Re: The Economist: Detroit Finished

Jun 24, 2003 1 Replies


The only people that buy an econobox


> are those that can not afford anything more expensive.

Or somebody that doesn't like driving a tank. I hate driving those damn things.

Corolla.

How about 2000-2002? Consumer Reports shows that 2001 Focus had a much higher than average incidence of fuel system problems, while body problems occurred frequently with the 2000 model. This may be another example of why Ford shouldn't try to save money by employing 50-65% fewer engineers per car design than Toyota or Honda do.

But recalls aren't a good indicator of reliability because they're more likely to occur with newer models, so if a company rarely changes its products it's probably going to have a low rate of recalls, as AMC did at one time in the 1970s and Chrysler did during some years in the

1980s, and those companies even boasted of this, yet both also had had the worst reliability records in the industry when they did (Fiats not counted).

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