Kirk's message about German "science" vs. British "lackadaisicality"
certainly got me thinking. It seems to me that there is such a thing
as too much engineering. For example, there was an article in AutoWeek
some months ago about this in connection with the Mercedes ???SL (the
new sporty one.) Why can there be too much of what is obviously a good
thing?
- It can be applied too selectively, ie. increase power output only at
the expense of reliability.
- It can result in increased complexity, meaning more points of failure
and less probability of successful diagnosis.
- It can result in systems which are subject to "hard" rather than "soft"
failures (see electronic vs. conventional ignition systems).
- It can result in drastically increased cost.
- It can remove the feeling of control from the driver/owner.
I suspect that the last is the primary reason we throwbacks like old cars.
Yes, it's more likely to break, but it's also more likely to fail in such
a way that we can, with a few tools and some Mach3 tape, get home.
I have deeply ambivalent feelings about this myself. My Prelude does
everything well. It has good performance, good mileage, excellent
reliability, and negligible emissions. But whenever it hiccups, I get
this feeling in the pit of my stomach that says I don't have any idea
how to diagnose or fix anything that might go wrong. On the other hand,
my old, simple car is the one that's in the shop for $3.5K worth of new
engine.
Some engineering advances seem much less mixed, for example, mettalurgy.
In engineering, as everywhere else, there's no free lunch.
Wayne
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