A855 - 5 Speed
On whether the A855 is a piece of crap, I see two major issues.
First: No one knows how many were sold, minus any produced for development and testing.
Of those produced, how many have failed to perform, and how many have the same defect?
Second: The recovery always matters more than the issue, to any reasonable person.
As far as the first issue, here are the facts they provided on building, testing, and failed trans.
8 b-body trans and 1 a-body rebuilt for the same issue sent for testing in December.
In April there were 2 a-body trans and 3 b-body trans still in WY that failed.
That means at least 1 other a-body trans was sent for testing and failed, add my current trans, John's trans, that's a minimum of 12 trans, 9 in one month, with the same exact issue.
Here is the timeline to build, bench test, and send out to WY for road testing:
11/18/19 there were no a-body trans in stock.
12/3/19, 15 days later, a new a-body trans was built and failed bench testing.
12/27/19 it was ready to be shipped out to be road tested.
12/31/19 sent to WY for road testing.
1/6/20 all 9 trans passed.
We know now that not all 9 trans passed, and my replacement failed road testing twice, however, using their timeline that's 7 weeks total for a trans to be built, bench tested, road tested, and it has yet to be shipped to a buyer.
Without the actual numbers, it's difficult to determine the failure rate, however, based on the facts and communications, multiple trans failing road testing more than once, and at least 1 trans passing all testing multiple times and being sent to a customer, I would surmise it is high enough to cause any reasonable person a considerable amount of concern.
I would imagine if any company had 10+ low production, expensive, widgets, with the same defect in 1 month, they would certainly reach out to customers and social media to identify those impacted.