After my post sometime back comparing the Porsche and Corvette (a few threads farther down this topic area), I had a personal e-mail asking me for a hard 'fer instance' about design: I had stated I thought the 'vettes engineering was better but that the Porsche's design was far superior.

Here are two pictures of what I mean. They show the drivers seat in both my 02 'vette and 04 Porsche. Both cars have right at 20,000 miles on them.

Both seats had side bolsters and a very sporty shape. Note that on the vette, the seam and its thread is at the very crest of the bolster, where, every time I enter or exit the car, my butt and back rub the thread with the result that after 20,000, two places in the seam have opened, one quite wide.

By contrast, while the Porsche has side bolsters every bit as vertical and firm as the 'vette's, Porsche located the seam down and around from the crest, far enough that it gets no friction and rubbed from the dirver entering and exiting; my butt just rubs smooth leather.

This is not a matter of engineering (I assume both seams are designed suitably strong). It is a matter of design. Putting the seam at the very crest of the bolster, where it is rubbed every time the driver enters and exists, is not as good design as is Porsche's, where the seam is pushed back far away from the friction.

 

Okay, I'll try once more. The site told me it uploaded the pictures successfully. Don't know why they aren't there.

 

That's pretty impressive, I can't believe the wear you have got on those after 20k miles. Will you just replace the seat in the vette or can it be re-tailored?

 

Dang Lee, are you a big guy?20k miles and that bad huh. Here is mine at 37k miles but I make sure that I don't rub up against the side. The wear that is there was there before I purchased the car. That is worse than my 14 year old nissans leather seats, wow.

 

My rant on the subject:

begin(rant)

As an engineer, I see this kind of stuff all the time. I always feel embarrassed for the engineer or designer who designed it. I always point them out to my wife. I think that she's tired of hearing about them. These types of design flaws aren't supposed to make it to final product. Design (or peer) reviews are supposed to catch this stuff. Sometimes it is caught, but the design fix adds cost and so a management decision is made to keep it the way it is.

In many cases (and I'm sure you know this Lee) management will direct that cost be removed from a product. This results in re-design based on compromise. In a previous job I ran into this many times. Our product was a commodity priced item and so the lowest bidder won the production contract. I would create a design that worked 100% of the time. Then management would say "we need to remove $X from the design". Or, from the beginning I would have a cost target and have to meet that as the number one design priority. I would then have to pick out lower cost parts or skimp on some design element. The end result is a product that doesn't quite work right all of the time or last as long. To save $0.75, I was allowed to have one product that I worked on catch on fire a low percentage of the time. The fire did not endanger anyone and would burn itself out but made the product fail (and stink).

It doesn't always have to be hardware that gets compromised. Very often I see software (or embedded software) that has been under-developed for cost reasons. On my cell phone for instance, if I'm listening to mp3s and I push the voice dial button (the big one on the side of the phone) then it's all over. The phone turns into a shiny paper weight. I have to take the back off and remove and replace the battery to get it to function again. I'm sure that the people who made the thing know this. They just don't want to spend the money to fix it.

I see these types of design compromises (and flaws) all of the time in all kinds of products. I see it in my vette in certain places too. Lee points out an obvious one: the leather seats. It's something that you as a consumer put up with as a cost compromise. It's just that you expect far fewer compromises from a product that costs as much as a corvette.

end(rant);

 

I completely agree with all points. It drives me nuts how shoddy the leather on our seats truly is designed and implemented.

I have been working in software development for over 27 years now, and I can wholeheartedly and honestly say that riley's comments are bang on the money. I have to make decisions just like that each and every day in my engineering department. Sometimes these decisions either keep me awake at night, or result in several harried days in dealing with patently unhappy customers/users.

I think it's terrible, the way things are done at times, these days. I am sure the engineers responsible for these issues are not all that proud of their work, either, and had they been given the time/money, the job would have been done right the first time.