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About 20 years ago My parents were looking for a new car and my dad had the latest Consumer Reports. CR had rated highly the Caravan turbo and my old man had decided with out any other information he wanted one. I tried to get him to look at other product but no way he kept waving that magazine. So he buys the caravan and he is of course to old to work on it. I was constantly repairing it and so was the shop. Turbo went out it would overheat window regulators were always breaking. POS..

 

Ah, recalls are certainly annoying and should impact reliability and sales more than they do.

 

Ford knows that they are lacking in the electronics dept. They have been pushing job openings in app/software development super tough on Twitter for the last 8 months.

 

It all went downhill with the invention power windows.

 

??? The electronics rags give the Ford infotainment systems great reviews. The Sync and MyFord Touch software is largely developed by Microsoft and for the most part works pretty good. Of course they are looking for good software folks. In a modern car software affects just about every aspect of the car. All this stuff has to work together and play nice.

The rags like Consumer Reports down grade Ford because they prefer the poverty spec controls over anything else. Pretty much anything that looks like it came after 1970 is too complicated for them. Even the soft touch buttons on some of the Fords is too much for them.

 

I don't disagree or anything, but I wonder why that is. Most media-industry idiots love complicated electronics

 

Consumer Reports is notorious for being very reluctant to accept anything new. They automatically think that new stuff will break more. That is part of the reason they like toyota and honduh so much. They know those two will wait until someone else takes the risk and develops something new. Once the bugs are all worked out they steal the concept for their products.

 

I'm very distrusting of (new) technology, and personally don't care for it all that much. It isn't reliable, it does break, and it's very expensive to replace. I think it's reliable enough but I don't think the long term reliability is going to be there for all of the extensive electronics that are now in vehicles. Meaning that I believe it will be exceedingly expensive to keep a vehicle operating at 100% for 10+ years. And that's coming from a young person that's supposed to love this crap . . .

I don't mean to be close-minded, because I do know that the basics that are taken for granted now such as power window, locks, mirrors, seats, etc. have become very (relatively) reliable and long lasting. However, they do add to the long-term maintenance costs, and every year the amount of electronic-based items in vehicles is increased.

 

I see how you can easily come to that conclusion but the new electronic stuff can be just as good or better than the old mechanical stuff. (this is coming from a Mechanical engineer that doesn't like working on electronics very much) A lot of the old stuff is ran by vacuum lines, springs and cables all of which break and can be a pain to fix. With this type of system the problem can be at the control input, the actuator or the delivery mechanism. With the all electronic system the delivery mechanism is removed from the equation as wires typically do not go bad like vacuum lines or cables do. A lot of people got a bad taste from the early systems that just added electronic controls to the old systems. These had the faults of both designs and the teething issues of a new design.

 

Things that are replacing mechanical things with electric motors are fine. I'm more or less talking about heated/cooled seats, lights all over the place, steering wheels controls, ABS, TC, ECU, computers governing how the vehicle actually drives and operates as far as output from this and that, touch sensitive radio controls, basically all the electronics that are unnecessary for the normal operation of the vehicle.

I'm school for ME and hate how much we have to use computers and do programming. I despise computers . . .

 

Ford's quality has been goin' down since 1979.

Adrianspeeder

 

*shakes fist at leaking third brake light that has been redone with rtv on the shell and camper tape on the housing*

Ford y u make f-150 for 4+ yrs with leaking brake light?

 

If you search enough, you will find that all makes have their issues. A gentleman I worked with bought a Chevrolet Cruze. He later learned that Chev had issues with the fuel tanks coming loose from the vehicle and several other issues. Now he is paranoid, and questions every little squeak and rattle. He's driving the dealer nuts.

 

That reminds me that I should crawl under my truck and see how my fuel tank straps are holding up. I heard there was a recall but never heard a peep from the dealer I took it to.