In my world (cars) I see the most atrocious designs imaginable on an everyday basis.
I often wonder if the 'designers' go home and say to their wives (that is, if any of them are capable of normal relationships...
) "Had a great day at the office today Love, wait til they try to change that clutch/cambelt/oil filter/whatever!" The very worst IME are those that work for VAG, who seem to take pleasure in designing brackets that overlap a bolt head just enough to prevent access, which requires that said bracket to be removed and guess where its bolt is...yep, just obscured by another bracket....and all these bolts have different sized heads too....
In quality terms it has to be Renault and Fiat who between them must compete to use the poorest quality materials to make their shoddy products out of...and I imagine similar conversations from those in the purchasing department.... "Hey Honey, bought some REALLY cheap sixth-hand steel today!" ...and I found some Chinese bearings at a tenth of the price of the ones we were using before!"
But then I have to remind myself...these people are not in business to make my life easier, nor to provide the punter with an everlasting car...no, they are only in business to make a higher level of profit than last year.
To achieve that means the lowest factory-gate price possible coupled with long labour times to rectify faults that are designed to occur outside warranty.
I test this theory frequently and it is true every time, with the notable exceptions of Honda and Toyota. The rest are now experts at designing cars that will work perfectly for three years (no warranty failures) and then progessively fall apart and earn them money from costly spares, the difficulty in access is to try to ensure that the job comes to them rather than DIY or indies...
The stated intended life is only six years in the case of Renault, a bit like our expectancy of three-score-years-and-ten, any extra is a bonus, you keep it longer than that at your own peril!
Remind yourself of this next time something fails on your ten year old car/bike/washing machine and you struggle to get to it as easily as you think you should....welcome to my (and Maz's and Tubbs's etc etc) world.
PS In case you doubt the relevance/truth of this, consider the decision to drop the cassette transmission set-up on the Buells, Tuber to XB range...much much cheaper to build as an integral unit and it should outlast the warranty period, but consider the cost to fix failure outside warranty...it's a virtual write-off!
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