General Motors

no knowledge of any sears roebuck catalog; it's irrelevant anyways- a car is much different than a catalog.

A car is not different. Rolls Royce and Yugo both have four wheels.

You can make high quality, medium quality and low quality. Prices normally follow suite. Quality levels are engineered into the product. There is NO directive that industry will make the best quality product that they can make.

They make what they hope is acceptable, for the target market.

On the manufacturing level, "best" and "good" may not be so far apart, pricewise

A POS part is not so much cheaper to make than a high quality part, in many cases.

I really think you have missed the point here

I appreciate your elaboration; I am somewhat preoccupied. You are mostly correct it will appear in describing levels of manufacturing quality. There is a tolerance specification to a part- and that can be tightened or loosened. I have worked in parts manufacturing sector so I do know first hand some of the problems that can be encountered. Even very simple basic parts have to meet exacting standards in terms of their shape, and that has to be regularily checked on large samples- you might be surprised at how often parts are rejected due to a deviation or mark; but what is perhaps more disconcerting is how many parts slip through checking and on into the production line. But then this is where it starts to get expensive- because somewhere down the line someone will realize bad parts have gotten through and then it becomes a question of what to do about it. Part of that has do do with the basic design. Some parts are very difficult to manufacture to tolerance just on the geometry alone. Change the geometry then ? no way. So the parts continue to roll off the press often flawed, pasrt inspection and on into an assembly. Then, perhaps years down the line a recall order has to be issued. Multiply that by numerous car designs and yearly design evolvement.That is not very efficient way to run a business. If the design was allowed to be modified to accomidate a shapes natural tendancy all that could be avoided.But because of a simpler design, a cheaper car will bear an out of tolerance part better than the more expensive one. thats when you get a car that just goes and goes, whereas the more expensive one will spend more time in the garage, fixing.