results of different surways, but it is still something. Again, the big difference between those 2 surways is the vehicles age.

den25