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Lol best headline. I don’t think I’ve dug deep enough into any of my various german cars to encounter anything truly stupifying-I was impressed when I took the instruments out of my e30 years ago that in addition to the screws- it had two shiny circular gnurled nuts that had to be hand loosened off their studs on either side of the steering column to as the final bit of dis-assembly.
Oh shit I forgot an even better more recent one! My 2008 Porsche Cayenne has the battery mounted in a compartment under the driver’s seat. Which pivots forward to allow access-but only once you remove the two back bolts-which of course are some obscure version of a star bit that only Porsche/Audi/VW use and is not necessarily readily available at your local parts store (i had to try two.) Then you’ve got to remove all the compartment crap and wires-then lug out the heaviest largest non-diesel battery I’ve ever seen.
I don’t understand what is wrong with timing gears,lots of engines use them and they are almost always working fine.
So far, it’s the idler pulley on my Cadillac. 2 of 3 screws are accessible, easily. # 3 is just enough behind the something bracket that I need to remove that bracket. I haven’t yet. The part sits on my bench laughing at me, while the one in my car is ALSO laughing at me, like a little birdie.
I have a few German engineers I know, and they talk about the national cultural pride they have in engineering things. Historically a little cringy but they revere engineering like ‘mericans revere guns and junkfood.
The national pride and the international prestige regarding German engineering is absurd.
I’m not sure there is any evidence of German engineering being consistently better than any other first world country’s engineering, but there are definitely other countries that have a better reputation than Germany.
This is Germans speaking about their national pride, there are things Americas think we are good at but are not.
I’m talking about both. I understand that Germans think that German engineering in general is notably good, and people from other countries think German engineering in general is notably good. I’m not sure German engineering actually is notably good, making both Germans and other people wrong for thinking that. The reputation that Germany has for good engineering is very international.
Actually the opposite of complicated but equally head scratching- 60’s Beetles used to run the windshield washer fluid off of the spare tire.
Why is that head scratching? The cheapest car on the market didn’t have the budget for a washer pump, and so they figured out another way to do it.
Obviously I know why they did it. I meant to convey something other than complicated is all.
I tend to find the most needlessly complex design features in Italian equipment, but that’s because my day job is repairing commercial espresso machines.
The Italian solution to design seems to be complex = advanced, and if in doubt/need to solve a design problem? Make it more complex!
One manufacturer, after a new model had been out in the field for 18 months, discovered that they had an issue with poorly lubricated o-rings on a sliding shaft – the o-rings would stick in their bore and stretch like a spring when the shaft moved, so it would tend to retract on its own. Our solution? Replace the o-rings and lubricate them with the right amount of the right grease = problem solved. But the manufacturer completely redesigned the whole thing, doubling the number of parts in the assembly, increasing the complexity of correctly adjusting the mechanism (and not bothering to adjust it when assembling the machines!) and adding a tiny brass adjuster that has a tendency to snap off. And they STILL refused to correctly lubricate the o-rings, so the problem just continued.
And this is pretty much how all the manufacturers in the industry seem to operate!
I wonder if that is not the same manufacturer of the Movie theatre soda dispensers. I think Pininfarina designed those.
As German engine design engineer, this article hurts my feelings. OK, there’s some truth to it. But still.
I’m doing aircraft engines now, but have been involved in automotive engine design in the past. A few things I learned and that I try to stick to:
All these comments and no one mentions the Audi 4.2 V8 and its rear-mounted timing chain? You have to remove the engine to change it and its guides. The guides are of course made of plastic and wear out sometime between 60k and 100k miles. It’s an interference engine, so don’t let that happen! Most shops will quote you between $5-9k for the job.
one could also mention the 3.0 Duramax in this instance from Chevrolet. they mounted the oil pump back there and it sits in oil and is not metal in any way, so yeah, that seems logical.
The 3.0 Duramax also has a timing belt(chain?) on the back of the motor. It’s either a motor out or cab off to access it.
Ha, I was about to say the 944’s balance and timing belts. They’re layered on top of each other on an interference engine, so there’s a reasonable chance that if either one pops, you’re gonna grenade the engine.
I’ve mostly stuck to less complicated cars, though. All y’all need old German aircooleds, SMH. Watercooling gave the whole country a bad name.
What does layered mean? Cuz on F series Hondas that I’ve worked on, and I can’t imagine this is unique, the timing belt and the balance belt are both driven off of the same crank pulley, so you can’t get to the timing belt unless you remove the balance belt.
That’s exactly what I meant. Sounds like a similar setup.
On a DOHC 3.4 GM motor in a 90’s Cutlass Supreme the alternator is don low on the rear near the fire wall. to get to it you have to rock the motor forward and work in a space a few inches wide. Of course the Timing Belts also take 8 hours according tot he book. so yet those engines while technologically advanced for the time I suppose, were definitely not designed for the application or the engineers simple said screw it, hold my beer.
Also Subaru simple things like changing spark plugs or a head light bulb.
I’ve owned a couple of different Subarus and neither was hard to change the spark plugs. On my 2004 Impreza the biggest obstacle was moving the washer jug out of the way. And since it just slid off a post it wasn’t really an obstacle. My wife’s 2012 Forester it wasn’t that bad either, no more difficult than many transverse V6 engines.
I’ll give you headlight bulbs, but I wouldn’t say that is unique to Subaru. I’ve changed them on many vehicles where they are a total pain. I think the worst I’ve dealt with were the 2007-2013 GMC pickups we had at work. One side was a massive pain in the wrist.
maybe it is just he legacy NA 2.5, but putting the head and sparkplug hole a few inches from the subframe spar and then using a special sized spark plug that seemingly no tool store has in a plug socket design meant once you pulled the extension off to actually remove the socket and then the plug with fingertips, you might actually get the plug out. Had to remove the inner fender liner to get the bulbs out. I have not often encountered a vehicle I could not remove the bulb without at most removing the radiator gap cover panel or even just pulled a pin at the top of the light and rotated it forward.
Dropping the subframe to allow enough clearance to remove the valve cover on my E90 BMW.
Less arduous but arguably more ridiculous: removing the front wheel to gain enough clearance to change the parking light. Also on my E90 BMW.
Typically you remove the rain tray on the E90 not drop the subframe LOL.
I thought we did remove the rain tray, then looking back through photos of the work I see that we did not. Oh well!
If we are complaining about strictly German car grievances, it would be the vacuum system that runs various systems (like the door locks) on 70s & 80s Mercedes. It isn’t so much that the systems are terrible to troubleshoot, it is simply that they could have been accomplished in a more simplistic manner.
Speaking of more simplistic manner, I spent the holiday break wrenching on my several decade old Lexus, including trying to pin down a rattle inside the dashboard. Disassembling the dash was needlessly complex, and it turned out the rattle was caused by the dashboard rattling against one of the other layers in the dash that had to be removed – so it was gone when I got to the point of figuring out what was rattling, and was rattling again after reassembly. It’s a relatively minor gripe, but the rattle is also annoyingly loud.
Vacuum power accessories such as door/trunk locks (Benz, Audi) and headlight doors (Lincoln Mercury early ’70s) are possibly the most annoying substitution of a problem for a solution known to man. Air always leaks. They somehow found a way to give a Mercedes and a pool float the same problem.
“And why is it always German?”
It’s not just German cars. I dread the times I have to deal with German software — SAP and Siemens NX (Engineering CAD/CAM/CAE software) are both used where I work. Fortunately, I only have to deal with them at arm’s length; I’m the server and cloud systems administrator and all-around cat-herder, not tech support. The configuration and UI logic of it all is obtuse and convoluted compared to so many other products out there. As one of the engineering department managers once lamented in a conversation when we were troubleshooting an upgrade, “You have to think in German.”
I helped run electrical service to three 11-station high-end high-speed German printing presses. The intricacy of the maze of various hoses, tubes, and wires under the false floor has to be seen to be believed. Not to mention the main electrical cabinet!
I remember it took me almost 2 hours in one of the secondary ones to figure out just where to land leads to a simple temperature probe.
I work at a steel factory built by a German company. Think of the unnecessary complexity they can achieve with something like a car, now try (and likely fail if you are at all a sane person) to imagine what they could achieve with equipment the size of a house with power ratings in the 10s of thousands of horsepower.
Interesting-I’ve wondered if this was the case with German software (seemed logical). I used to work in camera repairs and can say that there German cameras are very nicely finished and have better haptics than Japanese cameras but are also generally harder and more finicky to service due to needlessly complex adjustment systems that allow for far more range and fine adjustment than is likely to ever actually be needed.
I had a 1971 Jaguar XJ6 that developed an intermittent problem with sticking rear brake calipers. To reach the inboard brakes you had to remove the exhaust, disconnect the fuel lines, disconnect the rear brake lines, loosen the parking brake cable, loosen the driveshaft, then lower the whole rear sub-assembly.
Since the problem was inconsistent, it took weeks of repeating this procedure… over and over… to actually find and fix the issue.
This sounds painful
You have to really love a car to keep doing that. After a while, I would be looking on Marketplace if I didn’t truly love the car.
My Audi 5000. I mean, all of it, but I’m going to go with the brake assist. Instead of using a vacuum booster like every other manufacturer, Audi decided that it needed to use hydraulic brake booster which is powered by the hydraulic pump that also handles the power steering. Of course, this means that since it can’t rely on residual brake vacuum when the engine is off that it has a hydraulic brake accumulator. Because there’s never been a problem that the Germans couldn’t unnecessarily create then solve with yet another accumulator!
Everything about this system is terrible. The brake accumulator (like everything else on the car) is broken, so you have to get the hydraulic system pressurized before the brakes work. The steering rack leaks like crazy (because they all do), and if you let it get too low, not only do you lose power steering, you also lose power brakes, and it’s basically impossible to stop the car without the brake assist.
The only redeeming thing I can think of is that you can left foot brake without lifting the throttle and don’t run out of brake assist. Which is nice in rally and basically nowhere else.
Yikes! I’ve always watched for a clean Audi 5000 but had no idea they had a system like that hiding in them. It reminds me a little of the Citroen/Rolls hydraulic system in old Silver Shadows.
I’m not sure there’s a such thing as a clean Audi 5000 left. Almost all of them have been (rightfully) crushed. I paid $1,000 for mine (’87, non-turbo, but Quattro), and that was probably too much. It has *so many* systems like this! From all the extra pneumatic systems (power door locks, cruise control) to the insane electrics. Things like an after-run fan relay that will run the radiator fan after you shut the car down, but the relay invariably melts and then run the fan until the battery’s dead. Or the system that keeps the power windows operable after you shut off the car until you open the door, which sounds awesome, except that relay likes to stick so my battery dies unless I open and close the passenger door after turning the car off. And we haven’t even gotten to the GM-sourced digital automatic climate control system that does vat it vants to do, which is almost never what you want it to do. Or the differential locks for the Quattro system which are all vacuum operated (maybe there wasn’t enough vacuum left for the brakes after this?), with 6 vacuum lines going to the switch on the dash which is just a fancy vacuum mux.
Lol hydroboost brakes are not needlessly complicated, not are they unique to Audi in the slightest. Lots of Mustangs and Astro vans run hydroboost brakes, as well as most diesel pickups.
We have GM diesels at work and all run the power brakes off the power steering pump. It wasn’t something I’d ever thought of until our mechanic said diesels don’t make vacuum the same was as gas so it is an easy solution. One of those “Oh, that makes sense” moments for me.
The other solution is a belt driven vacuum pump, which imo is a much less elegant solution.
Interesting, my current project a 1983 BMW 533i also uses a hydraulic brake booster with accumulator for both power steering and power brakes. Maybe I’ve just gotten lucky but my impression is in the case of the BMWs they can break but I don’t think they’re notoriously trouble prone.
Yeah, I dunno that the problem is so much “hydraulic brake boosters are terrible”, it’s that Audi connected the brakes to an already failure-prone hydraulic system. The brake booster itself works fine. The hydraulic accumulator does not and they’re apparently failed on every Audi 5000 and the part is unobtainable. So, no boosted brakes until you get hydraulic pressure. Or after you lose it because the power steering rack leaks (which they all do).
Ah got it, AFAIK the bmw hydraulics are reasonably decent…thank you for helping cement my theory that Audis are even less reliable than BMWs-I’ve owned both lol. A much smaller Audi sore point I had was that my A4 leaked power steering fluid, which as you pointed out pretty much every car seems to after a certain age but for some reason unlike every other car maker they using some special mineral oil instead of ATF so it was more expensive and harder to get-though that was almost 15 years ago.
I dunno, does the accumulator in your BMW still work? At least it looks like it’s easily available: https://www.fcpeuro.com/products/bmw-brake-pressure-accumulator-34331162054
I’m skeptical that Audis in general are less reliable than BMWs in general. The Audi 5000 is probably the least reliable vehicle on the planet, but BMWs are pretty terrible. I should know, I’ve got an E30 as well, and I can complain pretty loudly about the ways in which it’s failed me. Of course, it’s a rally car, so I’m not sure that’s *entirely* fair, but the design is still German garbage. Like the slave cylinder that’s *inside* the bellhousing, and if you don’t get it lined up perfectly, it’ll self-destruct with the push rod falling to the bottom of the bellhousing. And then you can either remove the transmission to replace it, or do what I did and drill a hole in the bottom of the bellhousing. Or the “bullet-proof” M42 engine that swallowed a valve. The same engine that BMW can’t even be bothered to scribe TDC mark on the flywheel…
Ha fair enough, maybe I’ve been lucky when I had my e30 it was really quite reliable for its age and while the 5 series has a lot of little stupid problems it’s also got 40 years and 240K miles and basically everything more or less still works most of the time haha. Trust me I’m not implying BMWs are reliable and honestly I don’t think I’d buy one newer than about 2005 unless it was under warranty. And as far as I can tell my brake accumulator on the e28 works fine-brakes work well-power steering is a little crotchety when it’s cold if I’m pulling out of a parallel parking situation but nothing that’s ever made me think it needs replacing. RE the m42 that’s interesting you say that as my impression has always been that it was not that great a motor-which seems to match your experience. That’s horrible on the slave cylinder what a terrible design, I wonder if that’s the case on the 6 cylinders. I had one of those fail on a Mazda 626 many years ago and it was like 15 minute job to replace-or helped a buddy replace on on his Honda s2000 in less than an hour.
Maybe not the hardest thing to overcome, but considering how easy this could have been made, the e-brake actuators on a late model Volvo. Like most cars today, the e-brake is motorized and activated by button. To change the rear brake pads, you have to remove the e-brake motors and use an Allen wrench (better, use an Allen wrench bit and electric screwdriver/drill) to spin the motor to open up the disengaged state of the e-brake, otherwise you will not be able to fit the new pads with, if you’re doing it right, much more pad material. After replacing the pads, you have to put the car into one of four service modes to recalibrate the e-brake.
It would have been sooooooooooooooooo easy to have a pad service mode that backed the e-brake actuators to the wide-open position. But no, Volvo doesn’t think you or I are qualified to perform such a simple service as a brake pad change. Or oil change for that matter since there is no dipstick and you have to search forums to find the right amount of oil to refill.
I had a VW CC with an electronic parking brake. In order to replace brake pads, you had to have the VCDS tool (cable + software that lets you tweak the car’s code and perform service/diagnostic tasks) which allowed you to put the brakes in a service position. I bought the tool and it paid for itself, just using it for that one job.
The 3 that stand out as taking 10X longer than a “normal” car are the radiator in a 02 jetta tdi, a seat switch in a 12 tuareg tdi, and a power door lock in a 03 audi a4… I think I see a connection between all these cars…
replacing the front headlight on my malibu requires jacking up the car and removing both front tires, wheel liners, front bumper cover, then the headlight housing. 2 hours to replace a headlight bulb.
My god that’s bad. An ex’es chrysler cirrus had the battery mounted in a spot that was only serviceable by removing the driver’s side wheel and peeling back the fender liner partially. The headlight was easy enough but stupid because it required a really long thing socket extension with a tiny socket-to remove the lens from the front! Which is not that bad if you have the tools but imo headlight bulbs should have been mandated by law to reasonably user replaceable. That Malibu situation you’re describing is criminally difficult for a safety item that can fail at any time without warning.
I skipped directly to the comments to confirm the title: it’s ALWAYS German. GUH.
In general, I feel Japan has maximized for space at the expense of serviceability. Every time I work on our Element, I swear it looks easy till you try to fit a normal sized human hand in the space. My E46 BMW was tightly packed when you looked at it, but amazingly things were fairly easy to access when you actually worked on the car.
Conveniently I am swapping the same basic Honda motor into a Fiero and in that application we were deliberate about creating space. It is amazing what an extra inch of space does when installing a new alternator or belt. I know every inch of space is material that has a cost, but my goodness is it worth it when you are fixing something later.
Ugh needing to go to my email to log in is needlessly complicated 🙁
Lol that’s cuz it’s an Element. Every pre millennium Japanese car is really nice to work on
Zee Germans have never found a problem that they couldn’t over-engineer a solution for but my complaint has more to do with under-engineered solutions. Specifically oil filter accessibility. On my current cars the filter is on top of the engine right up front with a catch for filter oil and you could change it in your best white shirt without worries but for years that wasn’t the case.
On one car it was halfway over a frame rail so when you removed it that little bit of oil ran the length of the rail raining a curtain of oil for several feet. Moving it over 2 inches or angling it just a little would have avoided that.
I’ve had at least 2 different cars where the filter was hidden behind a giant under-engine cover that required 6 bolts, 4 clips, and at least a broken tab or two to remove and replace very time. A simple flap held in place with 1 bolt could have eliminated that effort.
On my motorcycles the oil filter is on the front of the inline 4 dead center between 2 exhaust headers and of course the manual recommends heating up the engine before changing the oil to make sure it drains properly. Removing that filter guarantees 2 things, you’re going to burn your arms, and you will spill oil all over the exhaust making the bike smoke the next time you ride it. You can try wrapping the pipes in aluminum foil or towels or whatever but it doesn’t work.
On my Taco the filter was above the passenger side suspension making it impossible to get a funnel or catch up there. At least my passenger side upper A-arm was well oiled and not likely to rust.
My SN95 Mustang has its filter above the driver’s side suspension. Best I’ve been able to figure out is a multi plastic bag setup (big ziplock around the filter and then a grocery bag as backup around it) and going achingly slow – tiny turns to not upset the baggies – to remove it. I still spill oil everywhere though.
Edit: it’s also horizontal, so getting a filled new filter on there is also messy.
On my Taco it was at least vertical, I guess I should be thankful for that.
My 2014 Sportwagen TDI requires removing a big plastic pan under the engine just to drain the oil. Something like 10 Torx screws. Pain in the ass. Fortunately the filter can be accessed from the top. But my fiancees 2018 Mazda3 has a nice design. Undo two screws on the plastic pan under the car, then swing a little access panel out of the way. The drain plug and filter are both right there.
It can be a bit of a pain on my air-cooled Beetle too. There’s no oil filter at all–just a screen (looks like a colander) that picks up…not much, really. You drain the oil by removing one large bolt. But around that are six or seven little nuts that hold a round metal plate that presses the oil screen to the bottom of the crankcase. There are two cardboard gaskets, as well as single use copper washers that all have to be replaced after you’ve removed and cleaned the oil screen. It’s frustrating sometimes, wrangling all that laying on your back. On later models, VW actually got rid of the drain plug altogether, to force people to drop the oil screen and clean it. Oh, and it leaks just a bit. Some people swear that all air-cooled VWs leak, and after a careful engine rebuild, I’m inclined to believe them.
This isn’t complex so much as frustrating for me, but Ford’s penchant for insanely deep spark plugs on the 4.6 (and I suspect 5.4, given the familial aspect) V8.
Anxiety-inducing to have to work totally in the dark on something so critical.
I had a 04 F-150 and those back plugs were criminal. Terrible design for sure. My friend has an F-350 and for many tasks on his truck the shop removes the cab to get to certain components. Yes, Germans can over engineer, but all manufacturers have tons of wtf engineering.
Oh yeah, I’d totally forgotten about the back ones…the fuel rails have to come out, etc. Ugh!
Humorously, I just replaced a bad plug on my 4cyl Focus, and it’s a night and day difference – all lined up in a row right on top in front. Took like 5 minutes.
Umm…… Most overhead cam engines have spark plug wells exactly that deep. My Honda has spark plug wells at least as deep as my 5.4.
Nowhere near as much work by the sounds but the Australian Barra uses much the same system, but vertical… most of the time that’s easier… until you get to cylinder no.6 where not only is it dark and deep with no vision options, but you have to assemble a very specific order of extensions to get a socket on the plug or the new plug home… always fun to watch someone do for the first time
Probably the PCV system on a 2005 Passat 1.8t. A completely incomprehensible mass of hoses, plastic pipes, check valves, and solenoids. It was hard to find diagrams of the whole system and I had to print out a few just to know what went where. But the whole intake manifold had to come off, amongst other things. I had to order parts from multiple suppliers and make one emergency junkyard trip. It gave me headaches just trying to get it all pieced together the right way. But in the end, it cleared the check engine light and it ran better.
I should note that that car belongs to my now ex, and hit 200k miles last year. Those 1.8t engines can be a nightmare and I’m proud all my hard work on that car when we were together actually paid off. It’s been reliable for the past seven years, apparently.
Who knows what horrors await when my 2014 Sportwagen TDI gets up there in miles. My other car is a 1972 Super Beetle and I have yet to find anything hideously complicated on that car. Back when the Germans over engineered, but didn’t overcomplicate.
I had a girlfriend with a ’99 Cabrio with the 2.0, and I kept it going for years. I was kinda pleased that it was the electrical system, not the engine, that did her in in the end (the car, not the girlfriend I mean).
My personal lifetime achievement award (so far…) for needless complexity goes to the windshield in an MGB. To replace it one must first disconnect the battery and drain the coolant, both steps being necessary because then one must remove the entire dashboard, all for the sake of two retaining bolts that easily could have been located slightly differently by about a quarter of an inch, thereby avoiding all of this.
Among my current vehicles, I’d say it is perhaps a bit much that replacing any of the dash lights in my Austin Allegro requires first removing the steering wheel. The instrument cluster was designed with no access from below (not difficult access, by the way, but no access) and the only way to remove it from above is to get the steering out of the way first.
I’ve come to accept and even relish a certain amount of poorly justified complexity but, to me, these both rise to the level of needlessness.
I had no idea…wow… this is nuts
Those little British cars from half a century ago are very much Rube Goldberg in operation.
BMW 2002 is the same but reverse. To remove the dash, you have to pull the windshield. Mind you, the whole reason for removing the dash is to service/fix/ replace the blower motor that commonly fails because it is in the valley of the rain tray, so water is present often.
I was hoping that by “the same but reverse” you were going to say it’s necessary to remove all the dash lights in order to take off the steering wheel.
Can I just say the whole car? My Jeep Comanche- No, not like Davids 91 with the chrysler HO 4.0. I have an earlier one, with the Renix electronics. A joint venture between AMC, Renault, and Bendix- what can go wrong? The whole electronics are wonky, and the fact that somebody somewhat recently made a reader that can show live data is a game changer. Prior to this, you needed a (generally) dealer-only unit that would read the computer. and saved codes? Nope. The ECU starts fresh every time. So that problem? Better be ready to troubleshoot. Intermittent problem? HA. Have fun. Especially since a bad ground at the taillight will cause idling problems. Plus, the mix of SAE and Metric fasteners. Holding the brake caliper? a 5.5mm allen. Had to go buy a set just for that. Just so many little strange things, that only effect the 87-90 MJs and XJs. Why not just leave it carb’d? Or use the 4.2 from the Wrangler?
Which is why I’ve always been a 91+ man!
If I had known then what I know now, I would have looked for a 91-92. But I bought it for 800 bucks and there is no rust on it. On the bright side, its still better than the 2.8 V6 XJ that I also considered.
That mix of SAE and metric gave me flashbacks to the 89 Camaro I owned for years. It seemed like most jobs required metric, SAE, and torx in some combination. The alternator which required semi-regular replacement was at least all either SAE or metric but if I recall correctly all 3 of the bolts holding it in place were a different size for no good reason.
Bought a set(s) of Torx just for my 89 Camaro. Sold the car in 2001 and haven’t used the Torx in an automotive setting since. I still use my Torx more than SAE though.
So….. Yes the 91+ High Output is better, and yes I have had some nightmarish experiences troubleshooting a Renix Comanche…… But I’m not sure that a High Output(or any other EFI car) is actually simpler or easier to troubleshoot.
They didn’t use the 4.2/258 because the 4.0 is a vastly superior all around engine. Much more horsepower, much better fuel economy.
The mix of imperial and metric applies to every single American car ~1983 – ~2003.