I'll cover two issues in the response. First, I also like to read these ads when the seller says things like, "just needs paint and interior". Just? That's several thousand dollars.
Another favorite is "my mechanic says that it needs a sensor and I'm not a mechanic so I just want rid of it". Does anyone think that a $40 sensor will turn it in to a wonderful car?
In college I did a report that showed the inefficiency in manufacturing within General Motors at that time. I compared that four different divisions all had their own version of a 350 cubic inch engine and virtually none of the parts interchanged, not even the oil filters. Buick, Chevrolet, Oldsmobile and Pontiac all had a 350 engine. Each was within a few horsepower of each other but there was no economy of scale going on. That's about the time that GM started electing divisions to specialize in a certain cylinder engine.
- Chevrolet continued to produce a V8 engine
- Oldsmobile continued to produce a single V8 engine, mainly for Cadillacs
- Oldsmobile continued, for a while, with the V8 diesel
- Pontiac ended up producing the 4-cylinder 151 engine
- Buick specialized in the 3.8L V6
In my report, I compared GM's techniques to that of Ford where every Ford product of the era used an engine produced for all divisions. A Ford 302, 351, 400, etc was in every model, Ford, Lincoln and Mercury. Additionally, each was designed to use the same oil filter which saved Ford lots of money by not having to supply different filters and manage that mess.
Looking back, GM should have figured this out years earlier instead of trying to fool the public into thinking that a Oldsmobile Rocket was special when it was just a cast iron hunk like a Chevy motor.
