In taking a bird's eye view of the forums, I see us chasing tiny vacuum leaks, broken wires, electrical sensors and fault codes, dirty spark plugs, breached gaskets, and , the list goes on.

What if all the plastic connectors on the manifold were steel instead of being plastic snap plugs?

What if all the oil reservoirs (gear boxes) had deliberate easy connections for drain and fill?

What if the big T radiator tube near the air box was made of the appropriate metal instead of rubber hoses and a plastic T joint?

For you guys with the automatic trans, what if the trans was a bullet proof box that simply req'd oil refresh every few years?

I happen to be tearing thru a long repair on my otherwise sweet running Jaguar, I've been into this thing (repair) for about 6 weeks now. I'm getting close to the fix, I can feel it. But in reflection, I ask myself these type of questions. Now, I'm asking you.

 

Notice (w/rare exception) that these are original engines too.
The underlying lesson? Maintenance, maintenance and then some maintenance.

https://www.cheatsheet.com/automobil...tml/?a=viewall

 

Sounds to me like a glutton for punishment.

 

Economics. That is why. Look at it from a business point of view. You need to sell a product or service to remain in business. If you make something that never breaks, at first you are doing wonderful as everyone wants your product. But, once everyone has gotten your product, there is no reason to buy another one. Now, you are selling nothing. In the case of a car, we know that we are going to put miles on the car every year and it is going to wear out. While no number exists, lets say that a modern day car lasts 300,000 miles before it is "beyond repair". If you assume that you drive 20,000 miles a year, that means every 15 years, you are "forced" to buy another vehicle. Where, if you have one that lasts 1,000,000 miles, then you can pretty much buy one car when you are a teenager and own that car until you are into retirement age. Now you add in the fact that there is a fair number of people that have the belief that after about 100,000 miles, the car is becoming questionable and not reliable and therefore they need something new. That would be after 5 years. if you go with someone like this, they would have bought 10 cars in the time that someone would have bought one of your cars. if you are the businessman, do you want to sell 1 item or 10 in that same time period?

 

Like Thermo said, part of it is economics, but there are a number of other reasons as well. For the most part every car out there is a compromise in that it is built for a specific target market and function AND to last an expected amount of time. Like, a small economy car is built to a price point and although it needs to be reliable, if it were to be bullet-proofed it could be too expensive for its target market and no one would buy it. So, manufacturers target a level of reliability over a certain amount of time for a given price point. If you could buy a car that had a bumper to bumper warranty of 10 years and 100,000 miles that covers EVERYTHING, but it was 2X-3X the current price the car is today, even if you might want to buy it, you couldn't afford it.

Some of it is weight. Car manufacturers have to meet ever higher fuel economy standards. And weight savings are a big part of it. And generally things like plastics are lighter than metal. Although metals don't degrade and become brittle out in the elemements over time like plastic, they can corrode and rust, so for some parts metal is not the best option or going to a more expensive metal is not practical either. Also, some things that are small with complex shapes it might be easier to manufacture in plastic vs. metal. You look into an engine bay in a modern car against one for the '50s or '60s and everythng is so tightly packed. Part of that is to save weight and part is there are some many more electronic things than ever before.

Some of it is that no one cares. How many people even want to keep a car for 1,000,000 miles? Their situations change (student, married, parent, retiree) from the time they start driving until they are too old to drive and what was ideal when you were 16 is no longer acceptable when you are 35. Or there was a car or brand you lusted over as a teenager and now that you are older you can finally afford it and just WANT it. Some of it is also people see something new with more and better features or just get bored and want something different.

Put all that together, along with a million other possible reasons and manufacturers have to build things to perform reliably over a period of time customers would typically expect. Peoples expectations have changed over the years for everything. Home appliances, TVs, electronic gadgets, cell phones, etc. A much more disposable oriented society than 50 years ago.

 

You've all probably heard of the 1966 Volvo with over 3 million miles, but an article at 2 million admitted it was on its third engine rebuild and who knows how many other parts have been replaced or repaired. But I guess its fair to allow engine rebuilds as rings, bearings and seals are consumables just like brake pads. With piston engine aircraft, the engines are supposed to be overhauled every so many hours whether they appear to need it or not per the mfgs spec, typically under 2,000 hours. I.e. if we couldn't just pull over safely to the side of the road, we'd probably all have a maintenance minder light on the dash of our Jags to tell us when it is time to overhaul the engine.

I think you could take just about any car or truck, follow the recommended service intervals, keep fixing whatever breaks and so long as it doesn't get taken out by a collision or other disaster, eventually the body and major components of the vehicle will go a million miles. But as already discussed, probably 70% of drivers want to upgrade within a few years for various reasons besides reliability and the other 29.999% just don't want to mess with an old car beyond about 200K miles max. Here are 20 examples of cars of varying quality hitting a million miles:

https://www.cheatsheet.com/automobil...tml/?a=viewall

 

All very good points. The auto industry has settled into what's profitable, within gov't regulation, and what the consumer thinks he wants vs what he needs. Sometimes those two align and other time not.

People wouldn't keep the same million mile car for a million miles. They would trade up and sell, buy cars similar to the market we have now. But car co.s would have to find new ways to make money. Consumables, memberships, who knows?

Anyway, what if the driver's lifespan keeps increasing and we live twice as long, to say nearing 200 years old with our faculties in place up until the end for most people? Being of driving age until about 185 years old!

Now what?

 

Then you would have to buy another car or two in your "lifetime", that's all.

 

We've had a few cars in my family make it a million plus, but all have had enginework along the way.

 

As a friend of mine said 40+ years ago.

"If cars were nothing more than transportation and you took away the desire for "things", (color, shape, sound, acceleration, etc.) we'd all drive Volkswagen Bugs.

 

As far as all of the appropriate well built metal connections: I have a friend who is piloting a B52 that both his father AND his grandfather flew on...same airframe, 64 years old! To be honest, if his son or daughter follow him into the Chair Force, they could well repeat the feat!

 

That would be the case if the consumer lifespan increase (doubling) happened much faster than industries could react.

But if lifespan increased to the doubling point over the course of a few decades, then many industries would gradually improve the durability and useful lifetime of their products. For one, it's very possible to do so; think of all the vacuum lines in/out of the manifold, to brake booster, or wherever else they run. These start failing around 100k miles bc they are crap plastic junk connectors. I've read many a thread where people struggle with their car in limp mode for a while until they locate a vacuum leak from a $10 part. Worse yet, owners start replacing sensors on the hunt for the problem, when it is a simple plastic fitting.

Secondly, high volume manufacturing can easily mitigate cost of going from plastic to the right metal alloys, so as not to pop the cap off the price point. Considering weight, alloys compete well with plastics. The composition of the plastic joints used in our cars have been chemically designed for heat resistance, but they don't don't stand up to more than a 100K miles of driving.

Granted, we do live in a disposable society, and people love new things and gadgets. But that has been the way of markets for the last 40 years or so, and this will shift, as most things do, and the direction I see is towards reliability.

I've not owned an expensive car, but I wonder if the new Jaguar F Type has plastic and rubber under the hood where it should have well designed durable metal connections. The 5.0 liter V8 w/ 575 HP Supercharged w/ AWD costs about $122K.

Am I spending $122K to look cool in my hot F Type Jaguar with no other benefits for the price?

In any case, I enjoy this conversation and all the input!

 

It might mean used prices would be far greater and I would never have been able to to buy my S-Type R.

There would be little need for sites such as this, too.

Horrors!

 

The people who buy very expensive luxury cars new every 1-3 years aren't generally interested in what the vacuum etc lines are made of. (So, yes, $122K to look cool.)

Thankfully they choose to afford the big money hit when they resell so that one day I might own the car.

(Reminds me of why do people buy a new mobile (cell) phone so often.)

 

hmm, 1 million miles.

Many here do under 10K per year so 100 years.
Many do under 5K per year so 200 years.

So hardly any need for new cars.

Car makers all go bust.