[ROVERNET - UK] P6 Design

[Vern Klukas]

>Vern Klukas wrote:
>>But most of your points talk more to problems created by the rarity 
>>of the car in America, not on it's construction.
>
>This is mostly true, but I thought they had plans to sell a lot of 
>them to Americans when they designed the car. Would that have been a 
>factor in their design and marketing plans?
>
>Most of the British cars I have worked on have been very 
>straightforward. Mine were also fairly inexpensive cars when they 
>were new.

Of course we can never really know what Rover's dreams were for the 
North American market, I personally don't think they planned on 
selling one to every Yank. We've jousted a bit on the details, but 
there is no denying that a P6 has some complicated bits that were not 
designed for ease of service, with the rear brakes leading the way. 
How much that affected the sales efforts in NA, I don't know. I 
suspect the market failure was more down to the horrors of BL 
ownership and the sad mess of the British motor trade tarring Rover's 
good name.

In general, the more expensive the car the more complicated it's 
bit's are if only because the customer wants to see more stuff. I've 
done a little bit of work on Rolls over the years, and there the 
guiding principle seems to be if one bolt will do, we will have to 
use nine more for added peace of mind.

By the same token, some of the cheaper cars have the best engineering 
precisely because they are cheap, and so require tha utmost in 
economy in materials and labour to keeps costs down. That's what I 
was referring to about the sophistication of the SD1 rear suspension, 
it optimized the competing needs of cost and function to deliver a 
simple design that worked.

Yours
Vern


-- 
Vern Klukas                             I'm a little . . .
Inkspot Type & Design
vern at inkspotco.com