Quote:
Originally Posted by racprops
1. Auto makers keep shortening production cycles and model year changes to make the public buy more often, this is not benificial to society, longer runs would reduce cost of production, improve reliability, reduce repair costs and the list goes on.
which killed the chrysler turbine car and the electric car.
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Short production runs are not just for extra profit, or to screw anyone over. Repair/replacement part costs and future profit projections are factored into new car design and pricing. If you kept the run of a popular car like the civic or camry to 12 years with all the same parts then the aftermarket would jump on all replacement car parts quick. That would NOT benefit the consumer in any way because the auto maker would simply not factor in that future income in the decision to price out the new car. Therefor you would pay more upfront for the car because the new car sales part of the business would have to supply much more of the total company profit. And this would never work because with so much competition unless all automakers redesigned the models in the same year no one would buy a civic or camry that was designed 12 years ago at new car prices.
The ford focus is a pretty good example of this, the first gen was loved by the auto press, it sold in big numbers. The second gen was a redesign for the rest of the world but north amercia got a re bodied first gen. Sales were crap, the auto press hated it, bad reviews all over the place. Then the third gen comes out and again it's loved and you see them all over.
Sales numbers
Year US Sales
1999 55,896 - partial sales year
2000 286,166 - wow people love a new car!
2001 264,414
2002 243,199
2003 229,353
2004 208,339
2005 184,825 - the design is getting tired now
2006 177,006 - new civic came out this year
2007 173,213
2008 195,823 - first gen platform, new body, looking fresh fools a few people
2009 160,433 - well they didn't stay fooled
2010 172,421
2011 175,717
2012 245,922 - third gen, wow fresh lets buy a new focus!
Ford Focus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
2,722,700 people were willing to shell out new car cash for a focus but if it had cost $3000 more to factor in Ford not making as much money on replacement parts I wonder if they would have sold as many.
Also the turbine car wasn't killed because they wanted to sell you more parts, it was killed because when it was banned from racing at indy after 2 failures on a grand stage there was no incentive to be rewarded from having the best engine if you couldn't race it. Win on Sunday sell on Monday is true. If the industry is so worried about loosing money on parts and repairs then why did the points and distributers that require tune ups disappear? Why do spark plugs last 100,000miles? Why is the timing belt being phased out in favour of chains now?