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Comment by hadlock | Hacker News Reader

Porsche started galvanizing their bodies in the 1970s, VW started in the 1980s, Japan only started galvanizing their bodies in export markets, in response to the germans, and only recently (last 15 years) have been galvanizing all their bodies domestic and import.

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>have been galvanizing all their bodies domestic and import.

This is because there's basically no market for used cars older than 5 years in Japan

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.picknbuy24.com/amp/column_1...

I feel like that is a self-perpetuating cycle. Japanese carmakers build cars to rust out in half a decade and thus nobody wants to buy old rustbuckets thus the carmakers don't bother to build them to last.

It is a actually a legal and insurance issue in Japan. The costs are not tied to the quality of the vehicle. If it costs more to recertify a perfectly functional used vehicle than lease a brand new one, it makes sense to opt for new one.

A HUGE reform to our “throw-away 1 ton of iron” culture of ecology in Europe would be to rewrite the insurance estimates of cars.

The fact that insurances value a car of 35k€ at, I’m guessing, 25k€ at the exit of the garage, then 18, 12, 7, 4, 2k€ the following years, means that people see no value in used cars.

Whereas the real value of a car is certainly 25, 24, 23, 22, 21, 20k€ along the years, and when one recycles it, it’s actually a huge new cost for the household, for a car that could last 20 years. It breaks after 7 years? “Yeah buying a differential costs more than the entire price of the car, sir.”

But it isn't the insurance that defines the price,it is the sales market. It doesn't matter if insurance says it is worth 20k if people will only pay 2k

This was true in the 60s and 70s for Jap cars, they didnt make them to rust, they just didnt rust prevent like they do now. Go watch youtube and watch some rust belt mechanics like south main auto and u will see what what cars rust and what cars last now (hint, US made cars dont even last 10yrs with salt)

I personally drive a jap car from the 90s and 400+k on the clock. I can fix everything myself including rebuilding anything i need. My wipers arnt controlled by a CANN BUS, they use a simple mechanical switch. There is a new killer on the block that makes corrision look like childs play - its called computers. Cars these days are literly THROW away with the amount of electronics on them. Replacing the guage cluster on a new econo-car like a hyuandi can cost upwards of 8k. Instance write-off, doesnt matter that the engines wont lost 150k, because the electronics that manage it are discontinued way before that. Got a broken wire in your loom? thats 5k to replace.

The GP talked about Japan only applied rust protection on cars for the export market. Their domestic cars were designed to rust out.

There's a huge export market though: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_used_vehicle_export...

I read that something like 60% of cars registered in NZ are Japanese imports.

IMHO Japanese used car exports have a lot of the characteristics of "dumping" (in trade terms) but because there is no local vehicle manufacturing in most of the places they end up, nobody complains.

Yep, a huge number of our cars are Japanese imports. It means we can get a 5 year old Toyota/Mazda for the equivalent of about $6-7000 USD (or cheaper imported privately), which will run for another 150,000km with little difficulty.

We mostly don't have snow and I don't think any region salts their roads, so rust isn't much of an issue with something that new.

Dumping is when a country is subsidizing domestic production and selling a good internationally below cost. Japan isn't dumping because they don't subsidize the manufacturer. Instead they just have onerous regulations that make private parties sell their cars. They artificially stimulated local demand

It's not uncommon to buy used car like newer than 10yo in Japan now. I can see many such cars at the road side used car shop. Because Japanese people especially in rural area (who need car) getting poor relatively, newer cars getting expensive thanks to safety and comfortable equipment, and reliability is improved, used cars getting more reasonable. After 13yo, vehicle tax increases so it's not popular but still sold, especially kei-cars are sold well because it's cheap for tax.

Still, according to this popular used car site, vehicle made in 2002-2011 is listed 109k, 2012-2021 is 319k so newer cars are more sold well. https://www.carsensor.net/usedcar/index.html

Is this new in Japan or has it always been the way?

There have been used car market like now at least for 25 years, but I believe acceptable car age getting wider. 8yo car should be fine to buy also in 2012.

Getting poor ?

Some Japanese brands are "galvanizing" instead of proper electro-galvanizing. Here is investigation into Mazda, legendary for rotting into nothing.

https://www.reddit.com/r/mazda3/comments/adioma/polish_autom...

the mazda3 used to be terrible for rusting but they changed something in 2007, a collegue mazda3 was from 2006 and it rusted so much thast it had almost no resale value, my gf mazda3 from 2008 sill looks new...

p.s. I live in a place were salt used to be applied aggressively in the winter. Nowadays they use more sand and only use salt when the road conditions really requires it. but it's a recent development (3 years at best)

The test was in 2019. Mazda was spraying a coat of zinc paint, dedicated metallurgical instrument was unable to detect galvanization process. Manufacturer protested claiming a coat of zinc is coat of zinc regardless of uniformity, adherence, purity or quality :)

Famously, 1990's Mitsubishi and Subaru vehicles can basically rust down to the frame before the drivetrain stops functioning. And they don't wait long to start on the former.

Interesting. Mine is a 2004 wrx and getting full of holes, but mechanic keeps assuring me drive train is solid and perfectly safe to drive.

I'm not confident enough on when that era ended to say it magically ended in 2000, just that it hadn't ended by late enough in the 90's to use a big fat brush and say "the 90's". The closest I've been to a Mitsubishi or Subaru maven is 2 degrees of separation.

Toyotas cost nothing compared to Porches, so 1-0 Japan vs rest of the world.

VW is an affordable brand.

VW has been caught lying about the capabilities of their cars, then the executives blamed the engineers to cover their asses. If one needs a reason to forget about VW.

Toyota has their fair share of similar scandals. Maybe none at such as scale as WW, but still.

VW was the _first_ company selling diesel powered passenger vehicles to be caught lying. Opel/GM, Chrysler, Nissan, Jeep, Renault, Peugeot, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi, and Porsche were all later caught somehow skirting diesel emissions testing. Basically all large truck manufacturers did it too.

Clean diesel is a myth, it never was a thing and the only reason anyone thought it was was because the entire auto industry was lying to regulators and customers for decades.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_emissions_scandal

Of these other scandals, which other companies have their, "executives blamed the engineers"

That is what I was highlighting. Not, "mistakes were made" but, "And they were, points fingers at scapegoat"

It's not fair to call those manufacturers are criminal like VW. VW (Bosch) cheats the emission test deliberately, but some other manufacturers don't cheat but emission is bad when condition is worse than test environment.

And Skoda and SEAT are even more affordable brands, and essentially the same cars.

Unless you happen to think that reduced car ownership is good for the world!

Or, even better for the environment , we could kill all of human civilization! /s

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