Re: the share held by banks

["stephen block" <stephenb@xxxxxxxx>]

Title: Re: the share held by banks

Okay, so Mazda has 1/3 interference engines. That means 2/3rds are not. And are you saying that the trade-in schema you outline below is something the manufacturers planned and executed, or are you commenting on what has happened? As far as I can tell, most people in North America keep Japanese cars longer than 40,000 miles and they seem to retain a lot of their value beyond 100,000 miles. So I'm not sure what your point is. GM, on the other hand, used the well-documented principle of built-in obsolescence. I also believe that if properly maintained, as you would maintain any car, the incidences of engines being damaged by timing belts is not that common. So I'm not sure what your point is there either: that the Japanese manufacturers set out to deceive the American consumer in an unusually diabolical way, far worse than, say, the US manufacturers set out to do so? That would not explain general customer satsifaction levels being much higher on so many Japanese vehicles than on so many North Am made ones. Doubtless there are reasons to like or dislike either set of products, and if you were a mechanic, I might understand your preference, for one or the other. But I don't see its importance for social theory, in the grand scheme of things, unless, as I said, you see a plot to deceive American consumers; a kind of variation on the "inscrutability" accusation of yesteryear. This you seem to carry on over to your example of telephones. Again, does that apply to Sanyo telephones as well? I still don't get the point of your examples or accusations?

Stephen Block

 

According to the Gates Rubber Company  all the Japanese manufacturers you list have interference engines in their line-ups.  In 1998, for example, one-third of Mazda models were interference.
Thirty years ago -- it was a quick and cheap way to increase the compression and performance of the dinky little engines in the dinky little cars to make them acceptable to American consumers.  Today there are better ways to increase performance if performance is indeed the objective.
It goes something like this.  The first owner trades in his car at 50,000 miles.  The odometer might be rolled back to 40,000 miles.  The second owner drives it about 30,000 miles.  The timing belt breaks, the engine is totaled.  It is replaced with a low mileage engine imported from Japan for two or three thousand dollars.  It is traded a couple more times.  At about 160,000 miles (the odometer might show something less) the timing belt breaks again.  This time it is the entire car that is a total loss because the its book value at that point is too low to justify spending two or three thousand dollars.  It is prematurely on its way to the junk yard making room for another import.
The crack about 1973 Toyata's and 1983 GM's is asinine.  I don't know how it is up there in Canada but there are thousands of quite serviceable 1970's era GM cars on used car lots in Houston.  You would be hard pressed to find even one 1970's Japanese car.
Let me tell you another little story, this time about consumer electronics.
It has been known since the earliest days of printed circuits that soldered in components that are mechanically stressed in their normal operation must be mechanically braced.  Solder has great electrical conductivity but little mechanical strength.
Panasonic (Matsushita) telephones--millions of them--are imported yearly without bracing for the handset cord jacks.  Every single one of the phones will develop handset problems (often intermittent) sooner or later, usually within a year or two of warranty expiration.  The repair takes all of five minutes.  The jack is re-soldered and a drop of glue is added for bracing.  That problem will never recur.  The trouble is that the repairs are not made because the independent repair shops have been forced out of business.  The "factory" repair center never repairs anything.  The "repair estimates" are invariably higher than that same model can be purchased new at Wal-Mart.  The attitude is that something repaired in the USA is a lost sale to the USA.  Perfectly good phones are thereby directed to the landfill.
Now this is not accidental.  The handset jacks in the early Panasonic phones were braced at a cost perhaps of a thousandth of a penny per phone, the price of a drop of glue.  But that was when there was still a viable (though doomed) American telephone industry that had to be contended with.
These are deceptive trade practices, folks.  It's consumer fraud on a massive scale.

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