akirby

But that wouldn't be affected by increased repair costs.

Maybe, but it wouldn't surprise me to see an all EB Navigator - 2.7L, 3.5L and a new 5.0L EB.

Here is a perfect example. Tacoma frame rots completely in half. Cost Toyota a TON to make that right.

Yes. I don't build cars but this is similar to what happens in large IT projects. What can seem like a simple change becomes complicated and you end up with a domino effect that makes it not feasible to make a change that seems like a no-brainer. In a lot of cases the problem can be a side effect of another unexpected change that happens at the last minute. A good example is the rear window regulators on the 2000-2002 Lincoln LS. The regulators would regularly break, almost always on the rear and only if the windows were not used a lot. What happened was the material that insulates the window when it's rolled up changed late in the program. The result was it was stickier than the original material. If the window sat for long periods rolled up, it would bond more tightly to the window and put more force on the regulator when the window was finally rolled down. This didn't show up in testing because when you test something you over-exercise it to make it fail. Over-exercising it in this case eliminated the problem. And folks who regularly use their rear windows never saw the problem. That's just not something you normally test for. In other words - stuff happens and most of it isn't on purpose.

Engineers aren't usually stupid, so there's usually a good reason for those types of decisions. Sometimes it's simply too expensive to change it. Sometimes they've already explored the change that you think they should make and found that it causes another more serious problem. Sometimes it just gets overlooked in the big picture. But people don't buy new vehicles today because the old ones wear out. Vehicles today last 150K miles and longer with virtually no maintenance. A customer who has a part fail that appeared to be intentional or negligent would most likely go to a different mfr. The simple answer is it was either overlooked, too expensive to change or wasn't deemed to be a serious problem. There is no way it was done intentionally.

The only way I see GM getting market share is with price - people will always go for the cheapest vehicle. The problem with that is they'll replace a highly profitable Silverado sale with a cheap Colorado sale thereby reducing profits. And there won't be much profit on any of the conquest sales. They might break even, but what's the point in doing all that extra work just to break even?

There was a differential problem on another vehicle a few years ago with similar symptoms - it would show up around 45 mph and disappear above 62 mph (guessing at actual speeds but you get the idea). In that case they put the wrong fluid or additive in the diff.

My guess would be 2.7L EB, 5.0L and 3.5L EB.

Why on Earth would any mfr knowingly build in problems like that on purpose? What could they possibly gain from it - they wouldn't be doing the repairs and if you had those types of problems you'd be less likely to buy a new one from the same mfr. Total myth.

It's called common sense......

I do remember Ford saying that SD was also going aluminum plus Expy/Navy but I can't find it now either.

<drool>

I'm done wasting my time making logical arguments with someone who is incapable or unwilling to understand them.

"We may have lost $1B last year but we built some hella cool wagons, coupes and EVs and got lots of magazine kudos."

I'd love to hear the rationale behind GMs product decisions. This sounds like independent teams being allowed to build individual vehicles without regard to the corporate impact. If the Canyorado sells 100K units but they all come at the expense of the Silvererra - do they still get a big bonus? Some things just don't change.....

I would expect Ford to have lower output standard engines and Lincoln to have the highest output top of the line engines and they'll share the ones in between (2.0L is Escape top end but MKC base engine while Escape gets the 1.5L and MkC gets the 2.3L). This is typical now - the Fusion gets the 1.6L/1.5L EB and 2.0L EB while the MKZ gets the 2.0L EB and 3.7L V6.

But I believe the Cayenne is leading the way in sales and profits along with the 4 door panamera and it certainly hasn't hurt their reputation so far.

It's on the sync support site - I think syncmyride.com will still get you there. Look through the FAQs or just do a google search.

I don't understand the comment about the home screen having so many controls. Mine has the current Sirius or FM stations or the current usb song in the lower left and the heated seat controls in the lower right. That's all you can select from the home screen. You have to go to the individual screens to select anything else. The indexing problem sounds like the old software or your metadata isn't correct. There is an itunes sync program that will identify and fix that. I have a 8 gb flash drive with all my songs and I can select a song, album, artist or playlist with one simple voice command. It works every time.

Democracy is 2 lions and a lamb voting on what's for dinner......

Or maybe the only Tea Party groups that get any publicity are the ones that the liberal media identify as the ultra-conservative ones that they despise. I already gave one example of a true local Tea Party group who are true to the platform and not super ultra conservative. To think there aren't a lot of those groups at the local level at least is naive. Out of the hundreds of Tea Party groups out there, how many have you personally witnessed or heard about? 5? 10? 20?

The 1.6L will be history but it will be replaced with the new 1.5L in Fords.

If a group of radical anarchists called themselves Democrats, does that mean that all Democrats are anarchists? Or does it just mean that some group of people decided to call themselves a democrat and it has nothing to do with the Democratic party platform? You're painting every Tea Partier the same based on a handfull of examples of people who call themselves Tea Partiers. I don't know how much clearer they can get on what their platform stands for (or doesn't).

These are just Ford haters looking for an excuse to do more hating. No different from the GM haters who do the same thing, or the Toyota haters.

I think he meant Estate.