Royal Ford of the Boston Globe bashes VW/Audi on ignition coils

[Brett Dikeman]

At 12:48 AM -0500 1/27/03, William Ng wrote:

>Hmmmm, just finished reading Mr. Ford's article.  After evaluating it's
>points as a 'buyer/owner' of these suspect models, I'd say his remarks are
>spot on!
>
>4 coils known to be from a defective batch, yet only replace the one that
>failed and send your customers back out on the streets. Sorry, but that
>smells of something GM bean counters would do.

Which part of "limited supply" did you not understand?

Let's say a dealership has 40 cars sitting in their lot, each with
only ONE failed coilpack(since as soon as one fails, that's when it
gets towed in/driven in.)

Let's say they have 40 coilpacks on hand.

So let me guess- your system, which is 'the best', is to replace all
the packs in 10 cars, leaving the other THIRTY to sit and rust in the
dealership parking lot for a week or two(or however long it takes for
them to come in)...instead of getting all forty back on the road so
the customers can use them? Meanwhile, you have to give loaner cars
to thirty people for a week.

This is not a question of 'sending a nice letter to people about a
recall' as Cobram suggested; the cars are failing and coming in, and
the last thing they need is a recall.  Regardless of whether they say
"wait for a call from your dealer" or somesuch, they'll be swamped by
idiots with perfectly working cars demanding replacement coils while
they've got stacks of dead cars out on the lot, and that's the honest
ones.  There are probably scores of idiots who make up problems just
so they can get the replacement coils.

In this case, Audi's preferred method is to get as many cars as
quickly on the road as possible and fix on a NEED basis until supply
has caught up.  It makes sense for the customer(who on average is
more likely to get their car back), among other things.

Sorry, I'm with Audi on this one.  If I had a 1.8t, I would be
annoyed at the problem, but happy with the temporary fix over not
having the car until god knows when.

Brett
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