Time was when people were shaking their heads (but still tacitly accpeting) at the concept of built-in obsolescence, especially when it came to cars. I dreaded the first bubble of rust along the seams of my first Mini, and that was only after a few years. But even if certain things have been addressed, others still lurk to get my eyebrow twitching.
Like this example, from the excellent Honest John Telegraph column I have mentioned before:
My body repair man tells me the fashion for integral, colour-coded, plastic-covered "bumpers" is the biggest trade bonanza for years. What was the reason for doing away with the classic chrome or black bumpers of yore?
Modern "bumpers" work more like cushions to absorb the effect of an impact, reducing damage to the car structure and helping protect the occupants. If you want old-fashioned bumpers, you can still get them on a ladder-frame pick-up or 4x4. They won't be safer for you in a crash, but they will reduce annoying minor impact damage. In the United States in the 1960s, DuPont developed a laminated plastic called Royalite. If it got dented, all you had to do was run a hairdryer over it and it would pop back into shape. General Motors immediately bought the patent and used it for the front of its cars such as the Pontiac Trans Am. But the last thing GM wanted to do was build rot-proof bodies on which damage could be repaired by a hairdryer, because then it would sell fewer replacement cars.
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