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From: jim beam on 21 Jun 2010 10:10
On 06/20/2010 10:34 AM, dr_jeff wrote:
> Scott Dorsey wrote:
>> Ashton Crusher <demi(a)moore.net> wrote:
>>> It's really incredibly stupid. Toyota went from 1.08 last year to
>>> 1.17 this year in terms of problems PER CAR. No retail car customer
>>> in their right mind owning one or two new Toyotas (or any other brand)
>>> would consider a change of 0.09 problems in the first 90 days
>>> something meaningful in terms of making a buying decision. There is
>>> so little difference between most brands that the whole thing has
>>> become ludicrous.
>>
>> Well, the thing is, NONE of the cars today have enough initial defects to
>> be considered alarming... all of them are far better than anything
>> made a couple decades ago.
>
> The natural assumption is that a car with fewer initial defects will
> also have fewer problems down the road (both figuratively and literally)
> and is of higher quality.

<snip for brevity>

the above is a false assumption. a really dumbed down example is this:
have you ever encountered the exploding chinese capacitor problem in
electronics? to the consumer, there is no difference in initial
quality. but a few months down the road, when they literally go "BANG",
you'll discover why the initial quality, which was prima facie perfectly
adequate, was in fact no indicator of subsequent performance.

same for cars, "initial build quality" makes no differentiation between
one vehicle with cheapo chinese bearings [for example] and another with
quality american. but you sure are going to know it a few thousand
miles down the road when one needs replacing and the other will keep
going for another few hundred thousand miles.


--
nomina rutrum rutrum
From: jim beam on 21 Jun 2010 22:02
On 06/21/2010 06:37 PM, Clive wrote:
> In message <08ydnQ8EnOV474LRnZ2dnUVZ_gqdnZ2d(a)speakeasy.net>, jim beam
> <me(a)privacy.net> writes
>> have you ever encountered the exploding chinese capacitor problem in
>> electronics? to the consumer, there is no difference in initial
>> quality. but a few months down the road, when they literally go
>> "BANG", you'll discover why the initial quality, which was prima facie
>> perfectly adequate, was in fact no indicator of subsequent performance.
>> same for cars, "initial build quality" makes no differentiation
>> between one vehicle with cheapo chinese bearings [for example] and
>> another with quality american.
> Those final two words were an oxymoron.

http://www.timken.com for one...


--
nomina rutrum rutrum
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