I remember the story of my dad buying a brand new 1982 Buick Century in 1982 with the iron duke 4 cylinder Tech IV engine. This was the 1st year that engine came with electronic fuel injection.
Since they bought the car new they had issues where under certain conditions the car would start to jerk and then stall so you would have to pull off to the side of the road, wait a few minutes then you could start the car agin and continue on. At this point, fuel injection was just starting to become mainstream due to high gas prices, stricter federal emissions standards and was still buggy. The car went back to the dealer multiple times to try to fix the issue to no avail and ironically 3 years later right before the warranty ran out my dad took it to a independent mechanic who was able to determine that the car had the wrong computer installed. You were not dealing with reprogrammable modules in that year. So they replaced it and the problem went away.
These were also the early years of the transition in the US from larger rear wheeled drive cars and lighter, smaller front wheel drive ones. One day my mother was turning to back out of the driveway while the car was fairly new when she heard a bang, one side of the front end dipped and the corresponding tire went flat. What happened is that the mechanism for holding the spring in for the front did not have any kind of a shield, the spring broke and punctured the tire. Had she been driving down the road when that happened it probably would have caused an accident. These days that is common and that is not generally an issue.
I also remember stories of my dad's 1980 Buick Skylark that had a lot of problems with the new electronic controls that were added to the carburetor to aid in fuel efficiency. By the 1990's the quality got better, but it feels like we are in a similar situation with these newer cars. Back during those years my understanding was that they would long for the simpler carbureted engines without all of the crazy emissions controls items that were causing problems and the cars that had frames instead of the newer more efficient unibody cars.
Once it was perfected and things were commoditized it was not an issue, but it feels like we are in a similar situation with the new tech right now.
Since they bought the car new they had issues where under certain conditions the car would start to jerk and then stall so you would have to pull off to the side of the road, wait a few minutes then you could start the car agin and continue on. At this point, fuel injection was just starting to become mainstream due to high gas prices, stricter federal emissions standards and was still buggy. The car went back to the dealer multiple times to try to fix the issue to no avail and ironically 3 years later right before the warranty ran out my dad took it to a independent mechanic who was able to determine that the car had the wrong computer installed. You were not dealing with reprogrammable modules in that year. So they replaced it and the problem went away.
These were also the early years of the transition in the US from larger rear wheeled drive cars and lighter, smaller front wheel drive ones. One day my mother was turning to back out of the driveway while the car was fairly new when she heard a bang, one side of the front end dipped and the corresponding tire went flat. What happened is that the mechanism for holding the spring in for the front did not have any kind of a shield, the spring broke and punctured the tire. Had she been driving down the road when that happened it probably would have caused an accident. These days that is common and that is not generally an issue.
I also remember stories of my dad's 1980 Buick Skylark that had a lot of problems with the new electronic controls that were added to the carburetor to aid in fuel efficiency. By the 1990's the quality got better, but it feels like we are in a similar situation with these newer cars. Back during those years my understanding was that they would long for the simpler carbureted engines without all of the crazy emissions controls items that were causing problems and the cars that had frames instead of the newer more efficient unibody cars.
Once it was perfected and things were commoditized it was not an issue, but it feels like we are in a similar situation with the new tech right now.