WHAT!? Not that much different?
Umm, do you drive to work on race tires, or do you switch them in every
morning???
The better DOT race tires get, the further away from what car engineers
intended they are. People will advise against running real racing slicks on
a stock car. Do you know why that is? It's because the loads generated by
them will eventually tear the suspension and chassis apart. Well, DOT race
tires get closer to that performance level with every tire generation.
On another note, there HAVE to be provisions in warranties for "customer
behavior" that I call "stupid human tricks"... Things like not changing
your oil for 30,000 miles, or putting a nitrous bottle out back. The guy
with nitrous might not be "racing" either. Maybe, he's just having fun with
it. Does that mean a maker should warranty the connecting rod sticking out
of his block? Of course not. Our "race tires" are precisely along that same
vein. They extend a car's capabilities beyond what it was designed for.
(granted, not as FAR beyond...)
You need a line drawn somewhere, somewhere between allowing aftermarket
customization, and that hole in the hood the cylinder head made when it
blew off because the owner turned the boost up too high... However, both my
warranty, and my insurance, both explicitly specify "timed competition
events" as grounds for non-coverage. If there's three words I would use to
describe an autocross, those would be them.
Besides, I'd like to see the face of an ASE certified technician's face
after being told to warranty repair my CP Camaro....
Mike
CP 58
At 10:10 PM 6/25/2001 Monday, you wrote:
> >Whether you call it racing or not, I don't think a car that fails to
> >withstand the stress of autocrossing is worth owning and a manufacturer
> >that tries to hide its own mistakes by
> >blaming the faults of its car on the behaviour of its customers deserves
> >to be lose our business.
>
>well said. I don't see how autocross is so different from daily driving
>that a regular car shouldn't be able the stress of autocross without
>falling apart, especially one that is new enough to still be under warranty?
>
>jmb
|