1 Billion Dollars Buys You 2 Recalls

[ctjet]

te he... Honda Re-call

holdens not looking so bad anymore...

[PHATR32]

yeah, a fuel leak in a hot engine bay isnt any near as bad as not have brake lights.........

[ctjet]

if you look at it from the perspective of; if your fuel line leaks and you car blows it'll just kill you, but if people dont see you brakes for whatever reason your now indangering the lives of many people... so Holden win by virtue that their recall fault potentially kills less peoples than Honda's

[boot_it]

if you look at it from the perspective of; if your fuel line leaks and you car blows it'll just kill you, but if people dont see you brakes for whatever reason your now indangering the lives of many people... so Holden win by virtue that their recall fault potentially kills less peoples than Honda's

just kills u i dont think so it could also kill anyone else in the car and buystanders

commodores suffered from inopperable tail lights for the last 12yrs so thats nothing new to them

the ve,s also have a problem with a knockin noise in the front of the vehicle when hitting bumps in the road which ends up being faulty engine mounts which have to be changed

[monaroCountry]

If you think the Barina was bad have a look at the problems going on with toyota

Toyota models rank at bottom of crash-safety study

http://www.sltrib.com/business/ci_4699240

Toyota and its Lexus division accounted for nine of 16 vehicles with "acceptable," "marginal" or "poor" rear-impact protection, lowering their overall rating, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety said today. Models included the Toyota Camry and the Lexus GS 350...................

A "poor" grade predicts serious or possibly fatal injuries in front-end and side collision tests performed at 40 miles an hour, while a "good" rating predicts a lower risk of serious injury, said Russ Rader, an institute spokesman.

Passengers in vehicles with "poor" rear-collision ratings are "much more likely" to sustain neck injuries compared with people riding in "good" vehicles, Rader said.

Edited November 26, 2006 by monaroCountry

[ctjet]

just kills u i dont think so it could also kill anyone else in the car and buystanders

commodores suffered from inopperable tail lights for the last 12yrs so thats nothing new to them

the ve,s also have a problem with a knockin noise in the front of the vehicle when hitting bumps in the road which ends up being faulty engine mounts which have to be changed

dude... i was joking

Reality would suggest that one fault is equally as bad the other... with the killing people and all

[Freddy Kruger]

the ve's also have a problem with their alarms... *hint hint* lol

[monaroCountry]

the camry has a problem with its power and RWD setup ...........

[ctjet]

the camry has a problem with its power and RWD setup ...........

its had that problem since its inception

[kralster]

I can't believe no-one enjoyed my "unicorn giggles" remark.

[ctjet]

oh no, we got it... it was just a shit joke

Edited November 28, 2006 by ctjet

[kralster]

you phail at the internets

[dineth]

As an industrial designer, I thought id add my 2cents. Its pretty much impossible to design a car that once put into production will come out being 100% perfect. As mentioned, pretty much every car has a niggle or too. So I think its very harsh to have a go at holden for having a few bugs. Belive it or not, most ‘new’ models are actually based on the model before that. They iron out the bugs from that model and do some updating, however once you start changing the chassis, some things that went right with the old model might not necessary be right with the new model, no matte how much money you spend and no matter how much testing you do, you cant beat a real world test and often problems come up after a few months of release. I think holden has done the right thing by not masking or trying to cover up anything and trying to fix things up asap. I’ll also add that I don’t work for holden or affiliated with holdens.

Another thing to note is that design wise, a lot of people say ‘oh it looks like a BA’ or “they should have been more creative’ you will find that as designers, most of us come up with some pretty radical concepts that the marketing/engineering/fincanance department then make us refine and cut back to something that’s more ‘acceptable’ If every single person who was looking to buy a commodore was a car enthusiast, then we could do some crazy designs that would really stand out, however the reality is most people who would buy a Commodore or a flacon is your everyday guy, family man etc. So the design cues have to be subtle as many people are fairly conservative. The commodore market would be the same as the falcon market so they have to be same yet different. and im sure holden and ford would be under strict guidelines to also have design cues from the past models, so there is only so much they can change. they cant design a completely different looking car becuase its way too much to risk. A new model can make or break a company (Ie Mitsubishi 380) and thousaounds of jobs etc, so they are forced to be concervative. Thats the reality of it all. How many of us complained that the upcomming GTR looks too different to the R34 model? One of my colleges who work for holden made the point that the rear light assembley on the HSV range (or possibly just the GTS) is different to your everyday commodore which hasn’t been done before. To change this one light assembely it takes a couple of million dollars cos that light assemlbely changes the panels that surround it and also will have to change the production line. These are the little things that people don’t always understand. And as with anything, it comes down to one thing and one thing only, money. One billion dollars is actually not that much for a car that holds a lot of the Australian market share.

Goin back to the 'looks', its pretty much hit or miss, becuase the general public will love or hate it before they even step inside one, let alone turn the key. When you invest so much money, you have to try and minimise risks and try and understand the market as much as possible and its going to be different from model to model. For example the AU falcon was based on the Ford Taurus (if you get a picture of the 2 cars you will see some very similiar design cues) because the Taurus was a big seller in the states. As ford found out, markets vary from country to country.

Performance and engineering wise, you can’t compare a HSV GTS to say a BMW M5, while they might seem similar on paper. Just like you cant compare a 911 turbo to a GTR. While its tempting to compare its completely different cars. You just have to appreciate them for what they are. I’ve never been lucky enough to drive a 911, but I’m guessing it would be a little bit more refined then a GTR, but having said that it also costs about 150K’s more. So for bang for your buck, id take the GTR anyday. It’s the same story with the Commodores, not every has a few spare 240k’s lyring around and if they can get similar performance and practicality (5 seats in this case) from a Australian made car for something that’s 1/3 of the price, then whats wrong with that? Even if there are a few recalls.

Edited November 28, 2006 by dineth

[phunky_monkey]

Thanks for the intelligent post mate, pity there aren't more people like yourself on this forum.

*thumbs up*

Dane