More on Complexity and the Lemon Vehicle

Remember when you opened the hood of your car and saw the ground beneath the engine? Now you open the hood and there's not enough room left in there for an underfed mouse. The space shuttle cockpit is child's play by comparison. Do people actually work on this thing! Not unless they have fingers like a Rhesus monkey, can see through solid metal like Superman, and have advanced degrees in engineering and computers. That's right computers!

These days if the seat temperature isn't controlled to a 10^th of a degree the consumer doesn't want it. Pretty soon the seats will vibrate like those heart-shaped beds at the No-Tell Motel.

Okay, okay! Perhaps we're getting a little carried away. The complexity of modern vehicles has grown extraordinarily in the last fifteen years. It isn't enough that these vehicles have design flaws. It isn't enough that attention to real quality has fallen by the wayside. Now even the mechanics are bewildered. When faced with diagnosing a problem the average mechanic must employ a confusing array of computerized test equipment. This is a guess, but I estimate that this so-called sophisticated test equipment isn't even in the right problem area 50% of the time.

There was a time when the mechanic started the engine, listened, or maybe drove it around the block after which he would tell you what was wrong, and he'd be right a large part of the time. Now they connect your vehicle to an engine test stand that looks like something from Apollo mission control. More often than not the computer will say you don't have a problem or that you have a problem that isn't vaguely related to what you are experiencing.

You protest. The mechanic says, wisely. "The test equipment doesn't lie, it's computer controlled!" He says this with the assurance of someone who still believes in the tooth fairy, and that children are conceived under cabbage leaves. It is only later that you might think to say, "Wasn't the computer programmed by humans?" And how about the old saying, "to err is human?"

Here's the point of all this. There are many reasons why you happened to get a "Lemon". You were not, however, personally selected by Ford, Volkswagen or God to be punished because you are a bad person. The thing to remember is that you can do something about it. Whatever you do don't assume that the dealership and its technicians know what's wrong with your vehicle, or that all that wonderful test equipment can figure it out.

You want the complexity gone from your life. Prediction is the basis of sanity. If you are constantly wondering if your vehicle is going to stall in traffic, the unpredictability of it all can be pretty darn depressing.

The first step to handling is to understand how it happened and next determine how you can fight for your rights. The understanding part is one of the reasons you are here reading this essay. Your Lemon Law attorney can help with the rest.