various

[Mike Arman]

Statutory Notice: the following opinions are probably due to a temporary
albeit severe caffeine deficiency and may not represent the sender's
mind-set during periods of normal sanity . . .



Polycarbonate headlight lenses, as used on new Audis and in fact most new
cars: Glass headlight covers are brittle, and I think are illegal under
federal regulations because of the danger to pedestrians. When plastic
breaks, the edges are not quite as dagger-sharp as glass. Wing-style
knockoff wheel nuts and protruding hood ornaments are covered under this
regulation as well - that's why hood ornaments now are either flush or
spring mounted (it isn't to make them easier for kids to steal).


Unfortunately, polycarbonate plastics "haze" with time - take a look at any
early 90's Dorf pickup truck or Taurus - the headlight lenses have
"cataracts" and of course, that makes it really difficult to see the
pedestrians you don't want to hit in the first place - the light output is
*severely* degraded. With most mass-market cars, this isn't a huge issue
anyway, because enough other stuff has disintegrated by this time that the
vehicle is ready for the scrap heap, so the fact that the headlights are
totally useless is moot.

With higher value and enthusiast cars which have lifetimes exceeding the
"haze by" date (lifespan) of the headlamp lenses, it is a problem - after
10 or 12 years it becomes necessary to find replacement lenses, and they
may very well be expensive, difficult to find or simply unobtanium. A case
could be made that this is a safety issue (it is) and that the manufacturer
should be responsible for them for the lifetime of the car. This would
force the manufacturers to state a "term limit" for the lifetime of their
cars, and I could see this very quickly becoming a strong sales tool - "our
cars have a design lifetime of 10 years, brand X will be junk in seven, and
they even say so!" It also might encourage car manufacturers to be slightly
interested in the very expensive vehicles they make beyond the *instant*
the warranty expires . . . hmmmm.


CAPS LOCKS . . . best response I've seen was this: "P.S. Caps lock on month
was last month ;-)"



Bluapunkt - yes, they are owned by our good friend Bobby Bosch. The
Blaupunkt ACD2900 am-fm-cd player I have in my car is made in China, and is
a sorry, unreliable piece of garbage that even Bosch wouldn't stand behind
when it died a whole week out of warranty until I squeezed them hard
enough. ("You're falsely advertising this unit - Bosch and Blaupunkt are
German companies, and therefore any reasonable person who buys a Bosch or
Blaupunkt product expects their purchase to be made in Germany to high
German quality standards - this unit is a cheap piece of oriental garbage
masquerading as something it is not. I want to remind you of the lawsuit
against General Motors, which has a lot more money than Bosch and lots more
lawyers as well, where they had to buy back several thousand Cadillacs
because they were built with Oldsmobile engines, and sold as Cadillacs. The
buyers did not get what they expected, and there was a class-action suit,
which GM lost. I bought Bosch expecting German quality, in fact, that was
the deciding factor for this purchase, but instead, I paid German quality
prices for some no-name shlock slapped together by slave labor working in
tents . . . and I want you to honor the warranty OR ELSE!

Eventually, and with not very good grace, they did. The unit works most of
the time, and when it finally does die, it is going to the local rifle
range and I am going to use it for target practice. The replacement unit
(already on the shelf) is an AIWA, which amazingly also died a week or so
outside of the warranty, but AIWA fixed it promptly and free, and even
apologized for the problem.


Best Regards,

Mike Arman, still alive and driving Audis here in Florida . . .

various stuff with 2, 3,or 4 wheels, wings, hulls, etc.