[Vwdiesel] Head lights 91 Jetta

[William J Toensing]

Regretfully, much of the engineering that goes into cars, domestic & foreign, is how to make them cheaper, not better. This is why it takes them 3 or 4 years to bring a new car to market in my opinion. Probably the most durable mass produced car is history was the Model A Ford, made from 1928 thru 1931. Why? In my opinion, it was way over engineered for its time since its development time was less than a year. Old Henry Ford felt the Model T was good enough & just needed minor improvements each year.  He refused to make a more modern car & was loosing market share & his family & business subordinates feared Ford would go bankrupt due to loss of market. Finally, they persuaded Henry to come out with a new model. In May 1927 he shut his Model T production down & closed his factories to develop a new car & retool the factories. Production of the "New Ford" (Model A) began in Nov. 1927 & was announced to the public in Dec. 1927. Waiting times were then over a year to get the "New Ford" which was developed & rushed into production in less than a year. Production of Model A's from 1928 thru 1931 totaled around 4 million. The oldest Model A is now almost  80 years old yet at least 200,000 are still registered & still on the road! Far far more of a survival rate than any of its competition, or any mass production car before or since in history. These cars still survived when they depreciated to values of $15 or less for running models. When selling for those prices, they would be junked rather than receive any major or often minor repair. They were neglected & treated as throw away cars once they broke down. However, they just kept running during those years of neglect, because in my opinion, they were over engineered because in their short development time, they didn't have time to find a cheaper way to do it.
I have a "Gray Market" 1971 Citroen CX diesel. The headlight switch has gone bad & when switching from high beam to low beam, the lights sometimes fail. I refuse to pay over $200 for a new switch so I wired in a set of fog lights which I leave on any time the headlights are on. I also relayed the headlights so the headlight current doesn't have to go thru the switch. Prior to installing the relays, the area around the switch was warm. I have had problems with older Citroen DS/ID models with the all purpose headlight switch which I have also remedied by relaying.