Premature vs. “Planned” Obsolescence

“The dealer may – probably will – install a new replacement transmission (modern electronicized automatic transmissions often can’t be rebuilt) and put the repaired car up for sale on its used car lot.”

No. they won’t. They will wholesale the car to an independent used car dealer, or it will go to auction. (Unless one of the dealer’s mechanics buys it).
New car dealers don’t keep cars over 10 years old these days. And if they did
keep & repair the car, they would account for the costs of labor because the mechanic would
otherwise be doing profitable work.

In the auto business for 35 years.

I’ve been following Eric’s posts on Facebook but I haven’t commented here in ages!

I’d submit that planned obsolescence has been a thing all along — at least as an aim — since the New Deal, but that its practical implementation had for long been limited by two factors: the technological difficulty of pulling it off without drawing a “lemon” reputation to a specific model, and (which hangs very closely together with the first) the fact that Enclosing the industry in the hands of un unassailable elite — ultimately an effective organ of the state — was a gradual process which, beginning with the New Deal in strategic terms, only gained practical application with the sealed-beam headlight legislation of 1940, and did not reach full fruition until c.1990.

As to the first, it is very much the same as the dilemma inherent in the design of military kit: you want stuff to be unbreakable by friendly soldiers, but instantly to crumble to dust the minute it is captured by the enemy. Practically, the former consideration has predominated, meaning that military stuff has for long been a good source of good, durable stuff. In the automotive context, reliability has been a selling point; and until recently the state of the technology has been such that basic, adequate reliability almost necessarily entailed a fair degree of durability. Only with the advent of electronic controls has it been possible to separate reliability from durability, by designing inherently fragile stuff which keeps itself from eating itself by constantly and actively adjusting itself not to eat itself. Only when the automatic adjustment-control system fails does the thing eat itself, and then with alarming rapidity. I am surprised that this feature has not become standardly incorporated into military kit, especially given the possibility of online remote control, though for all I know it has. Or perhaps I have inadvertently just given someone ideas.

I say that the second factor hangs closely with the first because, as long as the industry is reasonable open to entry by lesser-capitalized start-ups the offering of total self-destructing crap to the public is limited by the possibility of a brazen interloper offering quality stuff at a competitive price (or, from today’s perspective, even at a fair premium). It’s a classic prisoner’s-dilemma situation, as ought to render effective industrial cartelization prohibitively unstable, barring the sort of countervailing conditions the New Deal — and, of course, the industrial policies of the Third Reich and of Fascist Italy, which inspired the shape of the New Deal to an embarrassing extent — provided in abundance. For a decidedly left-wing (important because this is too often a blind spot for the left) exposition of the mechanics of this phenomenon, see “Railroads and Regulation, 1877–1916” by Gabriel Kolko.

Thus the New Deal created out of a numerically-tiny in-group segment of the motor industry as it existed then an effective _corpus,_ a corps in the service of the state analogous to the armed forces, as actual Fascist corporatism could only propose as a rarefied hypothetical ideal. And of course, this entity set out at once for all intents and purposes to outlaw its present and future competition, from the Cunninghams, Danielses, and McFarlans to the Excaliburs, Fascinations, and Mohses, to you and me. The overall merger-fest of the past half-century didn’t just happen; it isn’t merely the natural order of things; it happened under conditions expressly established at the level of state policy to encourage it to happen (even if in actual historical fact it happened by jumps and starts: DaimlerChrysler? AMC-Renault? Daimler-Benz-Studebaker? The overall trend was still overwhelmingly to fewer and bigger players.)

Simultanously these conditions allowed this industrial monster to pursue a programme of seeking capital-investment _requirements_ implicit in specific technologies for their own sake, in order to normalize a technological paradigm — what Austrian priest and theorist Ivan Illich called a “radical monopoly” — which necessarily entailed a level of capital investment unattainable except by a few. No longer did it follow the sensible approach of making a thing in the easiest possible way which would deliver the required product performance; it now set about making stuff in the most difficult practical way it could afford, to ensure that nobody else gets to do so. There was a time when the processes involved in automotive manufacturing, maintenance, and repair were pretty much the same processes. If you could fix a car in 1930 you were well on your way to being able to make one: and once you achieve that you have the power to make your car last as long as you keep doing the work. That has not been true for a while now. The history of automotive technology from c. 1933 to c. 1989 can be seen as one of separating those processes, making them as different from one another as was possible.

I won’t even start on how an industry elite in bed with the state has been remaking the urban landscape to get people who couldn’t give a shit about cars or driving to need to consume automobiles or be stranded, how that has determined the sort of technological trajectories this Enclosed industry chose to cultivate, how it has clogged our motoring environment with vast masses of idiots, creating a pretext for allocating significant budgets to draconian policing of vehicular traffic. Suffice it to say that it all hangs together.

The result is the disposable car, a consumable without a (legal) durable alternative (barring a significantly older car, given an understanding of its intrinsic maintenance regime.)

Now, in light of this, could the present clamouring after electrics be anything other than a continuation of the same process?

The thing that makes new cars expensive to fix or keep on the road with “codes” is the got-damned inspections. So many vehicles get tossed before their time because the borg box rats you out for a small evap leak or wonky speed sensor. The prole is forced to fix it to the computers satisfaction or face floggings by their communities swinest. In reality many dash lights can be ignored perpetually. Even a modern mustang with a bum 5k transmission could be retro-converted to a carbed crate engine and transmission if it wasn’t for “the man”. Perhaps we’ll soon see downgraded cars in states that don’t push the inspection grift, like american cars in cuba chugging along with lada engines.

Long time friend is preparing to upgrade his wife’s late father’s 1966 Mustang fastback. The car is in pristine condition “as is.” The plan is to replace the 289 with a “built” 302, bored out to maximum, replace the stock 3 speed with a 5 speed, change out drum brakes for disks, front & rear.

Yee, ha.

“Which, as it turns out, is roughly about the current retail market value of her car – with a working transmission. No one with any sense puts $5k in repairs into a $5k car that will only be worth $5k after you put that $5k into it.”
I disagree, and the plebs here already made the point….we are moving to cuba status with cars. I think external combustion should make a return….I know GM had a successful test model in the 1970s, but that would mean too much freedom and normies cant handle draining some cocks after a day of steaming. But I would toot my whistle to absurdity any day

I was at my local Toyota dealership the other day and couldn’t find (1) new 2023 on the lot. They had a 2022 Tundra but no 2023’s. They had a 2019 Tundra asking $57K for it on the sticker. I’m keeping my 2012 Tundra for the duration.

My brother has a 1999 Ford Expedition which he had the engine rebuilt for about $10K. Much cheaper for him than a new truck when you can’t even find one during this artificial supply chain BS.

I tend to agree with EM on this point.

To me personally, and I realize very few people think like this. If I like the car and throwing 5k at it would get me another 80-100,000 miles out of it and replacing the car would be in the neighborhood of 35-40k (with interest) It would be worth it to me. Forgetting all about blue book value etc.
I did almost exactly what Eric describes in his post replace a transmission in my 09 Acadia and gave it to my daughter as he first car. The car booked for maybe 6k, tranny cost me $3200.00. I do however know the maintenence history of the vehicle and couldn’t have bought her another one with a solid transmission in it for anywhere near $3200.00

I’ll be getting quotes this week to fix body rust on my work van even if it costs 4-5 thousand repairing it giving me another 3-5 years, a sprinter fully outfitted for my type if work would be 50-60k conservatively and would not be fundamentally better in the larger scope. I’d rather repair it and stack cash for when it actually becomes impractical to repair. I avoid payments with interest like the plague, All vehicles I own I pay cash for which is why none of them are new and most likely never will be.
A majority of people assume they’ll have a car payment forever constantly trading in and trading up barely within their financial means to make the payments let alone pay for it outright. Hence the “not worth repairing mentality” when in fact it very well may be worth repairing.

“New and improved” rarely qualifies for the latter. A fundamental of mechanics, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. A great many of the cars produced in the US from WWII to the early 90’s or so, WERE broken. If you got much more than 100k miles out of one, consider yourself lucky. The advent of Japanese engineering, forced upon Japanese engineers because of the lack of Japanese resources, vastly improved the quality and longevity of the motor vehicle. After which improvement in performance was achieved. For example, my 2006 MX5 out performs Porsches from the early 80’s. And it listed for about 22k when new. And is still going after 15 years, with no major expense. Of course the “electronics” are confined to the ECU, or EMU if you prefer. No internet connection even available, much less required for it to work. Such engineering peaked in the mid to late 2000’s, and the Psychopaths in Charge saw an opportunity to manage car manufacturing to meet their psychotic desires. With “regulations” created by unelected bureaucrats. And here we are, with cars engineered to last 250k miles, except for the parts that were re-engineered to meet those “regulations”. It’s not “premature”, or “planned” obsolescence, it’s state mandated obsolescence. Your product will never be good enough to satisfy the Psychopaths In Charge. After all, they are insane.

Hold up on the “nobody with sense” thing for a second. The way I see it, $5000 to give that car another 100,000 miles? While keeping the gasoline engine, while keeping the relative coolness of the ’08 Mustang. While keeping the not-internet connected or controlled electronics. While keeping the no breathalyzer.

I know… ouch… 5 large… is gonna hurt. I don’t know how in hell anyone can buy new without a similar bite… at least not in any way that makes sense to me!

So call me crazy but I *am* prepared to replace transmissions and even engines as a possibility. I don’t want to do that — it will sting like hell — but see my first paragraph. The alternative is by no means “pain free”.

Sincerely,
That Crazy Guy

Do people want repairable vehicles? Do they buy repairable vehicles? Do people even look at an engine bay when shopping? I’m talking about people, not all you greasers around here.

Do people upgrade vehicles? Seems to me many of the European lines use Bosch components. Do they all use the same bolt patterns? Can the ECM communicate with the upgraded part? Or do the manufactures tweak the design just enough, with customized housings and proprietary firmware, to make sure you can’t just change out a Bosch part made for a VW engine on your BMW?

Last week I discovered Sarah-N-Tuned, who’s videos are much more visually interesting than Eric’s, but she’s got a bit of an advantage too… Anyway, she reviewed the RAM 1500 TRX, which has the Hellcat’s engine. To get a shot of the beast she had to position the camera under all the covers and even then you could barely see it. And this is in a vehicle designed for people who like to look at engines. Repairability of this beast would be extremely difficult for a backyard mechanic without a full shop.

No one cares that cars are hard to fix. They’re used to the idea that new will be better and probably want an excuse to dump the old one anyway.

What’s remarkable about the 1950s — often characterized as a decade of conformity — is that planned obsolescence was broadly known to a sophisticated public, well aware that they were being played.

Whereas today, even with the ‘aid’ of Google, Twitter and Facebook, most folks don’t have a clue that they’re being maliciously shaken down.

In his book The Waste Makers, author Vance Packard described “the systematic attempt of business to make us wasteful, debt-ridden, permanently discontented individuals.”

But it goes back farther than that. In 1932, Bernard London’s pamphlet Ending the Depression Through Planned Obsolescence advocated a legally-imposed obsolescence on personal property, to stimulate purchasing. Obviously London was a fan of ‘ol Franklin Democrat Roosevelt, who made farmers dump their milk in the ditch and bury beef carcasses to drive up prices.

Japan’s shaken auto inspection regime, by arbitrarily requiring major replacements of things that aren’t broken, makes it economically infeasible to own a car more than four years. The used but perfectly sound vehicles are exported to Asia and Africa, while some of the engines show up here as JDM (Japanese Domestic Market) engines.

Now the Biden Thing is unveiling a planned obsolescence campaign that puts Frank Roosevelt to shame. By obsoleting the entire class of internal combustion vehicles, the Biden national socialist regime imagines it will spark a great purchasing boom in EVs.

It’s no longer just taxes that we’ll pay at gunpoint. We’ll buy EVs at gunpoint, too … or f***king walk.