How much should Component Quality effect Vehicle Quality

[Eric.B]

If you've ever driven a vehicle with a poor gearbox, you'd really care about gearbox quality!

To give you some real world examples: Mitsubishi 3 speed automatic, smoothly shifts, great fuel economy for an automatic, but HORRIBLE performance. It's hell on the highway as it makes the engine redline at 82mph! (132km/h). Such a gearbox would lower the vehicle's performance stat, and increase it's fuel stat...

The dodge version of the same transmission is plagued with issues in the mid 90s Grand Caravan. As such many of those models are considered crappy cars to buy. Durability and Quality ratings have decreased.

Ever driven an automatic with a jerky shift? Or how about Alfa Romeo and their weird second gears, certainly the comfort ratings of those gearboxes are lower... As an effect they effect the overall perception of the driver.

From my days working in the auto industry, 10% of the population don't even know what brand of car they drive. So no, they don't care what gearbox the vehicle has, but they do care how it effects the vehicle.

So yes, components should effect all stats of the vehicle. BUT they're not the only stats to factor in.

You bring up quality for instance. Well this is the quality of, Materials, body panels, interior, design, chassis, suspension, engine, fuel, gearbox, gears, design focus, so on , and so forth. Your "Gearbox quality" probably only plays a few % into the grand scheme of things, so no you probably wouldn't notice any more than a half star between the best and the worst. (The consumers will know though )

Thanks for the examples and explanation, that was interesting.

Judging by your explanation, i suppose the answer is that its debatable, unless the component has a noticeable effect on the vehicle.

I wonder if its decreasing sales in my current vehicle, which has good ratings but low quality on most of its components (trying to reduce cost)

Short answer is yes, but only if there is something better for nearly the same price.

The buying system works by giving the vehicle a rating, this takes into consideration what the consumers are looking for, divided by the price. (Really layman explanation of the formula ) Gearbox qualities do play a factor. If the gearbox is crap, but the rest of the vehicle is better than the competition and cheaper, it may be enough to justify the sale.

So to sum it up, if you put the aforementioned 3 speed in a Minivan, and your competitor puts a much better quality gearbox in their minivan, everything else equal. Just the quality ratings are different by 2 or 3 points. Then the the competitor will have a slight edge when it comes to sales.