Business Ghoul *has a legal duty to profit her shareholders*. If it will be cheaper to pay out a few families of burn victims than to redesign the bumper and fuel tank, then that is what she must do. See the Pinto fire fiasco, and for your amusement,

But our record profits!! 

The very idea that we continue to allow businesses to operate as they do, knowing full well they at least double the likelihood of cancer, is just insane.

There’s a factor you missed. In the past, seats would open up on a regular basis from attrition caused by drivers getting killed. Fortunately, that doesn’t happen these days.

Imagine the outrage and mockery if this happened to a domestic carmaker.  But Toyota gets a pass.  Again.

Any HD pickup thats daily driven and doesn’t tow.

Jeep Gladiator -

Ford Fairmont Durango. I own one and love it because it’s weird, but it’s horrible at being a truck. You cannot drive with the tailgate down because the taillights and license plate then face the pavement and can’t be seen. The conversion made it about $2K more expensive than the El Camino which meant nobody bought…

Trucks have been morphing from utility vehicles into status symbols for quite some time, making them all less truck-like. Which means the definition of what a truck is has changed, today they are do-it-all vehicles that offer tons of creature comforts, features, go-anywhere capability, luxury, power, and ability.…

The Chevy SSR:

As always, Britain has got this.

Exactly. My wife had her Toyota totaled last year (the other party was found 100% at fault). We bought it new, and it had crazy low mileage on it, was serviced at the dealer pretty rigorously (we had complete service history), it was garage kept and it was generally a great car that easily had 2 decades of service…

Just because you hit every maintenance checkup and recommended replacements of worn parts does not make your car equivalent to brnad new nor entitle you to one. If you get a few thousand, then that is your car’s worth, no matter how much it’s worth to you personally. Perception versus reality. If you don’t like the…

Car manufacturers build a crash cost into every car and it’s very clever. Plastic bumpers that click into headlights and tail lights instead of a separate cheap bracket. They know exactly what it costs to repair a 20mph speed difference rear ender and they calculate that out so that the new car is barely worth fixing,…

Our own insurance advised us against just filing with them since they would most likely raise our rates for a claim.....

Make cars simple again.

Another thing of note: The minimum Liability Coverage is waaay to low to reflect the rising costs of repairs.

Every single part/process is ridiculously expensive now. I could probably total more than half off the newish cars on the road by busting the headlights/tail lights and keying the car.

The OP’s central premise was that doing this would benefit the OEM’s bottom line. It had nothing to do with being “consumer friendly.”