Brasil cars, shiny death traps.

Google,,, Cars manufactured in Brasil are shiny death traps

Reply to
JR
Loading thread data ...

rright. quote which ones are imported stateside

Reply to
AD

VW manufactures a lot of cars in Brazil... my '02 GTI was built there

Didn't have any significant problems with the car; I did have the typical window regulator problems, had my coil packs replaced under recall but they didn't actually cause me problems, I just mentioned that the idle was a little rough; the rear wiper blade was wrong (too long) on delivery; the factory radio was miswired on delivery (I actually had to help the dealership sort that out because it was a speaker phasing issue - everything worked but the sound quality was not good.) Once those were all sorted I drove it without anything more save for regular maintenance and never actually paid for a repair for anything.

nate

Reply to
Nate Nagel

"apart from all the things that were wrong, nothing was wrong." idiot.

Reply to
jim beam

Cars made for internal use in third world countries have half the welds. In a crash they fall apart.

Reply to
Paul in Houston TX

where on earth did you come up with that one??? i've traveled a bit and it's completely untrue of the cars i've seen.

Reply to
jim beam

Out of curiosity the other night I put JR's word string into Google: Cars manufactured in Brazil are shiny death traps Its the same article repeated in all the posts but still may have a shred of truth to it. Interesting reading.

formatting link

Reply to
Paul in Houston TX

formatting link
>

that's a story long on hyperbole and short on facts. what is a fact is that all three of those manufacturers produce the exact same vehicles in brazil as they do in europe. tooling and design costs for what would be "different" manufacturing aside, in the event of supply shortage, they /need/ to make them the same so they can move them from one market to another if they so desire.

bottom line, that story reeks of the same kind of emotive "appeal to emotion" lobbying that's made u.s. cars gain nearly 50% in weight in the last two decades, which has in turn kept real world gas consumption high while engine energy efficiency has been increasing. the honda fit for example gives worse mpg's than my 89 civic, and it has a much better engine - all because of the extra weight. and as i said earlier, the dirty little secret of these heavier cars is that they're more likely to get into accidents because heavier means longer stopping distances and poorer maneuverability.

oh, and let's not forget brazilian attitudes to drinking and driving while we're weeping and gnashing our teeth - let's not compare apples with oranges.

Reply to
jim beam

formatting link

All good points. Thanks!

Reply to
Paul in Houston TX

have ever seen a two part audi A8 after a brief skirmish with a tree? here ya go for the source of that

formatting link
s

Reply to
AD

so no different to some of the "recovered salvage" vehicles you see here then...

Reply to
jim beam

there is a slight difference between unbending a bent frame and halfassedly welding two parts of the car into a whole, won'cha agree?

plus, you can't convert a salvaged title to a clean title in the states, at least I am not aware of any such incident. hence there is some transparency.

with the junk imports over here i'm not sure you can easily tell on the spot the car being offered was not imported as a lego set since I think there is no notion of a salvaged title.

Reply to
AD

dude, people salvage cars from separate front and rear ends all the time.

depends who wrote the vehicle off. if it went through the insurance claim process, then title will be tracked and salvage registered. but if it didn't, it won't. and you used to be able to clear a title by moving the vehicle to anther state. i think that's tightened up for a lot of states now, but it was the old trick back in the day.

"salvage title" is something i don't regard as informative. here in kalifornistan, where the insurance commissioner is in bed with the industry and the state's "auto business stimulation unit" [environmental lobby], cars over about 3 years old get written off for almost nothing. and for things like de-registration. seriously, you can de-register a

6 month old perfect vehicle, go back the next day to re-register, and it'll be salvage titled. to have that classified the same as a vehicle made from two [or more] other cars that haven't been through the insurance scam, is simply ridiculous and makes mockery of the whole "salvage" concept.
Reply to
jim beam

No such thing as a safe car. Maybe an MRAP truck, or a Stryker?

Reply to
JR
[snip]

Ugh. In the states?!?

soo if a car visits a body shop somewhere along the way if insurance was not involved despite some heavy damage sustained the carfax would never get the big red flag most used car hunter 'd want to see?

I understand that you never 100% be sure since there are aspiring body shoppers who'd fix it by themselves but aren't body shops disclose the record of service to shop up on carfax?

It's not as bad as the out of state salvage->normal transition that you've described above since it affects the state pickets rather than used car buyer safety.

I presume Intentionally salvaging a near new car is the means to dodge the increased governator vehicle tax?

Reply to
AD

correct.

why would they? it's insurance companies that do that, not body shops. if it's an insurance job, that's where the info comes from.

it's bad if you're trying to buy insurance because you can't get anything other than general liability for a salvage titled vehicle, in this state at least.

as to safety, while there are supposed to be "standards" for insurance repairs, some i've seen are a joke. a former coworker had his new lexus bent by his daughter. it got repaired and returned, but it didn't handle right. he had it inspected by an independent engineer, and found that the sub frame was badly bent - neither the insurance assessor nor the body shop had inspected properly. insurance bought him a new car and paid for the engineer's report.

conversely, you can have a superbly done vehicle made of separate cars if it's done right - it's common practice with classic/rare vehicle repairs. it all comes down to skill and desire to do it right.

no tax difference afaik - it's all insurance scam. the state insurance comptroller's job is a revolving door with the industry. it's a freakin' joke. example: my current address costs me more on insurance than my previous one. if i was insuring the vehicle for theft, i could understand it, maybe. but i'm not, just general liability - and i work in the same place and drive the same roads as before so my potential for accident is identical - i just have a different zip code. it's a complete scam.

and the "governator"'s retired. we're back to brown - he of the mtbe water pollution fiasco. when he signed mandatory mtbe into law, the refiner whose process produced loads of it was arco. his wife was on the board of arco at the time. other refiners ended up having to buy mtbe from arco to meet the state requirements so not only did he pollute the states groundwater for decades to come, he raised the price of gasoline for motorists while arco got to actually sell crap that they'd previously been burning off as waste. nice job jerry.

Reply to
jim beam

Well, in the case of lexus there is an issue of costly equipment and expertise to true the frame in which case the cost-benefit analysis says just dump the thing for newer and "better" computer on wheels

Even leaving the frame truing alone how much does properly welding two pieces in two (for Evo IX RS rigidity or better) costs in your neck of woods?

so I take it you fell the victim of zipcode splitup

so hippies are slow to oust the governantress from power, I see

quick google search revealed mtbe pollution is not limited to kaulifornia though

formatting link

Reply to
AD

a frame is a frame. a bent frame that's not been inspected properly is still a bent frame.

dude, i have no idea. but a shop across the road from my friend's does classic frame and body repair. guys show up with trailers loaded with bits of car they've salvaged from wherever, and they get expertly re-assembled. they charge a small fortune, but hey, if you want that

60's bug-eyed sprite, 57 vette or renault alpine put back on the road, or even created from parts, it's your only option.

formatting link
>

correct, but it started here - ca's pursuit of clean air legislation has been a ball at the feet of the oilco's. they've simply picked it up and run with it.

"oxygenate" mtbe increased gas sales by about 5% overnight because of lower energy content on each gallon sold. because of this windfall, the california experience quickly got rammed through on the federal level. when mtbe was found to be polluting groundwater, the epa dragged their feet mot knowing what to do because the oilco's weren't going to lose their windfall without a fight.

then ethanol came along [thanks al gore]. that it offered the extra political benefit of securing the farming lobby vote was an unprecedented windfall of huge political significance.

Reply to
jim beam

find big money with comparable money. epa did not want to get squashed by a goliaf so it had to find a replacement for that four letter crap. makes sense

and now as usual little guys have to deal with the garbage laying on the battlefield

Reply to
AD

MotorsForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.