Originally Posted by JP375

Well thanks for agreeing partially, but I must comment on your idea that engineers design flaws into parts to make money on replacements. This is a rather common misconception. No engineer would intentionally design a part to prematurly fail, just so that the company could make money off of a replacement. What is true is that often parts are designed to have a certain operating life which may be less than that of cars overall life, but this is most likely cost based. If an engineer is told to design a certain part and keep it under X dollars then they become quite limited in what can be designed. If the company cheaps out on the parts to begin with, they can sell a car at a lower initial cost and be more competitive in the market. So I don't think parts have specific design flaws which would cause them to fail prematurely, but rather the flaw in many parts is that, because of cost they were unable to create a part that would have near zero failure rates. There is a fine balance between making a well built car at a decent price, and making money. Contrary to popular belief, it is not easy to make money by manufacturing cars.