Art,
I was waitin'
I guess my Mentors & Elders instilled in me : "Dont't get wrapped around the axel".
As I get older - the more I understand about these "dimensions" these Mentors & Elders shared.
I know from personal experience many Brand Names or Companies are not what they used to be. Name is the same - the Company is not. I know not everything in a Manufacuter's is "quality", there is no Holy Grails and for sure NO Holy Grails by being Brand Loyal.
Sales Reps I dealt with used American Cars mostly. Chevy, Ford ,Buick mostly, and mostly because of Trunk Space as to what car was bought. These folks would put as much as 70K mi in one year. Plain Vanilla going 300K to 500Kmiles.
Windshields were bought, travel enough and trucks kicking up rocks do that. Tires, of course. Never really any problems. Whatever Dino oil at 3 months (didn't go by mileage) and whatever gas the company credit card was...regular of course.
One Rep finally bought himself a Mercedes. He had put 600K miles on his last Olds, gave it to his landscape guy. He put over a Million miles on the MB. When that MB hit a million miles - he said he would retire, he did.
He did what the book said to do for his type of driving with a diesel.
The reality is - most sales reps had no engine problems. Transmissions sometimes had to be replaced. Rusting out bodies due to locations around the country , or getting in an accident caused more problems than mechanical problems.
Like most things in life - folks making a fuss over matters that don't need fussing over - and not paying attention to matters that do.
My gut feeling is many engines today are built by whiz kids on a computer. No dirty fingernail engineering experience - keyboard and book learning only. The engine is "designed" - perhaps driven by EPA ...maybe to make brownie points, or get a longer recess... something.
When said engine is built is then requires a Lubrication Engineer to make it work...read" bail whiz kid's butt out of a tight spot.
I think there is Bell Curve to most stuff. One can engineer not enough - or over engineer. Moderation in everything seems to apply to engineering as well.
One aspirin is good so four must be better. Mario Andretti does this - so gotta be good for Grandparents Buick handed down to them...
I have my druthers on some things, then again some stuff is not that big of a deal. I prefer being able to have the pump on driver's side as that is where gas access is on my truck...been known to toss the hose over the bed from passenger side and pump too...
Of course I am the guy that used a pocket knife to sharpen a number 2 pencil in class because the whiz bang pencil sharpener was eating pencils...not sure if the classmates had never seen a number 2 pencil, a knife, or both...
*sigh*
I should be a real riot when I get older...