Car Warranty Challenge !

Remember the days when the first FJ Holden rolled off the assembly line at Fisherman's Bend in Victoria - and the new car warranty was a skinny "twelve months or twelve thousand miles, whichever comes first "?

Nothing changed - for many decades.  The luxury content of newer models travelled ever upward - and so did the price - but car manufacturers were very slow to extend their warranty to two years, and there it stuck until near the end of the twentieth century.

New Korean car manufacturer Daewoo shocked the car world when it offered a three year warranty back in 1985 and later Mitsibishi bit the bullet and extended it's new car warranty across the range - to five years or 130,000 miles.   The impact of a full factory warranty was now an issue to buyers when making a sales choice.

South Korea has become one of the foremost challengers in the automotive field and both Hyundai and Kia are making sharp inroads into world sales with their offer of a five year unlimited warranty across their range.  It is painfully obvious to their competitors that they are becoming a force to be reckoned with.

Kia is about to throw down a very new challenge - and offer a seven year full factory warranty. This will certainly have buyers think deeply about the warranty offer on the world's high priced prestige cars.  If they are so well designed and mechanical marvels, why is this not reflected in the warranty offered ?   Would it not be reasonable to think that a car with a $ 90,000 price tag would come with a ten year warranty ?

The bean counters of the car world have a problem with the top end of their range.  They only manufacture the car body, engine and drive train.   Most of the other parts come from independent suppliers, and yet when they become part of the vehicle they come under the maker's new car warranty.  If the failure of a tiny, unimportant add on results in the car returning to the dealer for a warranty repair, that cost is sheeted home against the manufacturer - and the cumulative cost can be enormous.

Some owners of top end vehicles like to boast about it's luxuries.   Electrically heated exterior mirrors are probably fine if you plan to cross the Alps - but even our most southern state of Tasmania does not get cold enough to need that innovation.   Then there are heated driving seats with lumbar memory to configure to twenty-seven individual driving positions - and probably the ability to play Auld Lang Syne on the bagpipes on command.  Imagine what a malfunction there would cost ?

Each new model comes with more added "goodies ".   We now expect reversing cameras and navigation aids to be part of the car structure and it looks like "self parking "will feature on most new models - and the age of "driverless "cars is certainly on the horizon.   The "on board computer "is now a reality and car service has moved well beyond the scope of mechanics who do not possess factory training - and the electronic equipment to communicate with the car on a computer to computer basis.

No doubt Kia is driving a hard bargain with its parts suppliers and saddling them with the repair costs of any warranty claims pertaining to their product, but that seems to be the way of the manufacturing world.  It is all part of the risk analysis.  Probably the very fact that the lower end of the car price range consists of fewer non basic components that can go awry is the reason  that the warranty has been extended.

In car sales - the motto of "Who dares wins "applies.   The number of car manufacturers is constantly shrinking - and their product is getting ever better.   It seems that warranty is becoming the game changer of the twenty-first century !