Quote:
|
This constant pressure on prices is why we get cars with great antilock brakes, fuel injection, etc with crappy plastic wheel covers, plastic door handles and crappy aluminum/plastic radiators.
|
DING DING DING!!!
Give that man a cigar!
All the cost is put into "tech", an very little is left over for the "proven" basics. In fact, in this day & age of computer modeling, we can now predict exactly when some mundane part like a door hinge will fail, and design it exactly to a specification.
In the olden days raw materials were fairly cheap, and nobody concerned themselves with weight, so if a door hinge was functional at 1/4" thick, make it 1/2", just for a good margin of error. (Look at the door hinges on a 60's Imperial as an example.)
That's why you see guys like Chip Foose, and other custom builders adding tech-items to older cars... Best of both worlds.
To get back on track, it's a similar thought process to put a modern TV in an old wood cabinet.
The sad part is,
most people, especially if they're young, have grown up to think that plastic hubcaps, door handles and black-cube TV sets are "modern and good", while steel car parts AND maple TV cabinets are "old and bad".