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Originally posted by TGO:
the svt duratec still did hold the record for a couple of years.
DO YOU RESEARCH!!! [sorry had to say it  ]
In what? Power per liter? Not exactly. Even excluding high end stuff like Ferraris and things with FI the SVT Duratec wasn't exactly the pinacle of power/l although it was pretty good.
BMW M3 (E30) 83.6 hp/l
BMW M3 (E36) 80 hp/l
BMW M5 (E39) 80.4 hp/l
Audi S8 85.7 hp/l
Toyota Celica GT-S 100hp/l
As well as the previously mentioned Hondas and Acuras.
Not to say the SVT Duratec was a bad engine, or even that its output was low, but it wasn't a groundbreaker per se.
"Bros before Hoes" <-- More men need this mentality.
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Originally posted by TourDeForce:
Seems the formula for success is a bit more complex than most think. They try to overcome the reliability perceptions of American cars, so they produce average engines that last a long time. Keeping a Hi-po power plant together is a bit more complicated, therefore reliability issues, material or design weaknesses will surface sooner in the engine life.
It's a balancing act, I recon. Best way to deal with it is to offer up the typical car, establish the dependability, then offer an engine option for more power (in limited numbers) to keep the enthusiast happy. Sorta, kinda the direction they're heading it looks like... 
That's not the way you win, though. You win by dreaming big and pulling it off. Balancing acts won't get you ahead, that's playing not to lose instead of playing to win.
Brad "Diva": 2004 Mazda 6s 5-door, Volcanic Red
Rex: 1988 Mazda RX-7 Vert, Harbor Blue.
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Going back to the mention of available engines ... I've never understood why there is no real selection of engine/transmission combos.
If you take a look at Ford UK, you will see the wealth of engines that are available in each vehicle. This gives the company a very broad range of options which can cover nearly any possibility.
It is beyond me why I cannot select say, a Fusion with manual and Duratec 35 ... and say my wife cannot have an auto with Duratec 30 ... my brother say a Fusion with auto and 2.3l 4 banger ... and my step-son a manual with a tiny but high MPG engine for pootling around town (like 1.6).
Allowing this sort of mix of engine types would surely help to allow Ford to reach the broad consumer base they need to. A smaller engine, like a 1.6 would do wonders with the MPG obsessors, 2.3l for your average city car, 3.0 for those who MUST have a V6, and 3.5 for those after the higher ponies.
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Part of it is our excessive government, and the requirements of certifying every major powertrain combination at the cost of the manufacturers...
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Rex: 1988 Mazda RX-7 Vert, Harbor Blue.
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That may be part of it, James. But most of it is just the margins that are on those vehicles. Flexibility to produce, as well as support, so many possible production combinations is expensive. And cars cost a LOT more there and people buy new ones MUCH less often than we do in the US. So people tend to buy cars exactly like they want them and want the flexibility to have the options they want.
If everyone was willing to pay $45,000 for a Fusion, Ford would be more than happy to let all of us pick from a whole long list of power-/drivetrain combinations because they'd be pocketing a lot more per vehicle in the end.
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I guess I don't see why it should be so expensive to do more mix and match options within the same parts bin. The parts are all there already. I think margins would naturally improve with more selection. I see more people do without a feature or two than swallow a package of things they don't want. Especially because it seems more that the people who care about cars the most are the ones the least appreciated.
Maybe that needs to be an emphasis in production technology improvements.
Brad "Diva": 2004 Mazda 6s 5-door, Volcanic Red
Rex: 1988 Mazda RX-7 Vert, Harbor Blue.
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Originally posted by sigma:
That may be part of it, James. But most of it is just the margins that are on those vehicles. Flexibility to produce, as well as support, so many possible production combinations is expensive. And cars cost a LOT more there and people buy new ones MUCH less often than we do in the US. So people tend to buy cars exactly like they want them and want the flexibility to have the options they want.
If everyone was willing to pay $45,000 for a Fusion, Ford would be more than happy to let all of us pick from a whole long list of power-/drivetrain combinations because they'd be pocketing a lot more per vehicle in the end.
UK car pricing is out of synch with the rest of the world because :
1. They MFG's get away with charging more
and
2. The associated governmental on-costs at the retail level are ridiculous.
Let's remove pricing difference from the equation, or alternatively figure out say the cost of a Focus here to Focus there to get a .x ratio for difference in cost.
Regardless, I am baffled by the true lack of choice that we as consumers are given in a given product. I don't want to be spoon-fed my car setup, I want a real choice. Unfortunately to do that I have to look at other brands and models, rather than just having an option.
Example: I want good MPG, I'll take a Honda. I want something practical, I'll maybe go Toyota. I want something faster, probably a Nissan.
All those choices could be configured into a brand by allowing more choice and real options other than just seat colour and cloth or leather.... 
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The 1978 Thunderbird offered 5 colors of moonroof tint to match the vinyl roof, three engines (302, 351, 400), three seating configurations (solid bench, split bench, buckets) with additional variations. The 1982 Thunderbird had over 10,000 possible configurations.
It's only recently that popular equipment packages which made for money savings changed to very limited configurations where items are only available via packages. It is a shameful step backward.
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Originally posted by ZoomZoom Diva:
The 1978 Thunderbird offered 5 colors of moonroof tint to match the vinyl roof, three engines (302, 351, 400), three seating configurations (solid bench, split bench, buckets) with additional variations. The 1982 Thunderbird had over 10,000 possible configurations.
Which is precisely why the Japanese kicked our asses.
The Japanese came over and offered only a couple versions of every model. You had almost no options on top of the version you chose. You got nothing or you got everything and maybe there was a version in between. It vastly lowers costs of production and significantly increases your reliability. Industrial Engineering 101.
The more possible combinations of components the less reliable the end-product. Plain and simple. Not only does it become more and more difficult and expensive to test every possible combination, but the man putting it together will never put 3 different things together as well as if you just gave him one thing to put together. You exponentially increase your problems in the future and you have support personnel, dealer mechanics, that must be trained on an exponentially higher number of power-/drivetrain combinations.
Then there's the biggie -- inventory. Every combination results in an exponential increase in inventory. At any given time there's almost $100 billion in automobile manufacting inventory out there. Increases are not treated lightly because the quantities are never small.
You might think that if you go from 1 to 2 engines it doesn't matter because the total number of engines in your inventory would stay the same you'd just have a smaller number of each. But it doesn't work that way. If you have 1000 engines in inventory with one option you might need 1500 when you have 2 options and 2000 when you have 3 options, just to maintain the same service levels. And with more engines you have more drive trains. And more electrical harnesses. And more ECUs. And numerous other things as well.
And then, for example, you decide you want to make Automatic Climate Control an option on every vehicle instead of just the V6 models. Now you went from a potential option on 30% of your production to a potential option on 100% of your production. Your needed inventories on that component just grew exponentially, by far from than the three times your potentially-equipped vehicles grew. You went from having to hold 1000 ACC units to holding 5000 ACC units, which you now have to purchase, find some place to store, and pay taxes on five times the quantity you did have to. Your cash-to-cash cycle time probably just went down the toilet unless you have very forgiving suppliers willing to absorb those costs themselves.
Oh, and you need a different wiring harness for that component. And it's dependent on your engine harness; an option that you also increased exponentially with the added engine options you wanted. This is why almost all, if not all, Contours came with the Fog Light plugs hanging on them whether their model could even get the lights or not -- it was cheaper and far easier to stick the same harness in every car than to use a different one.
And you do that for dozens or hundreds of different options, increasing the total needed inventory for your one facility by hundreds of millions of dollars overnight. It's a whole lot easier to do than you think.
And then you have to actually put all these cars together in a just-in-time manufacturing environment so that, when an in-process car gets to it's workstation the needed part is already there waiting for it. A part that was different from the last and will be different from the next, which will be different from the next dependent on whatever options and exact combination of options that particular car was ordered with. The more options you have, the harder and harder it is to guarantee that the needed component arrives at the needed workstation precisely when it is needed.
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Quote:
UK car pricing is out of synch with the rest of the world because :
1. They MFG's get away with charging more
and
2. The associated governmental on-costs at the retail level are ridiculous.
The costs of production itself, regardless of whatever taxes are on it or markup, is higher than it is here largely because they provide the consumer more options.
Europeans custom order their cars with 5 times the frequency that Americans do. They simply want the exact car that they want when they're paying so much for it and are going to keep it for much longer than an American will. They don't settle quite as easily like those 30% of Americans that purchase a car that's not exactly what they wanted but was there on the lot.
Consumers here want options, but there's a limit to which they're willing to pay for them. Not everyone here wants to pay for the relative minority that wants a car exactly like they want it. And everyone ends up paying more when additional combinations of equipment are available because it impacts the overhead costs of producing a car.
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