NCAviator
Member
That's a short-term view. The long term view would be how much would these changes save us in parts, assembly, maintenance, and repair costs? They could easily calculate an ROI on the R&D required to re-engineer everything that needs re-engineering. And for a car design that's going on 10 years old, I'm sure there's A LOT of things that need a new, fresh look to rebuild the platform for the next 10 years.
Car makers have been doing this for decades now. If automakers can shave 10 cents of a part, they will. Ford could have fixed the ill-fated Pinto gas tank for $11 per car (about $80 in today's dollars), but they chose not to and hundreds of people died as a result.
(more details here: Ford Pinto Fuel Tanks - Top Automotive Engineering Failures)
According to Wikipedia; 27 deaths occurred. There were estimates of hundreds possible in memos. Same number attributed to transmission failures in Pintos.