I'm sometimes asked what the classic signs of cost-cutting are in today's new vehicles. Some of them, of course, are obvious to almost anyone, and don't need further comment on my part. I also could not make a list of all of them in a single write-up of reasonable length, and will not try and do so.

We live today, of course, in an intensely competitive world economy and auto market. Automakers, on one hand, are being forced to constantly add more and more equipment to their vehicles for different reasons... government regulations, consumer demands, and the simple "image" demands of having to keep up with other manufacturers. Auto worker unions make wage/benefit demands and threaten strikes. Costs of raw materials rise. Energy costs in the factories can be enormous. Auto companies, like all of us, have to pay their own taxes. National currencies rise and fall in value in relation to those of other countries, and affect prices and wages.

This is not, of course, meant to be a class in Automotive Economics 101, so I will save that for another occasion. The main point I am getting at here is that automakers, for a number of reasons, DO scrimp on the design and materials in new vehicles to make up for the expenses they have little or no control over. Sometimes it is done clandestinely, sometimes more obvious. To some extent, it is a game... the designers hope (and are betting) that you, as a consumer and new-car customer, are so enchanted with the nice colorful brochures, web-site photos, and poorly-written auto reviews in newspapers and magazines which do nothing but praise a car and don't mention any of its negatives, that you just skip right over and don't notice all the little things that are conveniently left OUT of a new car design. Of course, as I said above, some of it is just economic necessity... you can't realistically expect a Lexus or a Jaguar for a Kia or Suzuki price. But, even on not-so-cheap vehicles, you often see signs of cheapness or economizing by leaving out something that would add only a small amount at most to production costs.

That is the purpose of this article. As someone who looks at a LOT of new cars, I've noticed a pattern in new-car cost-cutting, and here I'm going to list twelve of the things that I often notice during reviews.......the things that the car companies either hope you don't notice or won't care about. With some of you, of course, these won't matter.....they aren't important to you, nor will you necessarily find these omissions on all new cars. Fine.....but they are often there just the same. And they don't escape my glance when I review a car... I notice these things. So, in a nutshell, here they are;


1. Rigidly Mounted Side Mirrors.

Some vehicles, to avoid the cost of hinges, swivels, or springs, have a solid housing for the exterior side mirrors, often in an aerodynamic shape. The glass mirror inside adjusts, of course, but the housing itself doesn't swivel or fold on impact. Automakers justify this with claims of "aero" and lower wind noise benefits, but there is little evidence to back this... it is really just penny-pinching. This occurs on both domestic and foreign-nameplate vehicles, but much more often on domestics. The quality of the material for the housing can vary enormously as well... Ford and Chrysler products are some of the worst.


2. Underhood Prop Rods.

While, of course, not easy to disguise, this is penny-pinching at its worst... manual swing-rods that you unclip and stick up (or down) into matching holes or slots to hold up the hood. Most of the time, there is no real problem, but, besides the obvious annoyance and inconvenience, there CAN be a safety problem, particularly with a heavy steel hood as opposed to lighter aluminum ones. If one makes a slip, doesn't have enough physical strength, or doesn't get the rod exactly in the hole correctly, the hood can suddenly drop on hand, arm, head....anything in the way......and cause serious injury or worse. With lightweight aluminum hoods, strong gusts of wind have been known to suddenly flip the hood back, right off its hinges, into the windshield. Prop rods are sometimes used even on upmarket cars... the Lexus IS300 had one for years, and the Acura TSX still does.


3. No Spare Tires.

Real, honest, spare tires and wheels in the trunk, as we knew, them, are almost completely gone. Their successors range from normal-sized, dummy/temporary-use spares to small, donut-sized spares to even smaller ones with a compressed air bottle (Fix-a-Flat), and, recently, to the bottle with nothing else at all. Original-equipment Run-Flat tires, of course, are designed with sidewalls stiff enough to go 50 miles or so with no air at all, but what if the sidewall is damaged and they don't work? Or if the Fix-a-Flat bottle can't fix a conventional flat? Then you're stuck. Run-flat tires are also notoriously expensive to replace (they are generally unrepairable), and often don't wear long. Automakers justify the loss of traditional spares with added cargo room in the trunk... but I'm not convinced. They just found the alternatives to be cheaper.


4. Center-Mounted Gauges.

This is something almost universally panned by the auto press and much of the car-buying public, yet it is something that some vehicles, particularly entry-level Toyotas and Scions, still persist with........the practice of mounting the speedometer and associated gauges in the middle of the dash instead of directly behind the steering wheel, Automakers justify this with two reasons. First, they claim that having the gauges in the middle eliminates the possibility of the steering wheel rim hiding them. OK, I'll buy that to some extent....there does seem to be some truth to that. Even with multi-adjustable seats and steering columns, some tall drivers may still have trouble seeing the tops of the gauges....I've run into that problem myself now and then. Their second reason, however, IMO, is less credible. They claim that it is more natural for drivers to shift their eyes left and right to watch the road and the gauges than the more traditional....and natural....up and down. They claim that it keeps the gauges closer to the driver's natural line of sight. I disagree with that... as do most professional drivers in the auto press as well. Most drivers go bananas with nothing in front of the steering wheel but plastic or vinyl blankness.

The truth....and real reason for doing it.....is that automakers save a lot of money doing this on vehicles that they produce and export for both left and right-hand drive versions, like for the British and Japanese markets. By having the gauges, bulbs, and wiring mostly in the center of the dash, it more or less standardizes the basic design of the dash itself and minimizes the complexities and costs needed to differentiate the left and right-hand-drive cars.


5. Temperature Bulbs Instead of Gauges.

Lately, the tendency has been, especially on some economy cars, to substitute blue cold lights and red hot lights for a traditional coolant temperature gauge. This idea itself is nothing new (some cars I grew up with in the 1960's were like that), and some Ford/Chrysler products in the early 1980's were so cheap that they had one red "ENGINE" bulb for BOTH oil-pressure and coolant temperature...if it came on, you then had to find out if if it was an oil or cooling problem. That nonsense went away for a while.....but now, with cost-cutting, it is coming back. Automakers claim that a light suddenly going on or off is more noticeable than a gauge needle slowly creeping upwards....which would have some credibility if the bulb and symbol itself were larger than the size of a pea and easily visible. A burned-out bulb could produce a engine ruined from oil starvation or overheating. If the vehicle is still under warranty, of course, the company replaces it. If not, YOU do.


6. Painted Silver/Gray Interior Plastic.

This is something that just drives me up the wall. You don't expect lavish or expensive materials in entry-level econocars, though some, like Hyundai, give you relatively nice materials for the money. But, when you get into a $40,000 vehicle and see dash, door, and console plastic trim so thin and cheap, and so poorly painted with thin, flat, silver/gray paint, to the point where it could pass for a Kiddie-Car at Wal-Mart, it's time to speak up. At one time, a luxury car meant classy trim materials inside.........wood, chrome, carbon-fiber, brushed-metal aluminum, etc..... Now, it's getting to the point where you literally cannot tell some luxury cars from much less expensive cars.


7. All-Steel Body Parts.

For awhile, there was a move away from steel as the primary material for body panels to aluminum, thermoplastics, fiberglass, carbon-composites, etc... Now, there seems to be a return to sheet steel, as the prices of those alternative materials have increased. Some high-line Jaguars and Audis still retain the all-aluminum construction....and chassis as well. And Corvettes, as a tradition, still keep the fiberglass, but steel is becoming the norm once again. Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with steel, but it is heavy and cuts down on car efficiency and performance.


8. No Oil Dipsticks.

You should have seen the look on my face when I recently raised the hoods of a $94,000 Mercedes E63 and a $69,000 BMW M3...and neither of them had a oil dipstick under the hood. Apparantly we are to trust the lifeblood of two of the most expensive and sophisticated engines on the market (the E63's hand-built engine is certified by a special technician) to a couple of nickel-and-dime computer oil sensors. Give me a break.


9. Cheaply Done Ignition Keys.

I won't include cars here with special transpoder keys, START/STOP buttons, encoding ignition fobs, remote starting systems, etc... (they are a different case), but for conventional-ignition cars with conventional keys, there is increasing use of cheap plastic instead of metal, not for the key itself, but for the grip behind it and the hole where it snaps into the key ring. That cheap, flimsy plastic breaks with use and stress, and the key sometimes falls off the ring. With all-metal keys and only plastic for the surface of the grip for comfort, like on my own ignition keys, that doesn't happen.....the metal-surrounded hole in the key stays on the key ring without breaking.


10. Flimsy Gloveboxes.

It used to be that gloveboxes were pretty well-done. They opened and closed solidly and had good hardware and locks to latch them. Some cars still have nice ones, but on too many others, the gloveboxes are unbelievably flimsy and have latches so poor that a five-year old could pry one open with little effort. The Pontiac G8 GT I reviewed had one of the worst.......its plastic was so bad I'd be afraid to lay a soda can on it. A Subaru I recently drove on a cold winter day had a glove box latch that kept popping open and wouldn't hold shut until the interior warmed up a little. This is NOT a place to be cost-cutting, IMO. Some of the vehicle's most important documents are kept inside, such as registration, inspection slips, proof-of-insurance, and emission certification.....if a cop stops you and asks for one or more these papers, you DON'T want them falling out on a dark floor at night or be inaccessible because of a defective lock.


11. Only One Outside Door Lock.

An increasing tendency of automakers is to have only one outside door lock for the key (on the driver's door, of course) instead of one on each side like they did for many years. Some vehicles are now also doing away with the outside trunk/hatchback key lock as well. The official excuse some automakers give is that power locks and keyless door/trunk openers have made them redundant. Perhaps, but I see it, once again, as simple $$$$$$ cutting.


12. Non-Locking Gas Caps/Filler Doors

Some auto companies scrimp by not providing a lock or inside release for the gas cap and/or filler door. This is more of a problem on American-badged vehicles than it is on European or Asian brands. During periods of expensive fuel (like now) it is a problem because, for obvious reasons, it makes it easier for a thief to siphon out gas.

Well, there you have it. Some of you may disagree with me, but I see the list of what I have written above is simple bean-counting for the sake of bean-counting, not necessarily to make the vehicle any better. I understand the competitive pressures automakers are under to cut costs, but I would have a lot more respect for them if they just came out and ADMITTED that this was bean-counting and not try and disguise it as something else.

There are many other forms of cost-cutting, too, such as the elimination of two-tone paint jobs and limiting paint color choices, but, of course, I can't include everything in one article.