[ryeights]

>What do you think happened with the Golf 3 engine design? They made the camshaft structurally weaker, so the engine will blow up more easily.

Wow, talk about an oversimplification. The Mk3 moved from an 8-valve to a 16-valve engine; yes, this adds more valvetrain failure modes but also brings myriad other benefits, increased power, better fuel economy, reduced emissions…

The idea that a carmaker would purposely engineer flaws into core engine components in order to drive future sales doesn’t make much sense.

[hulitu]

> The idea that a carmaker would purposely engineer flaws into core engine components in order to drive future sales doesn’t make much sense.

There is a legend that Mercedes 190D was built like a tank and this caused customers to not buy the next iteration. Mercedes solved this, making cars a bit unreliable.

[salawat]

>The idea that a carmaker would purposely engineer flaws into core engine components in order to drive future sales doesn’t make much sense.

You need to realize modern business revolves not around one-and-done, but around recurring revenue streams. To the "business minded" the only thing that doesn't make sense is leaving money on the table.

[ryeights]

Selling people grenading engines is not a great way to build recurring revenue streams. And building performant, efficient, and reliable engines is hard enough without intentional sabotage