What were they thinking?

nm9stheham said

The philosophy on cars is different in Europe, as is their philosophy on WHO should own a car. There is less general thinking that everyone should be able to own a car, like Henry Ford promoted here. So if it is hard to repair, that is not a problem, since only the rich should have the ritzy brand cars. I can remember talking to to owners there (or from there) in the 70's and they expected to rebuild and engine after 60k miles.

Sounds like me Celica AllTrac..... took me 20 hours.... same as the book number.

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Dont know about that in in the 70´s
Volvo up to and including the 700Series cars where very easy to work on and up to the 200Series cars they where at a level where a blind monkey could have rebuilt them and those where built into the 90´s. The 240model is the swedish equilevant to a 6cylinder Valiant or dart when it comes to simplicity and reliability.
Mercedes up until the W201 better known as the 190E and a bunch of models after those was incredibly relaible but also horribly overengineered for no realy good reason,but still very relaiable. Quite funny actualy i used to work with a very inteligent older man and one lunchbreak he told me about how he back in the day had had a 6cylinder mopar engine and a mercedes 6 cylinder from the same era at the same time and how he was astounded by the difference in how much work the mercedes engineers had put into that engine and in the end it didnt make any more power,used about the same amount of fuel,was about as reliable but most certainly 10times as expensive to build and rebuild.
Italian sportscars on the other hand,those are absolutly terrible.
And that brittish guy who invented darknes also designed there backwards electrical systems in cars.