cars with good engineering

[swlove]

Part of my enjoyment of a car comes from knowing that it has been well designed and won't break often. And if it does break that it is fairly easy to fix.

Of course that is not all that is important but I cannot stand stuff that breaks easily.
I just had my dishwasher replaced by a Miele. The wheels on my old dishwasher kept falling off due to bad design and that annoyed me big time. I just found myself looking at my new dishwasher admiringly.
Hope that's not sad!

I have a Defender and a L322 Range Rover. I've decided to get rid of the Range Rover because things break too easily and that bugs me. I cannot think of another car that has all the good attributes of a Range Rover but won't break so easy. Maybe that is the curse of modern more complicated cars.


So instead of focusing on the annoyances of bad design (that can be another thread) let's focus on the enjoyment of good design and engineering.

What cars (old and new) do you enjoy because how well they work because of the careful thought that has gone into them and how is that exhibited?

Some examples:
Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow
Land Rover Defender

[swlove]

jhonn said:

Firstly - welcome to pistonheads!

Well spotted, thank you!!!

jhonn said:

I'm going to proffer a fairly mundane candidate - the Fiat Panda; for what it is it appears well designed, can carry 4 large adults comfortably, has decent ergonomics, cheap and easy to fix, tough and economical, it's light, handles well, can take a thrashing and is pretty much classless.

Good example!
Do they last well?

jhonn said:

I'm going to take exception to your example of the Defender for the following reasons..
Poor ergonomics
The chassis is full of mud-traps which hasten corrosion
Aluminium/steel galvanic corrosion
They leak (from new)
Poor turning circle
The gearboxes give trouble
Hit-and-miss build quality
Design flaws (oil in wiring loom, etc)
Badly sited components (fuel/water separator exposed in the rear wheel bay)

Yes, I know that they have their good points and people love them despite their flaws, however that's just some of the areas where I feel that they are not particularly well designed and engineered.

I knew that not everyone would agree on the Defender. However they do not break easily, they last for many decades, they are easy to fix and parts of them are well engineered (for the time they were designed in).

A Toyota LandCruiser is probably better engineered (however I still don't like them, engineering is definitely not everything that makes me like a car).

[swlove]

S.H.A.D.O. said:

Any car that takes more than a couple of minutes to change a headlamp bulb should not appear in this thread, that should narrow it down!

I doesn't disqualify the whole car (no car is perfect) but it is a good example of bad engineering!

[swlove]

S.H.A.D.O. said:

Unfortunately I get to do this virtually every day, position lamps, indicators etc, I have the scratches on my hands to prove it, I think manufacturers should make it possible to change what is after all an important safety item easily and without any dismantling.

Actually I think i'm wrong here, my example is about bad design and not bad engineering.

I used design and engineering interchangeably in my initial post. By design I did not mean making it look beautiful in the way it applies to for instance clothes.
Do you see bad engineering as resulting in something that will break easily and bad design as resulting in something that is not easy to use?

[swlove]

powerstroke said:

The defender must be the UKs overrated vehicle just dire and a sick joke in most countrys where a reliable vehicle is a matter of life or death ...

I knew some would not like my example of the Defender but this thread is not about the pros and cons of the Defender it is about good engineering.
Let's stay on topic as much as possible.