Is your car boring?

Don't blame the design engineers! They're just one of several groups that play a role in car design and production. Join Scott and Ben as they discuss some surprising (and not-so-surprising) reasons why a lot of cars are simply ... well, boring.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Go behind the Wheel, under the Hood and beyond with
car Stuff from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hi, and
welcome to Car Stuff. I'm Scott, I'm Ben. We are
joined with our new super producer ladies and gentlemen, Tyler
playing Tyler. You want to put an applause queue in there? Okay, already,

(00:25):
Producer and uh, it's it's good to see you man.
We likewise, it feels like a little while since we've
been back in the booth. Yeah, it does. It seems
like it's been a couple of weeks, but it probably hasn't.
I mean, well, you know how we do these things.
We do them in a little batches here and there.
So we try to be pretty topical with our our
our topics, but it doesn't always work out that way.
And in fact, today's comes from back in May, um

(00:47):
May of this year, which is good, not may have
last year. Sometimes that happens. But but I think it's
an interesting topic and and hopefully we can what do
you think do you think we could stretch us to
an hour? We always can, right, it doesn't matter what
we're talking about. Seems like we can. We can draw
this out right. Sometimes we end up going on tangents.
I've listened to previous episodes where and it's usually my

(01:07):
fault where for some reason I'm irritated about something that
I have to I have to just get on a
soapbox and rant about for twenty minutes. I will say, though,
in my defense that usually when I listen back, I agree, yeah,
and you know what you agree, you agree with what
you're Okay, understood, understood, I get it. But yeah, we
do get off on some tangents sometimes, and I think

(01:28):
we might have this, uh, have that opportunity again today
because it seems like this topic. I want to say
this up front, I'm glad, I'm glad we're you know,
kind of chit chatting here before we really dive into it.
But um, I do understand that, you know, today's topic
is going to have a lot of people saying, wait,
you forgot about this, And there's gonna be several several
angles and several different ways to look at this title.

(01:49):
So yeah, angles, funny. Yeah, So I think that, um,
you know, by the end of today, we will hopefully
have you know, not not um, not a hundred percent
answer the question, but close to it. Anyways, there's a
there's a lot of other uh dimensions that we're not
looking at or other things that we're not considering. I
understand that upfront. So please, you know, if you after

(02:10):
you listen to today's episode right in, tell us what
we're forgetting, what we're not, you know, understanding about this
whole process, because we're not We're not engineers, were not designers,
were not stylists, we're not accountants. But we are going
to try to describe to you why, um, your car
is so boring? And this comes from an article that
was in Gelotnik, and it was written by um, a professional.

(02:32):
It was written by a guy that is a car
designer and he just goes by Mr. Car Designer. He
wants to remain anonymous, but he is a design engineer
and he's also a car enthusiast who will um lead
us down a pathway that explains why you know that
economy car that you bought, or even that you know
mid level sedan is somewhat boring, right? And I think

(02:54):
this has happened to everyone in traffic, especially in the past.
What do you want to say for for decades now
there you've probably been in traffic. If you're listening to
this show and you've looked around once or twice, just
glance the left, glance the right, and you think, God,
these cars are also generic. Absolutely. I don't know how
many people have written in and said, why does everything

(03:16):
look the same? Why do why do all cars seem
to be taking the same form? And that goes for
trucks and in some situations as well, not all of them.
There are some standouts, of course, and the same with cars.
There's gonna be some standouts. But when you look at
just general traffic, when you're just again just sitting in
in you know, bumper to bumper traffic during rush hour,
you're gonna notice that just about every suv looks very

(03:38):
very similar. Every sedan looks very similar. And same with
economy cars, same with you know, hatchback, same with sedans whatever.
They all follow roughly the same form. And there's probably
a good reason for that. Now we're gonna maybe we
won't discuss this in depth, but there's something to be
said for brand identity. So you know, there are certain

(03:58):
key characteristics that cars carry that um, you know, all
of the product line carries. You know, let's have this grill, Yeah, yeah, exactly,
that's that's a great example. You know, it's as a
look that that they all follow. You know, you can
tell that that's a jeep from a long distance away
because it has that characteristic jeep form, you know, that
type of things. We understand all that, but um, there's
some really good reasons why uh, you know, and maybe

(04:21):
maybe this is a better way to see it. But
I've heard this from many people throughout you know, decades. Um,
you know, I've for one of this myself. Why can't
they make a car that is, you know, an economy
car at tend tend let's say fifteen thousand dollar car,
just to be fair, fifteen thousand dollar car that that
has the looks of a corvette. It's very small, like

(04:43):
let's say it's just a scale down Corvette, but it's
it's fifteen thousand dollars. Why can't they do that? Why
can't they make an economy corvette looking car or something
that looks like a Jaguar F type or something like that.
Why don't Why aren't small cars economy cars more sporty looking?
Why aren't they or why are they so simple? Why
are they so plain? And a lot of people ask that,

(05:03):
why can't they just add some style. Why can't they
add some of the uh, the finishes that make everything
look nice inside, you know, the quilted interiors that can
um And there's probably one good answer, one one four
letter word that that everybody can probably guess, and that's cost.
And it all comes down to cost, really, buts per unit.
But there are lots of reasons. Really, Yeah, there's more

(05:24):
to this story than there may appear to be on
the surface. So one of the things that few friends
and neighbors have written in to tell us before was
that cars are increasingly becoming generic because it's a matter
of science, specifically aerodynamics. And while there is some sand

(05:45):
to that. While I do agree that is part of
the reason behind boring design, it's not the entire reason whatsoever.
And as we explore this, we're going to with the
help of our anonymous whistled lower, we are going to
discover some new twists and turns to the story. How

(06:06):
do how do you think we want to set this up?
I like I like how he takes the bloom off
the rose really quickly. I do like that too, And
you know what, I don't want to start in with
the article and we'll read some of this article, I promise,
but I want you to cast your mind back to
the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties for a moment and
think about the economy cars from back then. Okay, so
a lot of them had very very flat panels, very

(06:26):
simple stamp designs, very easy to uh you can you
can imagine them being manufactured very easy right at scale.
I mean, you know, when they're gonna make twenty thousand
of them, thirty thousand of them, very simple to build,
very simple to make, and then they have very plain yeah,
and they're playing. And part of the reason they're playing
is because the components are built to be used in

(06:46):
multiple models. You know. Yeah, sure, that's that's part of
the reason. But but think about now, like and as
we get to you know, the seventeen model year economy
cars have made a pretty dramatic step forward, I guess,
and you know there are a lot of really simple
vehicles that still have a little bit of style. You know,
they've they've they've really I guess, I don't know if
they have up their games so much as more as

(07:08):
just they've refined it to the point where there's just
a little bit of style to it. It's not so
it's not so boxy, it's not so flat, it's not
you know, the cars have more bends increases to them.
They're they're a little bit um sexier looking. I guess
you want I call it that there's a little more flow. Yeah,
I mean, if you can call a Kia Rio, you know,
a sexy car. I don't know if you can or not,
but but you know, it's not bad. But you know,

(07:29):
you look at cars like the Smart for two or
the Chevy Spark or the the Sonic or you know,
something like that, or Mitsubishi Mirage even they have a
little bit of design flare to them, but not not
a whole lot. And I guess I just want to
remind people of that that, you know, they have made
some advancements I guess along the way. But you're you're right,
Ben the way that this starts out, he does. He
does quickly get right to the point. Yes, imagine you've

(07:52):
just been hired as a design engineer at a major
automotive manufacturer, says Mr Car designer. Your boss introduced himself
and says, hey, are you ready to design the most innovative,
mind blowing original car you've ever seen. Now, stop imagining
that because your boss is not going to say that.
Maybe Elon Musk says that to his new recruits as

(08:14):
they walked through the door. Then he probably mutters something
under his breath about tunnels in the parking lot. Okay,
So so that's every designer's dream. Where every engineer's dream,
right is there, like like you finally get to do
what you've went to school for for so many years.
You're ready to design the coolest, you know, most badass
car that you can imagine on the planet, even though
you know it's if you're designing an economy car or

(08:36):
a base level vehicle. But that's not the case, he says.
On his first day as a career designer, his his boss,
um says, we're considering removing the dampers on our glove boxes.
I need you to benchmark other manufacturers to make sure
our cars won't be seen as lower quality compared to
the competition. Prepare a presentation, and then we'll start training
you on how to fill out the paperwork necessary to

(08:59):
make the change. So that is the excitement that that
design engineering has today. That's that's what a typical design
engineer will look forward to on their first day and
as a as a rookie designer at this point in
their time. Mr Car Designer also had to point out

(09:19):
that they were they were car enthusiasts. This was a
real eye opening peek behind the curtain for them because like,
I love that you brought up Jaguar and Corvette, right,
amazing vehicles just from the visual profile, not even counting
the engineering that goes into the engine and the power
train and stuff. When we see those sorts of cars,

(09:41):
you know, those are those sorts of vehicles that inspire
kids to go to school and become a designer, you know.
But he wants to uh he he wants to give
us all a real, a real what would you call
splash cold water sure on this um. And one of
the first things he talks about is what engineering actually is?

(10:04):
What do design engineers actually do? Yeah, because everybody wants
to point the finger at the engineers and say it's
their fault. It's there, it's there, really there the reason
behind this boring design. I've got a great example of
kicking a probably innocent engineer. So so the Monte Carlo,

(10:25):
my old money Carlo, had this terrible design for placement
of the battery, and it had had mental strut a
top it and the battery is placed in sideways, so
you had to undo the strut first to get to
the battery. And of course I would rather have it
be vertical versus horizontal. And every time you've got a

(10:48):
dead battery, you know, you're not in the mood to think, oh,
I understand the economy of space at play here, I'm
I'm Instead you're thinking, why the hell do I need
another wrench? You know exactly. You've got to be prepared
for it, no matter where you are, if you have
to swap that out or do whatever you have to do.
So yeah, I mean I can see that people get
angry and frustrated at certain things on their vehicles and

(11:09):
they say, well, why why is that designed that way?
Why why did they do that? Why do they make
that choice? That's that's such a dumb choice. But there
are a lot of reasons behind that, and it doesn't
just fall on the shoulders of the engineers. There's there
are three main groups that exist within any automotive company,
according to Mr Car Designer, and he says, well, short
of hot wheels, he says, you know, hot wheels is
a different game. But there's the engineering group, styling and accounting,

(11:34):
and then you also throw in another group that's really important,
and we'll talk about these guys at the end. The government. Now,
everybody has to deal with the government because they all
all the cars that you produce have to comply with
certain regulations, of course, and they're hundreds of regulations that
we'll talk about now. All of them play a role
in shaping the car that you end up buying or decide,
you know, you don't want to buy because of the

(11:55):
way it's designed or the way it looks, or whatever,
you know, whatever reason you may have against them. So
he starts out with engineering, which is a logical place
to begin because that's what his focus is, his uh
study is in. And you might wonder exactly what design
engineers really do, since we said, you know, they're not
entirely responsible for this. So engineers are responsible for designing,

(12:16):
as he says, the clips, ribs, brackets, frames, hinges, wires, supports, springs, chafts,
and anything else that compromise or comprises the structural or
functional parts of a car. So they're they're responsible for
making sure that, you know, things don't rattle when you
go over the railroad tracks, making sure things don't shake
loose after you know, you hit ten speed bumps. That

(12:37):
type of thing, and a good engineer can make your
twenty thousand dollar car feel high quality. Alternatively, he says,
a bad engineer can make your eighty thousand dollar car
I feel like a drunk toddler made the dashboard out
of paper mache. And we've seen, you know, we've seen
that in some more high end cars, especially not to

(12:59):
ding them too much, because I know we've talked about
in previous episodes, but especially when you see upper scale
brands try to make economy cars, but they still have
this upper scale brand price point. Yeah, sure, nobody wants
you know what can I Can I mention something now
that we're talking about price point because um, and we'll
get right back into the story. This is one of

(13:20):
those the side stories that I think we need to
talk about. Not we we've mentioned that. You know, we're
probably gonna talk about price of vehicles. You know why
why they price them the way they do? I guess
you know why why certain brands can get away. You're
certain manufacturers can get away with making inexpensive vehicles and
others can't. All right, So what do you think the
cheapest new car for? Is the cheapest model year vehicle for?

(13:43):
You may already know this. I maybe asking a load
of question here the absolute cheapest in the US, just
to guess, wild guess. I don't know if I could
do a specific a specific vehicle, maybe I can try
to guess for a company Kia, is Honda, it is

(14:04):
not what it is is Nissan. Nissan has builds the
seventeen Nissan Versas Sedan, and the price at the starting
price for a brand new twenty seventeen twelve thousand, eight
hundred and twenty five dollars, I find that remarkable. Let's
get a couple. That's pretty good. That price is so
low that it sounds like it's, you know, a buy four,

(14:25):
get one free deal. But have you ever seen a Nissan,
a Nissan Versus Sedan. I have not seen the seventeen.
I have seen plenty of Nissan Versus, and they're not
my favorite. Right, the relatively plain vehicles. And you're also
going to have to deal with hand crank windows, manual
power locks. Uh, you know we're talking about the base
S Sedan. They're also not going to have any kind

(14:46):
of height adjustable driver's seat, no center arm rest, you
know for the driver or the passenger. Uh, there's there's
no folding rear seats, you know. It's just that their
upright and the trunk is the trunk. It doesn't allow
it doesn't allow any extra space or anything like that.
But what you do get, and this is kind of
surprising for that price, you do get things like air conditioning,
power mirrors. You get for a four speaker stereo system

(15:08):
with with audio controls on the steering wheel, which is
kind of nice for it for that price point. Um,
we get things like Bluetooth connectivity. I mean, it has
a lot of features that you would be surprised would
come on a on a less than thirteen thousand dollar car.
But you know, if it's still you're looking at it
fairly and I should say primitive vehicle. But it's a basic.

(15:28):
It's bare bones. Well it's bare bones. Yeah, it's a
it's a um, it's really stripped down. I guess it's not.
It's not loaded by any means. It's it's got, um
a scarcity of of amenities. Maybe, Yeah, that's a good
way to say it. And I am on the same
page with you there man, that it is surprising that
the same vehicle that would not have a center arm

(15:50):
rest has uh steering wheel audio controls. It makes me think,
and I'm just guessing here, but it makes me wonder
if in the or supply chain they that's the only
steering wheel they make down We'll see. That might be it.
This might be the like, um, the result of a
trickle down and technology issue where where instead of designing

(16:12):
an all new steering wheel as you said, you know,
for for this Nissan Versa, they just simply use it
from the Ultima or something like that. I'm making that up.
I don't know if that's true or not, but that's
a possibility. It might be all niece on sedans. That
could be. It could be. Yeah, it could be that simple.
And and that's the thing, this, this trickle down technology.
Oftentimes that's why a manufacturer will build a halo car,

(16:34):
you know, something that draws the customers in, has them
look at, you know, at the vehicle that's on the
showroom floor, and then the people end up buying you know,
a model or two that's a trim line lower, maybe
two lower than than that one. But they're still excited
about the product they're excited about. In this case Nissan. Yeah,
that makes sense. Sense, It happens, and it happens with

(16:54):
all brands that'll have these Halo cars that we've discussed
in the past. Get him in the get him in
the dealership. Yeah, as long as they walk out with something, Yeah,
hook them with something and then uh, and then reel
them in with something else. Sayby that's it right? All right?
So back to maybe what we were talking about before,
and I guess, um, you know, we're talking about engineering.
We hadn't really gotten too far into this, um, but
I think this is really funny. Now he goes on

(17:17):
to say, you know, we we talked about all the
little bits and pieces and the minutia that they design
and and and work on through their whole career. Really,
I mean the the brackets and frames and hinges and
all that stuff. Right now, this is there's a funny
way to put this. There's a humor throughout this whole article,
which I appreciate. So he's out anonymous. Now he says,
if if you're interested in seeing the work that engineers

(17:38):
like myself do, remove a plastic park from your car.
You might notice the curves styled surface and the way
the grain of the plastic feels. Now, forget about all
that and flip it over. You see those ribs that
run across the surface, the little clip towers adorned with
those Christmas tree clips that everyone hates. That's what I design.
My life is awesome. So he designs like the stuff
that you just don't see, the stuff that that matters

(18:00):
behind the face of the vehicle. Really, but these things
are mission critical every time you try exactly because it
adds to the durability the reliability of the vehicle, and
engineers are responsibility responsible for stuff like that so that
they make sure that the car will last, it won't
fall apart on the way home from the dealership. And
there's there's another part that he points out that I

(18:22):
think is I think it's valid, and it's a very
well written point. He preemptively responds to folks in the audience,
including honestly me, at the beginning of our research here
would say, well, engineering, what about the people who make
the engines and the transmissions. You know they're doing the

(18:44):
real gear head work. And then he responds with yes.
But at the end of the day, their job isn't
that much different from his own, because they don't just
decide they're going to throw an eleven thousand rpm V
twelve in the next key a rio. And then this
is one of my favorite sentences, and it's so true.

(19:05):
He points out, some guy out there has spent months
of his life designing a dipstick. Yeah, just chew on
that for just a moment. Just think about that, you
spend months designing a part that you know, relatively a
few people will ever really give much of a second
thought too, or even differentiate between when they get a
different car. Very few people are going to, you know,

(19:26):
check the oil and then go, oh wow, an amazing
and innovative dipstick. So the engineers, again, they're they're responsible
for making sure that everything has integrity, durability, reliability, and
and the thing is that a lot of a lot
of people, you know, they think that the engineers are
responsible for style, the way that the car looks, and
that's not necessarily the case. But the group that is

(19:49):
responsible for that is styling. And that's a group that
we're gonna talk about after our word from our sponsor
and we're act and we were talking about styling and styling. Now,
that's that's the people that are responsible for what what
the car looks like. I mean, when you get into
a vehicle with what the interior looks like, Um, you

(20:10):
know what it looks like from the outside, how it
catches your eye, how it turns your head. Have probably
draw it, drew you to it at the dealership to
begin with. Really that's the styling group and that's uh,
but they're not entirely responsible for it. We'll talk about now.
Remember the engineers are gonna push back with yeah, that
that piece looks really great, but you know it has
to have this ribbing underneath in order to make it

(20:31):
structurally uh strong enough to hold up. And they're gonna say, well,
then that changes the design of it. So it's back.
It's back and forth, right, So there's a continual push
and pull among all these groups that we're gonna talk
about and styling. Um, you know, sure they start out
with a fantastic design, something that's swoopy and and and
maybe even muscular. You know, it's it's it's a bowl design,

(20:51):
something that they really want. And that's what you typically
see in concept vehicles at auto shows. You know, some
some amazing looking designs and vehicles. It everybody knows that
by the time that vehicle goes to production, it looks
significantly different in most cases, right, because it's to some
degree it has to be collaboratively created. Right, So, as

(21:14):
Scott said, the engineers will come in and say, okay, okay, okay,
k K, I know we all love the Jetsons, but
it's impossible to do that. Can we do a regular windshields? Yeah? Yeah,
we're not gonna do a glass dome like you wanted
on that vehicle, even though it looks really cool and
and there are concept cars that have those, but there's
a reason that you know, your next knees on versus

(21:37):
doesn't have a glass dough. Yeah you're not driving under
like a fighter Jet canopy or something like that. It
could be so cool, but you just you just can't
do it. Now. I know. Again, concept vehicles have that
and they look amazing, but um, there's there's a reason
behind that. And the problem is that, you know, everyone
wants to design what they deemed to be the most
beautiful or most a sleek car in the world, right,

(21:57):
And designers can do that. They can pick up a
pen and paper and draw out what looks like the
greatest car ever, and you think that's fantastic. If you
could build bet I would buy one. A group of
engineers and a group of designers can realistically sit down
in a room, hash it out and make a car
that looks and performs at this amazingly high standard. However,

(22:22):
they're not the only people in the room, and we
can't just it's it's easy to say, uh so and
so ruined the new generation of my favorite sports car, right,
but it's also unfair to put the blame just on
the designers. These are not These are not spaced out,
spaced out knuckleheads or something who wake up one day

(22:45):
from a dream and say this is the new Chevy Malibu,
you know, a fever dream, a fever dream. Right, No, no, no,
there's there. As you said, there are other people in
the room, and those other people are the accountants. And
we'll get to accountants in just a moment. But but
it all comes back to, as you had guests, or
as probably everybody guests, and we said earlier, it all

(23:05):
comes back to cost. Everything costs money, so nice things
cost a lot of money. And if you if you
want to build an economy car. It's all about cutting
corners where you can while still adhering to the safety
regulations and still adhering to UM. You know, I guess
the principles behind the brand and you know what they
stand for and what they what they want to put

(23:25):
forward as their as their image. But more than that,
there's still there's still interested in cost. Cost is number one?
Cost is king Well, yeah, okay, should I say cost
is number one? Because they are real? I mean when
you get down to the brass tacks of it, I
guess you know, safety is what eventually rules everything. Safety
is eventually what? Well, yeah, safety ultimately, I would say safety,

(23:50):
marketability and costs UM. And the reason of marketability up
there is because it doesn't matter how smart you are
in the manufacturing room. If no one wants to buy it,
you're still up the creek. Okay, So they talk a
little bit about UM, you know, profit margins all right now,
Now this is kind of surprising. And I read this somewhere.
I don't not remember where it was. Isn't some form

(24:11):
somewhere and you know engineers had, you know, added material
to it. I don't remember exactly where to credit this too.
But someone said that economy cars are you know, lower
end base model vehicles. Oftentimes the profit margin on those
vehicles might be as little as a thousand dollars. And
this is amazing. I'm really glad you mentioned this because
I have an analogy for us in comparison. All right,
So you know what we're talking about though, and we'll

(24:33):
get to your analogy a second, But what we're talking
about is that every vehicle they sell, they only gain
back a thousand dollars. Now, imagine that you have built
this vehicle from the ground up. It's a scratch built vehicle,
let's say, and it's a brand new line. Let's say
it's the new Dodge Dart. All right. I was gonna
use the Neon, but Neon's long gone, So let's say
the new Dodge Dart. And you've you've got all the

(24:54):
tooling together, and we're talking about sometimes millions of dollars
for tools that they're go into this, you know, each
for each panel, each piece. You know, it gets very
very expensive. Of course, the research and development, all the
people that they're going into building that um um, all
the time that they've put into it. You're paying for
engineers for you know, maybe two years, three years to
develop this vehicle whatever it too. And there's testing that also,

(25:17):
there's testing where you're essentially wrecking series of these cars. Yeah,
there's I mean, there's just countless costs of going to
the thing and there, and they re get recapturing only
let's say a thousand dollars for everyone they sell. The
only way that that works is if you build you know,
twenty thousand of these a year, thirty thousand of them
a year, maybe hundreds of thousands of them, and over
the lifetime of the car, eventually it pays it back.

(25:37):
And now we're not talking about even one year. We're
talking about over a span of you know, the generation
of the vehicle before they have to retool it for
a new generation. So that adds more costs. So let's
say that you know, it has a five year run
without a change, and that would be a long time
I think these days without a change, a significant change. Um,
you know, they're recapturing a thousand dollars every every time
they sell one. You need to sell you know, hundreds

(26:00):
of thousands of vehicles in order to recapture that cost
her to to gain a profit on that line of vehicles,
and and sometimes it just doesn't happen. Sometimes they decided
to just get rid of the line. Other times they decide, well,
we'll retool it, make it more attractive, and maybe we'll
get more sales. And you know this, this goes back
and this, this kind of just snowballs into bigger things
as you keep going on. So um again, that that scale,

(26:23):
you know, you have to build it at that level,
That that amount of amount of vehicles every year, or
that amount of vehicles for the generation, that's something they
have to factor and right at the very beginning, like
is this really gonna be worth it? Is something that
people are gonna want to buy? Right? And the the
analogy that I would draw, one of the ways I
like to picture it, mainly because I skipped lunch earlier today,

(26:46):
is let's think about what we buy in a grocery store,
or let's think about the economics of a grocery store
versus the economics of really fancy restaurant. Okay, so in
a really fancy restaurant, could let's you're taking your significant
other out and I don't know, it's like your anniversary.

(27:09):
Your wife was always wanting to go to your husband's
always wanting to go to the special place, right, and
you know that you could, uh, you will be paying
a premium for what what maybe you know, like a
relatively small steak or something and then side of Berne sauce.
I don't know, I don't know what, but um, but

(27:31):
you're already creating such a high profit margin for that
restaurant if we're just looking at materials and we're just
looking at sort of the design thing and a grocery store,
so they can The point is, a high end restaurant
can produce more profit through fewer transactions, but a grocery

(27:52):
store which has maybe a profit of as as small
as three, three to four cents on a can of beans,
you know, they have to sell hundreds just to like
keep the lights on it. So at the steakhouse, let's
say you're paying uh fifty five dollars for Ribby steak,
which you know it doesn't cost them fifty five dollars,
but they have a big profit march and they can

(28:12):
sell less stakes and still make a lot of money.
That's like the Ferrari steakes. Yeah, okay, that's what That's
what I'm saying. You go to the grocery store by
a Ribby steak, and it's let's say it's twenty three dollars,
and you know the the grocery stores only making three
dollars on that sale because it costs them twenty dollars
to get that meat from the butcher wherever they get it. Right,

(28:33):
that's like the Nissan versa of steaks. Yeah, yeah, it's
I'm gonna pull that quote out of context. It just
quote you later on that because that's cool. But yeah,
I think that holds up because I really, I'm really
glad you said Ferrari because that's why you don't see
huge runs are very high end cars. They don't have

(28:56):
to exist. Well, they're they're also any quapor but they're
gonna throw in another complication, not not complication, but maybe anoderation.
Another angle consideration, yes, is that you know those are
primarily handbuilt and I know they're using some robotics at
Ferrari for our example here, but that's primarily hand assembled vehicles.
So uh, you know, there's a lot more time and
effort put into them, and they can do things and

(29:18):
a lot of a lot of cases that you know
a robot can't do. Now, I I know that. You know,
there's there's pretty limitless what you can do with with
robotics these days. I understand that, but on a relatively simple,
if I can call it simple simple assembly line. Now
with that, where a car is primarily built with robotics,
you look at what they do, and it's a relatively
simple operation. You know, everything loads in through the car door.

(29:42):
It's pretty pretty easy to uh, you know, get in
with the robotic arm and and weld and fasten or
whatever they have they have to do, right, apply finishes whatever.
That all happens relatively easy. But a craftsman that is
creating a Ferrari by hand, you know, someone that you know,
maybe twelve people in the line whatever it is, stitching
the upholstery and stuff exactly right. Yeah, there's a big

(30:03):
difference there, right, I mean, you're not going to see
a robotic arms stitching the steering wheel together on a
on a Nissan Versa. You're gonna see them, you know,
taking a pre assembled steering wheel and applying it to
the vehicle. It's like at the restaurant there is a
chef cooking well exactly, that's right. Yeah, So there's and
I know I'm oversimplifying that whole thing, but you you
get the point is that you know, these are these

(30:25):
cars are you know, there's they're They're simple design, they're repeatable,
you know, to the point where you can build you know,
tens or hundreds of thousands of them a year. I
don't know about hundreds. That's a lot, but you can
build lots of them quickly. The other the other version
is one that you build very few slowly. Yeah, and
the this leads us back to go back to the

(30:47):
conceptual process of building and economy car. Just like Scott mentioned,
anything that the designers, even the engineers think would be
really cool, it doesn't always get in. Anything that they
think is cool that other parts of the decision making

(31:10):
group I think are unnecessary are probably gonna get cut. Yeah.
Now that means things like, you know, break cooling ducks,
you know, intakes for breaks and things like that, fancy
aro tech as as he puts it, trick suspensions or
even crazy shape, difficult to produce body panels or nicks.
Now that's a huge one right there. Yeah, okay, yeah,
that makes me think of moving carbon fiber first came out. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

(31:32):
I do remember that, and how difficult that was to make, um,
you know anybody panel really. I mean now now they're
starting to simplify that. It's it's starting to be mass
produced and and it's it's getting a lot cheaper to
do that. But carbon fiber was so expensive to work
with in the in the early early days. Even if
this podcast it was it was it was a really
difficult process. But but all that stuff that you know,

(31:52):
they think is unnecessary gets cut from the vehicle. You know,
anything that um, um, the accounting group thinks is unnecessary, um,
they get rid of it. And again one of the
biggest things I think this is the the exterior sheet metal. Now,
I had mentioned this early early in the podcast that um,
you know a lot of people just simply want a
better designed compact car, economy car. You know, why can't

(32:15):
you make it look like that Corvett or why can't
you make it look like um, you know, a Hummer
when it's a it's just a little vehicle, a little
tiny compact vehicle. What why do you have to make
it so complex? How much could increase in metal possibly cost? Right,
But that's not all there is to it. It's not
just adding the style to the outside. It's not just
the bolt on stuff really, um, there's you got to

(32:36):
think about everything behind that, you know, everything that the
engineers are responsible for making, you know, making sure that
stuff doesn't fall off, making sure that it's supported in
some way, making sure that you know, later as we'll
talk about, you know, crash standards, you know the regulations.
That's a big part of it. There's there's again everything
that we talk about here just against snowballs into something much,
much bigger. But the good news is that manufacturers still

(32:58):
can get away with adding stuff like that to the vehicle.
They still can add arrowtech, they still can add trick suspensions,
they can still add you know, the brake cooling ducts
or intakes if they want to. But it's going to
be not on the base model. It's going to be
on the mid level lines or even the high line vehicles.
It's the trim package. It's the optional, it's the it's
the option that honestly, this the feor tastes Heckatomy Scott.

(33:24):
It's the option that makes you think, well, why would
you sell a car without that? You know, And we
can promise you a lot of engineers and a lot
of designers, like a lot of stylists probably thought the
same thing. Oh yeah, you know they were. They were
probably like, no, this suspension is important, and they're I
guess it's not. It might be important, but important, isn't

(33:46):
the same thing is necessary? Do you really need the
brand name struts on this or can we just put in,
you know, the ones that we buy from our supplier
right that we already have a deal with for another line,
and we have truckloads of those available. Let's just use
that it allows you with this suspension. And the people
who say that, the people who end up kind of

(34:06):
playing the you could think of him as the bad cop.
I think that's busting their chops a little. But those
people are the accounting department and they are responsible for something.
Let me let me ask this, Scott, did you ever
have did you ever have a car where somewhere on
the console or the dash there were blank buttons that

(34:28):
were just like a slap in the face to the
options that you didn't get in a car Almost every
car I've ever owned, really, I mean, that's that's the truth,
is that you know there's always going to be that
spot where you know there's there's a spot for a
button there, or even three buttons or whatever it is,
and you wonder what the heck is that until you
find a vehicle that is a higher line than yours,
let's say, but you know, um, it just makes a

(34:50):
Mustang by Mustang. And then you go look at a
Mustang g T and you find out what that button
hole is for. Right, But you've just got a blank
panel there, a little piece of plastic and that again
kind of a slap in the face, right, I mean,
why don't why don't I have that option on my vehicle?
And if the if the holes there for it, why
isn't there at least just a dummy switch there? Right?

(35:11):
Why don't they put something there so it doesn't look
like just you know, an option that I don't have.
I had a Yeah, I've had those experiences where we
hop into a car. It's like my car and I
would look at the radio and obviously didn't have the
cool version of the radio. So there's a big blank
space in this one area, and then where the where

(35:33):
the hazard lights would be, there's that one button and
then there's a row of other unlabeled buttons that don't work.
It's like the fog lights or and every time I
hop in, I feel like my cars a part of
my friends here. Every time I would hop into my car,
I feel like I was saying, you, cheap bastard, thanks
for at least getting wheels. You know what, I think
A lot of people, a lot of people feel that

(35:54):
way about about those blank buttons, like why do you
even have to have that opening? Why does that have
to be there? Why can't they just make a separate
dash for this level vehicle? Just give me the one
button I need? Yeah, exactly, so, so okay, he has
a perfect example of this. Now, this is again from
Mr Car designer Um over a Gelotnick. He says, Um,
for example, say your car is available with the sunroof,

(36:15):
but you bought the base model. And then he says,
so really brought the sign yourself by that. But the
car with the sun roof needs to have a hole
in dashboard for a center of switch. Makes sense, right?
All right? Your car does not, I mean it doesn't
need it. You don't have a sunroof, so so that's
the reason. But well, it seems simple enough. But what
you may not have considered is how a dashboard is manufactured, right, now,
so there's no employee whose sole purpose in life is

(36:38):
to drill holes in in dashboards for Sunroot switches. Almost
all dashboards on the market today are injection molded plastic,
and that means that mold has to be designed and
cut from a large piece of metal for every single
variation of a part. Now that's every part. That's not
just the dashboard, but we're talking about the dashboard here.
A mold as large as an entire dashboard can easily

(36:59):
call cost millions of dollars. So you know, that's the
reason they're not gonna make two separate dashboard dyes for
you know that your your dashboard, because it costs them
millions of dollars. Now, think again with the the the
profit margins that we told you earlier how small they are,
and some people's and others. I understand it goes up
a little bit as you go up in in trim level,
but still they're not going to invest millions of dollars.

(37:22):
They're gonna look at that and say, well, no, we're
just gonna give you, you you know, a two cent blank
to put in that spot instead of you know, creating
a whole new die or mold for that whole thing. Yeah,
because think about it, in order to have a variation
of the dashboard with that sunroof switch and one without
that sunroof switch, so that you, like me, you would
not feel like you were incredibly cheap when you're hopping

(37:43):
your car, it would cost the company millions just to
have this. So and the funny way he puts it
is that it would cause if you think about it
this way, so you understand, like you can't have a
separate dash it cost millions of dollars. But the reason
they don't do it is because the only thing that
it solves is that it would fill you know, one
square inch of material on that dashboard is millions of

(38:05):
dollars worth filling that one square inch of material. Never
not to accounting, No, not to accounting. Well, yeah, I
guess you know what do you and I man, I
just I mean, if it's not my money, they should
have done it. Just sell another you know, ten tho
a hundred thousand vehicles, you see, I mean clearly right,
we can see that there is a We can clearly

(38:26):
see there is logic at play in this decision. And honestly,
although although it can be irritating, to see this blank
buttons and stuff. It's completely understandable and I have a
hard time picturing anybody doing anything different. Now it's irritating,
I understand, but that is accounting job. They have to
make sure that stuff like that doesn't happen. Now, another
uh factor in this whole thing that another role that's

(38:48):
played um in car design is by the government. And
we'll talk about them after word from our sponsor. We
have returned, and here is where one of the biggest
influencers and any car design comes into play. They're the

(39:10):
people who have essentially, out of the four groups, they
have the strongest veto power for any design. Oh absolutely,
because if if they don't approve it, your car is
not gonna be on the road. You're not gonna sell
even one vehicle. So you have to design with this
last faction in mind right from the very beginnings. You
have to think about the government. You have to think

(39:30):
about regulations, You have to think about what um uh
you know, the vehicle safety standards you have to meet
in order to get your vehicle on the dealer lots
and then onto onto the highways. And not just what
you might think of when we first say safety standards,
not just you know, seat belts, air bags, point like
even crumple zones, stuff like that. This also means emissions.

(39:53):
This also means you know this, This means a bunch
of different things that all get wrapped up under the
approved will of what we in the US call Uncle Sam.
And if you want to get right down to the
the group or the division that this is falling on
on their shoulders, this is the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration or or n h t s A as we'll
call them, and we've talked about them many times in

(40:14):
the past, and their set of rules of the list
of rules is known as the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety
Standards or fm v s S, which will we'll just
say Federal safety standards. How about that. Yeah. It's an
exhaustive it's an exhaustive group of regulations and it and
it increases every year. It's hundreds of regulations, hundreds of
regulations from raigie from air bags and air bag tasks

(40:37):
I guess two standards for flammability for vehicle interiors. Their
regulations play a huge role in the design of the vehicle.
As you said before, Ben, and as as these guys said.
You know, the engineer points out early on, it's pretty
easy to build a car. You can. You can build
the most simple vehicle out there. I mean, it really
is pretty simple. You can take just about it. You
could build one in your garage and make it and

(40:59):
make it work really out of scrap that you have
laying around. You can. You can you can make I mean,
think about a go cart. People build go carts all
the time. People like people motorized shopping carts. You have
to all you have to do is just scale that
up and make a small vehicle. And I know it's
it sounds like a tall you know, it's hard to
do that. I understand it takes skill, but but it's

(41:19):
relatively simple to create something that could run and drive
if you don't have to worry about safety. That's the thing, now,
see that, that's the thing. If you take that design
that you create in your garage, you know, whatever that
happens to be, if it's your own design, you would
still have to pass these tests. And if you're planning
to sell the vehicle, I guess you know that's that's
the other thing. If you're planning to to replicate and

(41:39):
sell this vehicle, you have to adhere to uh the
nh t S as battery of tests. And they've got
a lengthy list of tests that they have to or
crash tests that they have to um you know pass
with its with some uh form of confidence. You know
that that you know you you've passed with one star
or whatever it is. I mean, at least you've completed this,
right and you know, of course everybody's shopping is looking

(42:01):
for the five star vehicles, right of course. Yeah, and
then they throw out tests that aren't yet federally mandated
but still have to be complete. The manufacturers are still
um adhering to that. One of one example is the
UM the offset test. I think there's a small offset
test now, which is different. They for years have ran
something that they just called, you know, the frontal crash
right where it's a full on front crash. Right. I

(42:24):
think everybody can understand. That's pretty easy. I guess they
would call that the full frontal crash, right. Yeah. Yeah.
The there's wait, isn't that what isn't that one of
the criteria you look for in in a movie when
you go to see it full frontal? Yeah? Yeah, that's true. Alright, Sorry,
I couldn't. I couldn't resist. I mean, how often does
that come up in our podcast? Not very often, don't.

(42:44):
We're really full frontal show. Okay, I'm just I'm I'm ribbing.
You been so inspired by the world of film, the
full frontal crash. That's where that's where all the crash
dummies are naked. Okay, So I guess moving on, all right?
We uh you know, then there's the um there's the
moderate frontal crash, which is from about right around there.

(43:05):
I'm not exactly sure the year, but that has um
a barrier that only contacts of the front of the vehicle.
And we've seen we've all seen that, right, I mean,
it's kind of like an offset barrier. They've increased that
even more now in the last couple of years. I
think I want to say it's around two thousand twelve,
but it might have been two fourteen somewhere in there. Uh,
they started running something called the small overlap frontal crash,

(43:28):
and this one only contacts of the front of the
front end of the vehicle. Now, as as Mr Designer
points out here, Mr Carr Designer points out, um, these
are brutal crash. When you ever if you've ever seen
a small frontal overlap crash. They're they're running about forty
miles per hour. I think forty pur that's not very

(43:50):
fast until you hit, until you see one of these
crashes happen, and then you understand exactly how important it is.
But the problem is this completely changed the game for them,
and they when they started doing these these overlap tests.
You know, we're only a part of the front end
is contacted. It changes the direction that you know, the
body inside moves. It changes where you place air bags,

(44:11):
it changes, you know, the structural underlayings of the let's
say the left front side of the vehicle, the right
front side of the vehicle. Um, you have to add
steel beams, you have to add a lot of material,
and again everything has that snowball effect where if you
add material here, you've got to take away from there
or it extends it. It changes the design of that.
So when you change something like as simple as an

(44:31):
air bag, you know you have to adjust your air
bag design because of this this overlap that changes literally
hundreds of parts on a car, hundreds there's a domino
or snowball effect. As you said, yeah, and that ripple
effect or domino, wherever you want to call it. That
that causes a lot of issues with not only your department,
with other departments as well. And so again that leads

(44:52):
to a new a new string of meetings, a new
string of cat designs that have to go out. You
have to change everything based on just that one simple thing. So,
you know, changing even the most simple thing you would
think it would be simple, it has. Again, that's this
effect that that reaches to all groups. Everybody is responsible
for it now. Yeah, so if the from our sunroof

(45:14):
switch example, if you have to install a new, bigger,
stronger knee air bag to stop somebody from moving sideways,
then you have to factor in all of the other
parts that are around it. And this can have very
real and very dangerous implications. So now all of a

(45:34):
sudden we have this bigger, stronger air bag. It could
turn the sunroof switch into a deadly projectile when it
when you know, depending on the nature of the crash.
Back to that sunroof switch again, I think it's causing
us all kinds of trouble today. You know, I miss
having a sunroof, So you really, even though there's such
a hassle just again another little side, don't Yeah, I

(45:55):
prefer vehicles to not have sunroofs. I don't know why
that is. I just I've had vehicles with and without,
and I just seem to prefer them without. And I
think one major reason is that it's a giant hole
in the roof of the vehicle, and that's another potential
leak spot. That's one that's nice, I guess, to be
able to open it to vent you know, this air
and you just have some fresh air floats through there

(46:15):
and it brings cool air through the windows sometimes, you know,
on a fall or spring day. I like that, but um,
a lot of times, I mean we're here in Atlanta
and it gets hot. I mean even if through it's
you know, they're usually really really tinted, really dark, even
through the tinted window, tinted glass. Uh, those become super
hot in the summertime, and I just I would prefer
to shield myself from that sometimes just kind of hide

(46:37):
out underneath the hard roof of my vehicle. Well, you know,
my position on this kind of stuff is when I
see you know, when I see like a retractable soft top,
or when I see vertible, when I see a sunroof.
The first thing I think of is how many moving
parts break so easily in those things? Right? You know

(47:00):
the last time I was the last time I was
actually in a soft top. Uh. The person who was driving,
she was showing me, showing me her new car, and
she was like, yeah, we'll take the top down and
said cool, take the top down. At the top did
not come back up. My friend was that right, Yeah,
so she had to take it into the shop that day.

(47:21):
Luckily the weather was fine. But to me, they feel
like liabilities, extra parts, extra parts. More movement equals more
opportunity to more movement, more trouble. Yeah, right, right, more movement,
more problems, something like that. Anyways, All right, so you
know you're getting the idea that you know, um, you

(47:42):
change one little thing or you add one little thing
and it and it creates this world of complexity that
that wasn't there before. Right. I mean, you may have
everything kind of all hashed out and ready to go,
and you know, someone down the line decides they're going
to change the design of the front facia, they're going
to change the look of the headlamp. You know, something
has to be adjusted, but that that again, that has

(48:03):
that ripple effect that that changes everything behind it or
at least a significant distance around it. So hundred again,
the underlaying stuff is what this engineer is concerned with,
and and there's hundreds of pieces that then have to
be reevaluated for every little change, you know, make sure
that there's no no issues that are caused by that.
And let's get let's get specific here with the help
of Mr Car Designer. The Mitsubishi three thousand GT hood blisters.

(48:28):
These were originally caps added to cover holes in the
hood for strut tower clearance. All right, I have to
admit that I had to look this up. I look up.
I think it was like a nineteen Mitsubishi three thousand GT.
And it does have these kind of goofy looking caps
that were put in place. They look like a separate piece.
They are a separate piece. It was put onto the hood.
Later they smoothed them out, they made them, they incorporated

(48:50):
them into the hood design. But it's a goofy design.
So why do they have to do that? Yeah, because
there were these holes in the hood because the strut
tower needed clears that the actual hood, the pre existing
hood just didn't have, and they didn't go back to
redesign the hood yet, and they did later. They did
as you said, they did later and usually this usually,

(49:15):
this sort of incorporation of these new features happens when
the next model comes. Well, i'll tell you why. I
mean again, go back to the example of the dashboard, right,
I mean, imagine how expensive is to make a a
piece of metal that you have to shape in order
to create a new hood for a vehicle. And so
they they probably just got to a point where they said,
you know what, we can't spend you know, six million
dollars for this new hood design right now. We don't.

(49:38):
We just we're unsure about it. We'll do that on
the first redesign of the vehicle whenever that was. I
don't remember how many years later that came about. But um,
they look again, the counting looks at it, everybody looks
at it. And besides, it's just not worth it at
this point. Here's our here's our simple fix for now.
We'll really fix it later. And sometimes that sounds like

(49:58):
a sort of an ad hoc so lution or a
last minute ish thing. But he gets the car on
the road, and he gets the car and dealerships and
it gets the car out. I have to believe that
this is smoothed out a little bit with you know,
with computer aided design that we're doing now versus computer
aided design back then. It was a bit more boy
the second time, if he's a bit more primitive back then,

(50:20):
even though it was very advanced for back then, Uh,
you know versus what the way we did before, you know,
the drafting board. But um, and they still do drafting board,
I understand, but but now um, you can you know
input this and the whole team is working on one
system now and I think they have been for many
many years now. But to be fair, but you know,
you make one change and it shows you every part
that it does affect, and then alerts are sent out

(50:42):
to everybody to say, hey, so so you know Ben's
making this change on on the you know, underneath the hood.
Is that something that's going to interfere with you know,
production is going to cost more? Is it going to uh,
it's gonna allow us to manufacture, this is going to um, um,
it's gonna have any kind of interaction with another part?
Is it going to you know wide with another part?
And then how much is this change going to cost? Yeah,

(51:04):
exactly what is the reference? What are our other options?
And all this is happening in real time so that
you know, when when they're working on a vehicle, they
can do this simultaneously. Everybody sees, you know, what changes
will being made every day, all the time. And I
think it's very helpful. I think it's streamlines the whole process.
So so stuff like that won't happen now. Really, yes,
it shouldn't happen. It shouldn't. It's much less likely to

(51:25):
happen hopefully. I guess when you get to the you know,
the assembly line, things are a little bit different when
the when the robot hits the hits the road. There
is there is another extreme example, or extreme possible consequence
of these sorts of changes, and Mr Car Designer doesn't
name it specifically. He says, I know of at least

(51:47):
one vehicle, a certain off roader. Let's just say that
that was discontinued entirely because changing air bag regulations would
have meant the entire shape of the vehicle had to
be redesigned. So this change in air bag regulations affected
so many other parts of the vehicle that the manufacturer,

(52:09):
whomever they might be, just said, uh, let's call it,
let's take a bath on it, let's call it a wash.
I wonder, and you know, I was trying to think
of who this might be, and in my best shot
in the dark answer for Bronco, I wonder, I just
wonder maybe someone out there nose maybe maybe they know
what you know, what vehicle went away because of airbag
regulations side airbag regulations and this design change. I mean,

(52:31):
that's that's pretty I mean that shows you how, you know, dramatic.
This is they did away with an entire line of
vehicles because of one change to airbag regulations. And this
is an impulsive decision. There are people running mathematical models
over you know, if it gives us cost X to
make this redesign, and how many vehicles do we have
to sell for how many years to just even turn

(52:55):
a profit or break even or breaking or even close
to even just enough to uh you know, well you know. Okay,
So there's one more final point here that that we
want to bring up. But later, at the very end
of this podcast, I'm gonna ask you a question. I'm
gonna ask the listeners a question, maybe even a couple
of questions. But the way that Mr Car Designer wraps
up this article and I think this is a good
way to think about this, and um, the next time

(53:17):
you get in your car, just hits, take a quick
look around and think about the things that you do
and you don't like about your vehicle, and then realize
that nothing in your car exists because one engineer didn't
get enough sleep or decided to put that USB charger
just out of your grasp. Designing the car is an
immensely complex, exhausting process, and each part has its own story.
As we've kind of told you today. I mean you

(53:38):
think about that simple switch for the the the sunroof,
try to understand how all these stories come together and
make one coherent, attractive, quality, affordable, safe vehicle, and you'll
understand the challenge of my job. Now. I think that's
a fantastic way to end this because it just shows
you how difficult, how complex this whole thing is. It's
not just one group that you can, you know, point

(53:59):
the finger out and say why did why did engineering
decide that you know, this USB chargers should be way
over here where I can't hardly get it. Um, that's
that's his last example here. This is perfect, But um,
there are things in my own vehicles that I've had
in the past that I've just wondered, why did they
do it that way? And I'm trying to think of
some specific examples, but I guess missing buttons is one.

(54:20):
So that's one huge one. I think a lot of
people have that question. Others are maybe unusual shifter designs,
something that doesn't feel right, like where, um, location of
an emergency brake releases or a hood release, a simple things,
you know, maybe even even the gas release door, you know,
like if you have a locking gas cap or lacking
gas door. Sometimes they put them in the glove box

(54:41):
on the passenger side in the past, and you know,
I was thinking, went's a really weird spot for that.
And then they started talking them underneath the seats and
you'd have to get your hand kind of wedged in
between the mechanism down there to open that up. And
then they started putting them on the doors, and then
you know, now they're down underneath the dash, by the
hum by the steering. You know, they've changed them all
over the place. But there's a reason everything is where
it is, and and um, the design or the thought

(55:03):
behind that isn't necessarily just one person, one group. It's
it's kind of a group think thing, and it has
to happen that way otherwise it just won't work. I
have a good example for you, a bit of a
compudgingly example. So you know I used to drive that
forward escape right. The thing about that, I mean compact
suv is that the rear seats, the rear bench fold

(55:28):
down so you could carry you know, more stuff. So
I won't get too in depth about the process, and
it's like a three step process to fold down these seats.
The one thing that always mystified me, I still never
understood is the headrest. You had to you had to
physically pull them out, you know. So it's like it's
a pretty basic headrest with you know, the upholstered part

(55:51):
and then two metal rods the notch short side. I
think everybody can picture that to adjust that, but you
have to pull them all the way out to lay
the seats flat, and then what do you do with
the headrest. They're just they're they're just floating around the car, right,
That's what you know. Maybe maybe I'm missing something, Maybe
they somehow folded and I was just being a dufus,

(56:13):
But yeah it got me because I would fold these
things down and be loading up a car, you know,
to to move or something, or or take some stuff
for a project, and then I would think, well, I
lose things all the time. I better make sure that
I keep these because I don't want to be driving
around with a weirdly missing headrest. Yeah, what do you do?

(56:33):
You can you put them in the garageery just kind
of stash them on on the floorboards. What do you do?
I mean, that's that's kind of a bad design. It
really is a bad design. It feels weird. Yeah, I understand. Well,
what if you just like smash yourself right up against
the steering wheel, see your chest is right up against
it then and you're driving that way that worked? I
guess that would be you know, super dangerous. Well that's
the thing. The thing about that is at least if

(56:54):
there were an accident and be over quick for me
to be over real quick. I guess I understand. You
know though that um uh, you know, in order to
do it properly, had to remove the headrest. That's that's
just a terrible design. Let's see, that's that's a perfect example,
like why did they do it that way? But you know,
the back seat requires headrest, now you know that's that's
probably probably part of one of the uh um n

(57:16):
h T s A standards are regulations that they must meet,
right for you know, I guess that the rear seat passengers,
it's probably a whiplash reducing effort or something like that. Right,
that's probably why they were there. All right, So Ben,
I think we've pretty much wrapped up. You know, the
complexity of of why you know a car is kind
of boring. I guess in a way. Why why it's

(57:37):
not always the flash, why it's not always you know,
um an exotic supercar looking economy vehicle, And it's difficult
to do that when you're dealing with um, you know,
limited budgets, You're dealing with multiple groups. The the restrictions
of an assembly line that you know is often nearly
entirely robotic in some cases, for you know, these economy

(57:57):
cars that roll off you know, dozens every it, you know,
whatever the whatever the pace is really um So you know,
there's a lot of restrictions, a lot of regulations, a
lot of things that are happening behind the scenes that
we just don't see. We don't understand until we really
start to think about or talk to somebody like Mr.
Car Designer and then understand, uh, you know what they're
dealing with, their limitations that they're dealing with, you know,

(58:19):
the parameters that they have to to meet in order
to get that approved. And I think that that's probably
a valuable lesson for it's It was a valuable lesson
for me. I mean, I understand now you know what's
happening and when Why a cheap car it looks cheap, right,
Why why it doesn't necessarily have the flash of of
a Jaguar, It doesn't have the uh the pizzas of

(58:39):
a Panels or something like that. You know, it's trying
to think of a p V. Yeah, well there's yeah,
And why the materials seem to change, maybe even degrade
over time an obscure sports car. Had to bring up
an obscure sports car with my example of the p
vehicle like as pozzas, I guess, so how about the

(58:59):
pizzas of thes as a Minto shirt And that's definitely
that one, all right? So I said, I wanted to
wrap up with a question or two for our listeners
and for you, ben Um, the question would be, now
think about this, if they really could design you know,
some of the smaller cars with a lot of style,
a lot of um, a lot of the features and
and excitement I guess that some of the exotics have

(59:22):
or the sports cars have, right, So you want to
get a twelve vehicle that looks just incredible people their
real head turner, right without adding on a bunch of
stuff that you bought, you know, at the local autoparts store.
I mean, if you want to add you know, fins
or you know whatever vents and and side skirts whatever.
All right, So you don't want to do that. You
want to buy a car from the factory. But would

(59:43):
you really ever want to drive like a stylish sports
car or an exotic car that doesn't have the power
behind it, like like an exotic or a sports car
does have because you'd still beginning the economy drive line
with that, you'd still be getting you know that that
one point leader naturally aspirated UH five speed manual transmission
vehicle that you know doesn't really have any get up

(01:00:04):
and go compared to the vehicle that you're trying to
look like and it would just be kind of like
you're You're like you're kind of like a like like
a poser, Like you're like saying like, I don't like that, man,
I don't think I do either. I mean it's like,
you know, you'd have all the you'd have the look,
you just wouldn't have, you know, the the anything to
back it up. I would rather I would much rather

(01:00:25):
have a car that it looks like, you know, it
looks like an early nineties Volvo or something and it's
just still maybe even maybe even earlier like an eighties Volvo. Okay,
so picture sure, we're this is very boxy right now,
and uh, have it performed like a like a high

(01:00:46):
high powered exotic car. Yeah. I don't much rather have
a sleeper because the the idea it might be for
some people, but the idea of having a car that
appears to be, you know, one of the apex predators
of the road and not being able to back it up,
that's just Okay. Now, I'm not pointing fingers, I'm not

(01:01:09):
I'm not being disparaging in any way towards a certain
vehicle here, but I'm going to mention a certain vehicle
and uh, and a pair of vehicles maybe. And I'm
actually a fan of these vehicles. I like them. Okay,
don't get me, don't get me wrong when I read this,
but but but think about the think about this now.
This is a lower line vehicle. It's not it's not
the bottom of the line vehicle for either of these manufacturers.

(01:01:32):
But um, think about the Toyota f R s H
now to be known as the Toyota eighties six UM
or the super ru B r Z, those vehicles you remember,
we I mean, we've talked about those in the past. Right,
they're both comparable looking vehicles. They're both um roughly the
same exterior wise they've got they've only got like two
d horse power maybe two five horse power, which is

(01:01:52):
plenty strong for a small vehicle like that, right, but
they look like they should do more. They look amazing.
Those are great looking vehicle. So that's something that Toyota
and Subaru are combined, you know, as a combined effort,
have done very well. They've made a great looking small
vehicle that's still affordable. It's not an economy car. It's
not you know, the base level vehicle, but it's it's

(01:02:12):
lower lower in the line lineup, I should say, Um,
but they don't necessarily have like an over abundance of power.
That's what I mean. I know you can you can
tune these and you can change them. You know, you
can add upgrades, you can do whatever you want to
make them a lot stronger. But right from the factory
they look fantastic. They perform pretty well, but not at

(01:02:33):
the top level that you might expect. The way that looks,
I mean, it looks like a fast vehicle. It looks
really fat, like an almost not exotic, but it looks
like a sports car. It is a sports car. But um, again,
two hundred horsepower, two five somewhere around there. Um, that's
not necessarily like you know, when you jump into a
car that has you know, five hundred horse power, six
hundred horse power and has the looks to go along

(01:02:54):
with that five or six hundred horse power, it's it's
not the same thing. And again I'm not trying to
be disparaging tour you know, Subaru owners or Toyota owners
of that vehicle, because I think they look great. But um,
that's just one example. Like how they've how they've kind
of up their game. They've made you know, some of
these these lower end vehicles look really great. They can
do that. But the problem is, and I don't know

(01:03:16):
if they're running into this. I haven't really even looked
up the numbers. Um, you can make an economy car
or a cheaper car look fantastic. You really can do it,
and it will cost them a little more. But the
problem is they might not sell a lot. Sure, they're
going to be people that you know, are enthused about,
you know, very excited about it. There's gonna be one
group that has to have that vehicle. Everybody else is
gonna say, I think I'll pass. I'm just gonna go

(01:03:37):
on something that's a little simpler, keep it keep it easy,
keep it simple. Um, you know, I'll buy the the
the manufacturer of the make that is the competitor in
that in that group, for whatever reason, maybe they don't
want the flash, maybe they don't want the attention that
something like that would draw. So you know, you you think,
just like as a knee jerk reaction, that that would
be a great idea is for them to create something

(01:03:58):
that it looks like an ex attic and as an
economy vehicle. But that might not be the case for everybody.
Not everybody is going to love that the way that
you might love that point though, we would be remiss
if we didn't mention, uh, the if we didn't mention
the weight to power ratio. A lot of these manufacturers,
these cars are creating vehicles that overall do pretty well

(01:04:23):
with two five hours. Oh and I think that the
FRS and the BRZ do. I think that they're they're performers,
but they're not necessarily at the level that you would
get from you know, again, a sixty thousand dollar, eighty
thousand or even a hundred thousand dollar car, you're just
not getting that. But but for you know, twenty five
tho or whatever they cost, I think I'm close there,

(01:04:44):
maybe thirty yea somewhere around there. They're a fantastic vehicle,
they really are, and probably worth it, probably worth every dime.
So I guess we would want to know what you
think about this too, listeners. I Scott, I I owe
you apology because I believe in the beginning I misinterpreted
a little bit with the Toyoto and super examples you have.

(01:05:06):
I think I think they are competent cars, and I
don't think they're the kind of thing you should be
ashamed to have at a traffic light. However, there are
some other examples of cars that would you know that
that look like they should be doing much better than
they do. Should we name names? No, let's not name names.
I don't know. Maybe that's its own episode I have.

(01:05:28):
I have a list of cheapest cars for you know
that That Nissan versus Sedan was right at the top.
But um, but it is what it is. Nobody's going
up by Nissan and going out. Oh better start reven
just straightaway. Let's just throw up Missubishi Mirrage there, just
just because I want to. Yeah, that's one. Okay. So anyways,

(01:05:48):
there's there's a whole bunch of vehicles that you know,
you can still get into that maybe aren't the flashiest vehicle,
but but they suit the purpose. You know, they get
they get you where you have to go. Um there,
maybe not the most fun vehicle to drive, and they
look a little bit plain, you know, sure they do.
But they're getting a little bit better maybe as as
time goes on. As you know, we're in ten model
years now, Um, they are getting a little bit better.

(01:06:10):
When you consider what it used to look back, what
the economy car, what the base vehicle used to look
like back in the eighties and nineties or even earlier.
It just hit me though when you said that. Man,
we're in October right now, this is two thousand eighteen.
Model years are coming out. Oh man, what have I
been doing with my life? Well, let us let us
know what you think about this. Personally, I would always

(01:06:33):
prefer a sleeper car. Yeah, I think I'm in the
same way. I think I would prefer something that you
just don't expect, you know, something that's unexpected. It's a surprise.
Speak softly, carry a carry a big V eight you know. Uh.
It was okay, not my best work. Thanks man. Um.
So we are going to hit the road today, but

(01:06:54):
we will be back very soon with the brand new
episode of Car Stuff. In the meantime, if you would
like to hear more behind the scenes explorations of car manufacturing,
we have our entire catalog of podcasts available for free
at car stuff show dot com and more on the

(01:07:16):
way we promise, and you can also find us on
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us know what you think. You can also talk to
your fellow listeners, which I think is really cool when
you see people getting conversations about stuff. Oh yeah, that happens.
And in the meantime, if you're like Scott Ben super

(01:07:38):
producer Tyler, I've got some super secret insider info about
the manufacturing process of insert company x here, or I
have some very strong opinions about sleeper cars versus these. Um,
let's say, commute in cars that look like something else, right,
then we'd love to hear from you direct. You can

(01:08:00):
email us at car stuff at how stuff works dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
This is how stuff works dot com. Let us know
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