Hacker News Reader

Comment by giarc | Hacker News Reader

I can offer an opinion not yet seen in this thread. It comes down to tolerances. My father works for GM as a tool and die maker. He says that GM is obsessed with tolerances in their panels. This means that the gap between the hood and front quarter panel is the same near the windshield as it is near the headlights. Same goes for all other areas of the car. It's hard to get right. If you start to get more complex designs with panels meeting at odd angles and with multiple bends it gets even harder, and more expensive.

Therefore, my theory is that mid range car companies don't want to build complex designs as they will increase the price of their car needed to satisfy their tolerance specs.

View on HN

My friend is a Ferrari mechanic and he says the panel gap and fitment is atrocious, he claims that part of the construction is mostly done by unskilled labor. The money, time, and care go into the design, suspension, engine, interior, etc. He has a lot of stories about large panel gaps, off-center screw holes on body panels, terrible fitment and lots of refurbishing needed even with a brand-new Ferrari.

Enzo Ferrari once said, "I don't care if the door gaps are straight. When the driver steps on the gas I want him to shit his pants." So I don't accept the parent commenter's idea that manufacturing tolerances are relevant to styling.

It's economics and marketing, in my opinion. Car manufacturers find it hard enough to make money that I don't see them mass manufacturing risky designs that only a small number of people want to drive.

To be fair, Enzo died almost 3 decades ago. A lot has likely changed at Ferrari in time since he was involved in the day to day operations.

Building on this comment as a mech eng who works in metal construction of heavy industry, it's also to do with the economies of scale and profit margins.

As you reduce the purchase price, you need to increase volume to ensure profits. Similarly, you want to absolutely minimise construction cost to maximise said profit.

As you increase volume and minimise construction cost, you rapidly reduce the scope of possible manufacturing techniques. You narrow down to tried and true methods of fabrication and assembly. Now the parts must be readily handled by robots, reproducably accurate between the same parts, parts must be able to swap between mating parts without bespoke tailoring (ie: the opposite to Apple's vision system to pick the right set of parts to assemble together), it must reliably assemble and stay assembled, it must be easily and quickly maintainable by cheaper labour for aftermarket cost minimisation, it must perform well in the battery of safety tests yet not become structurally complex to pass them, it must be light to minimse raw material costs, etc. etc. Deviating from this essentially adds cost, and even a small additional cost adds significant burden due to volumes and small margins.

With all of those constraints in place, you then consider a middle-of-the-park design that isn't polarising in its appearance or function to maximise market share. Thus, you converge towards a relatively inoffensive sedan shape that Just Works for all parties and still satisfies that litany of constraints on the design, manufacture and maintenance.

> relatively inoffensive sedan shape that Just Works for all parties and still satisfies that litany of constraints on the design, manufacture and maintenance

I feel like you've encapsulated the essence of Toyota.

This, this, this.

In simpler terms: You can't build a "Ferarri shaped car" at the same price as an Chevy Impala because the shape is a part of the cost.

I'm not sure I really agree. It's been done.

Mid-engined layouts are just a pain to do maintenance on, generally offer reduced cargo space and interior room.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e7/19...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/34/Fe...

When has a mass produced middle class car ever looked like that Alfa 4C? It's neither mass produced, nor middle class. It shipped with a $67k msrp. You're talking about a car that sells in the hundreds of units.

The 4C has a base price of $55,000. You can spec most mid-sized crossovers into that price territory.

They build 3,500 of 'em per year. That's very high compared to say, any given Ferrari or Lamborghini model.

I think the difference might lie in the income level in USA vs EU, but a middle class car in EU is about 25K-35K euros after all taxes.

Average new car price (NOT including taxes and fees) in the US is $34,400.

http://mediaroom.kbb.com/record-new-car-transaction-prices-r...

Yes, but what I meant is what do you consider middle segment for cars in the USA?

In EU, a Volkswagen Golf for instance is middle segment, but perhaps in the USA is considered lower segment and therefore the difference.

We buy way way way more luxury cars and suvs than you do. These are not considered vehicles for the wealthy either.

Small cars do not really sell here.

(For reference, I actually bought a new VW Golf R about 2 weeks ago... for roughly $41,000, just as a single data point).

How much do you like the Golf R? Is the 4WD worth the price increase over the GTI?

Love it.

In my case, the price premium isn't really that much to even think of, as I would have been going with a fully loaded GTI, which would have sticked around $35k or so, so it's not even _that_ much of a price bump.

actually, that in an of itself, is a good question. Name all the moderately price mid-engine sports cars on the market.

The Toyota MR2 & Pontiac Fiero were midengine and low priced.

The Alpha Romeo 4C is also comparatively inexpensive for what it us (Under $60k).

>"You can't build a "Ferarri shaped car" at the same price as an Chevy Impala because the shape is a part of the cost."

I don't know how it compares to the cost of a Chevy Impala, but it's definitely possible to get the Ferrari look on a budget, here's one example of a kit to convert a Toyota MR2 to look like a Ferrari F360 (similar kits exist for other cars):

http://www.kitcargrp.co.uk/

Years ago car body panels were made with hydraulic presses that could make those curvy shapes that older cars had, however, a hydraulic press is expensive and slow. A mechanical press can churn out those panels at 4x the speed and at a fraction of the cost.

Modern cars are apparently 'very curvy' but if you look closely you will see that the curves are done in plastic, not metal. The metal parts have relatively simple curves to them, when painted the same colours as the plastic bits it all looks good and far from 'boxy'.

As for tolerances - 'fit and finish' - there is more to it than the gaps in the panels. There has to be some tension in the panels for them to hold their shape. A bit of curve is important for this. Compare with vehicles that have totally flat panels, e.g. a Land Rover, where the panels are 'wrinkly' and far from smooth, even if fresh out of the factory.

There is also the matter of platform engineering. In the VW group the bolts that hold the engine in place are the same no matter what the model or the engine size. The Golf has dozens of same but different variants on the same 'platform' : Audi A3, Audi Q3, Audi TT, VW Golf, VW Jetta, VW Eos, VW Tiguan, VW Touran, VW Scirocco, SEAT León, SEAT Toledo, SEAT Altea, Škoda Octavia and so on...[1]

All the other volume manufacturers have the same platform based approach, the fundamentals of the car are worked out for the 'Golf' version and then after that the marketing folks and some kids with clay put together the 'remixes', e.g. the Audi TT for the 'hairdresser' market, the Jetta for the 'minicab driver', the SEAT Leon for the 'younger sporty buyer' and so on.

I believe a trip to the paddock at Silverstone is probably the best place to get appreciation of the Ferrari grade cars. The fit and finish on them is not what you would expect when inspected close up. Furthermore, the actual engineering is quite crude compared to the 'Golf'. But, if you are racing and need to fix the car between races then 'crude' is pretty good. If you are going to be rebuilding the engine all the time anyway then who cares that the bushings are primitive and prone to wear out after a few hundred miles? With the 'Golf' there will be rubbery bits mounting the engine, on a Ferrari it is bolted straight onto the chassis with no effort made to damp the vibrations, again not important if you are setting lap times around Silverstone.

Ferrari cars were styled by Pininfarina and the coachwork built by Scaglietti back in the 60's, Fiat subsequently bought the coachworks bit (as per Rolls Royce and Park Ward). Those panels on a Ferrari are very much 'coachworks' built, even if nowadays with carbon fibre composites etc. This is a very different way of building a car to the mechanical press + bits of plastic approach that mass produced cars use.

So yes, the shape is part of the cost. Personally I would prefer the 'Golf' to the 'Ferrari' and this comes down to childhood experiences of visiting car plants. The mass produced cars (MINI) fit together PERFECTLY every time. In the olden days, next to the MINI production line a smaller amount of panels were made for the Jaguar and other brands that used the same body shop for historical reasons. These panels for the deluxe cars had teams of people hammering them into shape as the tooling for them wasn't any good. They didn't fit perfectly!!! Sure the posh cars might have had leather seats and other fancy things but the basic shell was not good - 'lipstick on a pig' is the phrase that springs to mind.

As mentioned it is worth visiting 'the paddock at Silverstone' to look at some of these Ferrari type of cars close up. Also on the track. The Porsche 911 is a relatively tall and 'road car looking' compared to anything that it races against, e.g. the Ferraris, Mclaren things and what-not. Cars for the track are a very different breed to those designed for 'sitting in traffic'. Ferraris obviously have the race heritage and the track mechanical starting point, plus they are still 'coach built' and therefore 10x expensive (which is a minor cost if you are out racing).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Volkswagen_Group_platf...

We'll they could if they used different materials: http://gtspirit.com/83504/gallery/9412/132107/

Seriously though, advances in composite materials science/ manufacturing techniques shouldn't put this too far off.

It gets even costlier when you take into account that the purpose of the shape of those cars is to increase downforce for better handling around corners. This causes the air drag and the fuel consumption to go through the roof, which is the opposite of what you want out of a four door Mazda.

Not sure that's true. Low drag is incredibly important to the top speeds of those cars. For example a `03 Golf has a CdA of 6.89[1] while a new Ferrari 458 is 0.330[2]. Also, most modern supercars have active aerodynamics to create more downforce at higher speed.

[1]http://ecomodder.com/wiki/index.php/Vehicle_Coefficient_of_D... [2]http://www.autozine.org/Archive/Ferrari/old/458.html

You're comparing CdA for the Golf with Cd for the Ferrari. According to that table, the '03 Golf has a Cd of 0.32, actually lower than 0.33 Cd of the Ferrari. Without knowing the frontal area of the Ferrari, I don't know if its CdA is higher too.

Why not have both? The answer is active aero, which is also expensive to design, implement, and test. Unless it'll be on a track, be cornering at >1G, or going >140mph, it's pretty moot. A cheaper car wouldn't do any of these.

Is this still true nowadays with almost entirely automated manufacturing? If you look at modern car models, even the cheapest ones have way more "shapes at odd angles" than sports cars.

Nowhere near as much of automotive manufacturing is as automated as people think. Fitting panels etc is often a robot assisted job but not 100% machine. During production trials for new cars ALOT of time is spent trying to get the panels to fit together correctly, even getting the doors to seal correctly and be water proof isn't a given to begin with.

Indeed. I once temped at a car plant where I wore chain mail gloves to manually remove body panels coming out of the die, place them on a cart, and spot check a random sample for defects.

Often, those panel intersections look like shit.

I have a Nissan LEAF and have owned it since new (so I know it's never been hit). Looking at the panel fit between the rear bumpers and the quarter panels, that car looks worse than some cars I've seen that have been hit.

Tesla apparently has very poor fit and finish.

>Tesla forums are littered with complaints about fit and finish. Have a look at the .pdf in this thread, which shows bad sealing, poor parts fitment and even rust on the rear seat brackets. [0]

And that is for the Model X, from what I've heard, the Model S was even worse.

http://jalopnik.com/the-tesla-model-x-is-suffering-from-qual...

Except Fiat, which owns Ferrari, also makes Fiats, so they have the expertise, the design chops, and the machines yet still do not use it for their lowest end cars.

Do they use the same equipment and plants that make Ferrari's to make Fiats? If not, then that wouldn't be true as they'd have to use more expensive equipment for Fiats than what they need.

See: Maserati

They use the same design chops, technology and factory to make the similar looking cars with less performance than Ferrari.

Also owned by Fiat.

Don't Maserati's also cost a lot of money like Ferrari's? Or can you get them the price of Fiats? Might point is more about what using weaker tech in plants does for them on low end than the high end. I assume Ferrari is a rip off financially supported by their branding.

I don't know about tolerances but it is a viable argument. What I do know is that almost all of your super-cars are built using some form of composite material, Carbon Fiber and Kevlar being the two big ones. These material extremely mold-able but also prohibitively expensive when it comes to mass produced cars.

Why can't they be made of fiberglass like Corvettes?

It's still more labor intensive. You can stamp metal, any kind of composite has to be laid in a mold in several steps and then infused with resin (the resin is a big part of the cost). Further one the part is finished it has to be trimmed out usually with grinders and sanders. Even with fiberglass the cost of production is going to be higher than the equivalent steel, aluminum or plastic part.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com