I like to think we live in a world where if efficiencies are discovered within one part of a business, those efficiencies are passed on down the line, so that everyone involved gets in on the savings.
While stuff like that certainly happens all the time, there are many times in which it doesn’t, whether that’s due to neglect or greed. I wrote about Ford’s unicasting strategy in today’s Morning Dump, and predicted that the lower repair costs the company is designing into its parts might actually make insurance rates cheaper, since it would be saving on labor time and parts.
Bearddevil quickly pointed out that’s probably not how it’ll actually work out:
The depressing likelihood is that unicasting isn’t going to lower insurance rates. Insurance companies are accustomed to charging more, and I expect that they won’t want to change that if they can continue to charge high rates and make an even better profit margin.
Though because of that, I expect that insurance companies will champion this method because it’s going to help their bottom line at the expense of policyholders, as per usual.
TheDrunkenWrench:
Unicasting will go mainstream, but they’ll have to use some new lingo to get the YOUTHS to adopt it.
“We’re FrameMaxxing our chassis so we can mogg on other manufacturers and spike their cortisol levels”
Or whatever the Gen Z/Alpha kids are saying these days.
If you don’t know what any of the words in the above comment mean, I envy you.
Staying on the topic of Ford, The Bishop wrote about the late-’80s Ford Turbo Coupes, which honestly look like they’ve aged well. I love when the Bishop does these write-ups, because people who actually own or have owned the cars always chime in in the comments. M. Park Hunter:
I owned a 5-speed 1987 Turbo Coupe in the early 1990s. Absolutely one of the best cars I’ve ever enjoyed. Quick (by standards of the time) if you stick your foot in the turbo, efficient (30+ mpg) if you didn’t, and a supremely comfortable long distance tourer.
Large Marge:
Freon-filled gas-bag axle dampers sounds like an insult from an Adrian Clarke article.
Have a great evening, everyone!
Top graphic image: The Autopian
Dang! Morning Dump and COTD? Burning the wick at both ends.
Is it a designated senior staff vacation week?
“the late-’80s Ford Turbo Coupes, which honestly look like they’ve aged well.”
The looks aged well, the photos did too, but the cars did not hold up. Faded and crumbling, every last one of them.
Being a commodity product, insurance companies will 100% cut your costs if it means undercutting the competition. Otherwise Allstate would just charge everyone $1 million a month for car insurance and call it a day.
People with enough leverage pay nothing compared to retail prices.
And European insurance is insanely cheap under some circumstances.
American firms still won’t pay claims.
Found out renting or leasing a film on Amazon costs ten to fifteen times as much here as Amazon in UK.
Havent seen the analysis yet on why castings are cheaper to make or repair. Stamped steel seems like the cheapest high strength structural material of all time even if you forgo mild steel and go straight for the boron. Which is why it has been used since car chassis were made outta wood. Dodge Brothers, maybe? Boy, that beaked Turbo Coupe photo brings back the memories. Dream car. I forgot about the thunderbird badge front and center!
I feel like a large part of the manufacturing savings comes from the fact that castings can be made in one piece all at once rather than several stampings that need to be welded together, and often need to be stamped multiple times to achieve the desired shape. Every step in the stamping and assembly process is money. Time, tooling, labor, machinery, etc.
There’s a lot of straightening to do with steel. The casting is either good or it’s not, and you simply cut out the section that’s not.
Steel chassis are strong, but they can end up tweaked far away from the impact site.
Thx for the shout out. Lots of memories of the Thunderbird.
Drag raced my brother’s bright red V8 Trans Am on a long empty four-lane, and totally toasted him. Sad day for him.
Also wooed my wife in the ‘Bird, so there’s that.
Somewhere in my model-car-kit stash I have the one Revell did of that beaked T-bird Turbo Coupe. I need to build it and it WILL be the metallic-red over red velour of the car in the article’s topshot.
Model car velour recipe – to 5 parts Tamiya flat acrylic or 6 parts cheap craft acrylic (thinned to the consistency of the Tamiya stuff using water) in the desired base color, add 1 part Tamiya acrylic silver and 1 part cornstarch-water mix, roughly the consistency of the paint. Brush on in the desired direction of the velour’s nap using a wide-ish soft brush. (I will not be held responsible for attempts to airbrush this mix.)
Is this better than airbrushing flocking?
If nothing else it’s easier to get cornstarch than flocking.
And it makes excellent “walking in the snow” sound effects
I feel like TheDrunkenWrench is channeling Chad Maxxington, aka the brilliant Sarah Sherman.
https://youtu.be/4XMPLdiXB1k?si=iHyMmaxTYur2Y_g1
Jester-gooning like a sub-human beta-cuck? Defeated.
Since I don’t have a desire to smash my jaw with a hammer to join the Looksmaxxing crew, I’ll stick to the Jester role.
We can’t all be Chad Chaddington Longschlong III.
Nah, I just recently listened to Behind the Bastards’ episode on Incel culture and Clavicular.
You won’t see the savings at all. I mean those boats for the executives aren’t gonna buy themselves.
No discussion of cost cutting in a corporate board room has ever resulted in “great, now we can lower the price!”
That was the first Henry Ford.
He taised the pay, lowered the prices, and turned out to be a notorious antisemite whose writings and actions significantly influenced Adolf Hitler and the Nazi movement. is the only American mentioned favorably in Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and he was awarded the Grand Cross of the German Eagle by the Nazi regime in 1938.
Well 2 out of 3 is sort of ok.
Lest we forget, thanks for the reminder, I knew most of that, but not reading Mein Kampf(ire) I was not aware that the old bastard was mentioned. I know we are not supposed to define a company and its products by the owner/original owner, but in these days of voting with dollars I think it is appropriate. So fuck Tesla, Ford and GM (they are in here for killing Saab), maybe Volvo is still a safe PC bet? Or raw Korean offerings?
Nor was even spurred by, “let’s cost cut so we can lower the price,” in recent history.
The computer industry is an example of race to cut costs and then lower prices.
The Ford model T went from $900 in 1910 to $250 in 1925
Accounting for inflation that’s a price change of $30,958 to $4,668
Not quite as dramatic as computer prices, where the price would have decreased to a fraction of a cent (and the speed would be supersonic) but still impressive. Especially considering that the model T didn’t change substantially over its run.
Other than the fact that the economy depends on the cost of goods constantly increasing, there’s no reason the cost of cars can’t fall precipitously.
Really? Has anyone told the computer industry that lately?
How’s gates doing forcing everyone to buy new laptops because Microsoft keeps bricking with updates, trying to force yet another failed version on the public.
Their inability to write software is not my problem.
Re the computer industry, I see it less as “let’s try to cut costs so we can lower prices,” and more as “the cost of production has dropped but so has everyone else’s, so we have to lower prices (or more realistically, keep the same prices with better hardware) so that we stay competitive.” No?
There’s obviously an element of that, competition pressures prices down, but at the same time the price of what hardware the market considers to be adequate has fallen.
The same can be seen in the price of televisions for example.
Ford with the Model T made the automobile a commodity.
GM competed with continuous obsolescence, yet the model T continued to sell despite being a terrible car aside from being cheap and durable.
Political considerations are keeping the Chinese automobile industry out of the American market, so there’s no competitive pressure to change.
The insurance lobbying industry, cloaked as “institutes for safety yadda yadda” has always pushed the feds to add safety features under the guise that will these will reduce lower speed collisions, thus payouts, ans therefore lower insurance rates for all. But then, with all the sensors mounted in the front and back ends, as well as the windshield, when there is a low speed collision is has become hideously expensive to repair. So, the insurance rates for all go UP under the guise that yes less collisions, but in aggregate the total cost of repairing less collisions at wildly inflated expense is now greater than before. And you newish vwhicle will be totaled if all the air bags go off.
Fascinating observation. We make cars more expensive by incorporating (requiring) all of this safety tech to avoid accidents, but when those accidents inevitably occur, the car is totaled, thus raising everyone’s rates from costly payouts. Yes, we’re being scammed by an industry which never should have been chartered to operate as a profit driven one, the medical industry as well.
If a manufacturer put some effort into repairability the insurance companies might reflect that in their rates. The problem is that liability insurance is based on on how much it costs to repair someone else’s car, not the insured car.
The underlying sensors aren’t that expensive, it’s the packaging and mounting that’s expensive. Bonding them into the windshield is remarkably stupid. Also intellectual property laws designed to protect the entertainment industry make repairs really expensive. You can blame the dealerships for protecting their right to exclusively repair cars.
The Government through the EPA defines the “useful life” of vehicles as 15 years or 150,000 miles, during which they must pass emissions tests.
Since government regulations have made repair of automobile drivetrains less profitable, a couple thousand dollars to calibrate the windshield will have to do
For a few years bumpers were required to service low speed impacts at zero repair costs. We should go back to that. Current bumpers are vastly uglier than the battering ram bumpers of the past.
Setting and enforcing maximum bumper height standards would help both cost and safety too.