> Smarsquid: If you were talking about a Chrysler product, your fears would
> be highly understandable. I left Honda to buy a new 1995 Dodge Intrepid. I
> had no problems until just after the 36,000 mile warranty expired. Between
> 36k and 40k miles I had the transmission die ($2,000), the A/C condenser
> leak ($600) and an oxygen sensor fail ($300). Many things continued to fail
> until I finally donated the car when the transmission failed the second time
> at ~90,000 miles. (and NO, I didn't abuse the car, I pampered it - it still
> LOOKED great when I gave it away).
>
>> You might want to check out JD Power and Associates website for
their latest
> 3 year reliability ranking. Honda is WAY below industry average for number
> of problems in a 3-year period, and Dodge is WAY worse than industry average
> (and its parent, Mercedes Benz is considerably worse than even Dodge).
> >
> Another thing to consider is customer service - I'd be willing to bet that
> Honda would be much more likely to help out if a major failure occurred a
> little after the warranty expired than Chrysler. Chrysler was absolutely no
> help in any of my problems with the Intrepid.
> >
> I'm a reliability engineer (no, not for Honda) and let me give you a short
> lesson. There is a thing called "infant mortality" (my boss hates that
> term - he used to do safety engineering on toys). This means that on almost
> every new product, it is much more likely to fail in it's first few months
> than it is to fail later in life until parts start to wear out (these are
> called wear-out failures). This means that most of the failures should
> occur during the warranty period. Between infant mortality and wearout is
> typically a long period of very low failure-rate. When graphed, it looks
> like a cut-away of a bathtub, hence its name "bathtub curve".
> >
> Companies like Honda try to make their parts (and therefore their cars) as
> reliable as economically feasible - their future sales depend on that. From
> my sample size of 1 experience (not statistically significant) with Dodge,
> it APPEARS that their only concern was getting the car past it's warranty
> period and didn't have much concern about how long it lasted after that.
> The JD Power report APPEARS to reflect that sentiment also.


You just summed up my life experience, and have professional
experience to back it. If a car is a piece of junk, it will fail
regardless of pampering. If it is well-designed, it will generally
give very long service unless abused. Everything you said is worth
re-reading by the uninitiated.

I think, though, that you failed to emphasize one point: it takes
TREMENDOUS engineering skill to design a product to fail on schedule
-- the schedule being just past the warranty period. The service
department of most dealerships brings in as much, or more money than
the sales department. How quickly would a Chrysler or GM dealer go
out of business if half their revenue dried up because the cars
actually last? The economics of their business model weren't set up
for it.

JM