Victor Davis Hanson
I bought new a 2021 Ram V6-EcoDiesel, four-wheel drive pickup. I like it a great deal. It has a lot of torque and horsepower, yet often achieves 31 miles per gallon on the freeway. The salesman said it was reliable and my research and word of mouth contacts sort of confirmed his optimism. It ran well for a year and a half.
Yesterday, my son hitched a houseboat (7,000 lbs. with trailer) to it and pulled it up to the Sierra during the cooler morning on the 4-lane CA 168 route to Huntington Lake. I followed in my former 18-year-old Toyota pickup that I felt was now too old for the annual June task. (Mistake #1: don’t pay attention to listed torque or towing capacities, but instead prefer an 18-year-old (in good shape) V-8 over a new six-cylinder truck.)
My son never made it. Suddenly, without warning the truck froze, with the huge boat behind. He was going uphill, again on a crowded four-lane freeway. Luckily, he found a place to pull over. Idiot lights were flashing Check engine. Throttle control. Stop. There was no longer any power. The online site suggested a problem with either the turbocharger actuator or fuel pump.
It was the turbo, and it went out in uphill mountain traffic with a boat in tow, at 27,000 miles. I talked to a couple of EcoDiesel owners and went again online to confirm what they said. The narrative was mostly something like, “Did you really believe the hype that an EcoDiesel can pull 12,500 lbs. of trailer uphill in the mountains? I wouldn’t try that truck with 7,000 pounds.”
I thought the problem initially was a “recall” flawed fuel pump. Note Dodge has recalled the fuel pump, claiming the Bosch unit could fail without warning. Thus, owners should come in for a new replacement—except, except there is no such new model fuel pump in existence. In fact, no one has any idea when there will be one. Thousands of owners are told their current fuel pumps in their new trucks are land mines of sorts that can blow off anytime or anywhere, and they must be replaced asap.
But Dodge has no replacement parts. How can a First-World country have a “recall” but no “recall” service or parts?
Is that like a cardiologist saying, “That pacemaker is defective and dangerous and has to come out before it kills you.” “Yep, take it out now.” “Sorry, we have no replacement pacemakers.”
I called a couple of dealers about the recall and asked, “Are there owners of new trucks whose fuel pumps failed, and their new trucks are sitting inert for an indefinite period (but their monthly high interest car loans continue)?” Answer: “Oh, yeah, we see that.”
But reader you say, well, Victor, at least if it goes out, you can get a new flawed fuel pump, like the one that will go out, and perhaps get lucky. But no, dealers are forbidden to put the new replacement flawed fuel pumps in as replacements for the failed flawed fuel pump.
Only in the new America would a company 1) warn you that you might be killed when your pickup abruptly fails and thus must come in for the recall repair, but 2) has no replacement to satisfy its own recall, and so 3) if your pickup is dead, Dodge will not honor the warranty if you put a new existing, design-flawed fuel pump in to get you by until the mythical new pump is born.
What is most Third-World about the new U.S.A. is the screw-you attitude of indifference. Instead of a solution, you get a “shrug,” as in “Your problem not mine,” “Sh*t happens, so what?,” “We’ll call you back,” “Leave your name and number,” or in other world terms, “mañana,” “δεν πειράζει,” or “va te faire foutre.”
Discussion (24)
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You've distilled the issues nicely. Not confident it can be undone. Statism has deeply infected the body politic. Succession?
I agree Thomas. The activist woke gays seem much more doctrinaire than the old gay protestors who just wanted to be left alone. It's as if they've forgotten what it used to be like for many gays, and, more importantly, don't realize what it could quickly become if they keep poking the bear. I worked at a Sainsbury's grocery store when I was 16. This was back in the mid 1980's. There was a guy there who, shall we say, was a bit light in the loafers. But he never bothered anybody and as far as I could tell was a good worker. One day, I was stocking shelves with another guy who was about my age. We were joking around when he suddenly froze and stared intensely at the gay guy who happened to be working in the dairy section. He then said with righteous indignation that "that (blanking, blank)isn't supposed to be working on my shift." He later told me that his parents had complained to management and had apparently demanded that their son not work around the gay man.
It is this way everywhere. I had to travel out of Australia during the pandemic for a business engagement. It was difficult to say the least. At some point along the way I needed to make a change to my flight booking on QANTAS. I rang the reservations line. It took 6 hours for someone to finally pick up the phone. I was working at a desk while I waited. I was speaking with someone who spoke English as a far distant second language over a very poor connection. After 20 minutes on the phone, it was clear he did not have the skill or permission to solve my problem. During the call I thought I heard chickens in the background. I asked about this and he told me he was working from home in some village in South Africa. When I asked him to transfer me to a supervisor, he said he could not and hung up.
Sorry to hear that. Even here in The Free State of Florida customer service and quality have declined.
Anything MOPAR has been prone to early failure since the 1970's, fact of life. I've heard all manner of stories of how great anything made by Chrysler is but Consumer Reports says otherwise. Yes, diesel engines are great, especially Cunnings, but once the truck and auto manufactures were made to do strange things to those engines, well, you found out. Toyota's business is selling quality automobiles and trucks, not parts, and high quality was always expected from them in their home markets. Very few Americans know that there are no "used" cars for sale in Japan, once an automobile or truck breaks down and cannot be repaired or is too expensive to be repaired then it is scrapped. One does not trade-in one's old car to buy a new one in Japan. In America we live in a throw away society as you have found out the hard way.
That truck looks like it ought to have a V8 engine. They're doing a lot of this with imported cars like standard to full size cars and SUVs having a 2.0 liter 4 cylinder engine with turbo instead of a 3.0 6 cylinder engine as a base engine. Turbo is near universal these days and it is used to get the power and acceleration up into competitive territory for marketability, but I don't like the idea of relying on another level of mechanical complexity to obtain acceptable power. I suspect turbo to be something that will be one of the first things to have problems with. I prefer to have an engine with more power than I need when the car is young so that as it ages, it will still drive acceptably well. Currently driving an Acura (car) with a V6 engine that will be 18 years old come the fall. I expect to drive it a couple more years.
Thanks you very much. Your lesson has driven me to buy for my son, my favorite "bathroom book" in my 20s: Catch 22. He is 16 and will be off for college in 2 years. While he has grown up in "the developing world," there are limits to permissible idiocy here. Like the dealer would get it handled somehow or lose a LOT of his business. In a place where everyone knows everyone, bad news travels at light speed and can be devastating. It is in the supposed first world where things truly become absurd.
Has snow melted at Huntington Lake?
Well, it's a beautiful truck.
I feel your pain professor. It's not just indifference but indifference coupled with incompetence. In just the past eight years or so I've had to straighten out my local bank loan officer, dig into the county fire code and show the fire marshal that what he was requiring of me was not applicable to my situation, correct the county tax accessor and obtain a refund of over charged tax, had the A/C repairman make multiple callbacks due to misdiagnosing the problem and not thoroughly troubleshooting to begin with, and that is just off of the top of head. Its rampant and ubiquitous.
Welcome to the Third World, Victor. And to think it came to you; you didn't even have to leave home. Modern times are wondrous.
An interesting blurb on some of the wows with stateside manufacturing and fabrication. A radio auto expert former race car owner heard Saturday mornings in Seattle advises contacting the CEO when the locals fail so miserably. That's far worse than planned obsolescence. Nevertheless, to answer the question on recalls in paragraph 6: Anymore, it "ain't".
Same here with Ford! Seems to be transmission related regardless of power plant. I have the big V-8 gas and many I know are having the same problem requiring replacement of the transmission with no replacements in sight. Back order is months long. Guess what, they are still putting the same transmissions in new trucks they are selling; however, can't find enough to fix the trucks already sold. We have the wrong people in charge everywhere doing the wrong things. Need some focus on making and supporting quality products. We all need to learn the lesson to do what we do, do it well, and hush about other stuff. Companies need to learn the same lesson. Maybe AB/Bud Light is a start! Maybe someone should investigate corporate collusion. Seems they are all doing the same things which defeat the idea of competition. It won't be long until all of us old goats are gone, and no one will know how to do anything well anymore! Thanks Dr. Hanson for covering the full spectrum of our decline.
Chuckle, chuckle, chuckle. Victor, you’ve lived in California too long. I guess you could utilize one of those attorneys CA is famous for producing to ‘litigate’. Here in backwards Oklahoma, we have these things called part stores and garages. We also got things to do. You just don’t let your work truck set idle. Get back on the farm buddy. Your point is well taken, but that’s just not how things get done around here. Worst case: We ‘know’ a guy’. Yep………still chuckling.
Wow Professor Hanson......just a stunning fall we have seen. I remember when you bought this dandy truck - all the research you did and when you finally got it how nice it was going to be. You tie this personal dilemma into our current and quickly unfolding decline as a nation and larger yet, the western world in general. I wish I could say "hey, call this dealer" or "call this specialty shop" to get you rolling but alas.......there are none. Keep us posted on this kind sir........and do we assume the trusty Toyota finished the towing of the houseboat?
Glad your son is all right. That must've been a scary incident. It seems more and more that Corporate America - Bud Light, MLB, Delta Airlines -couldn't care less about their customers and just takes them for granted. I read recently that even though they lost billions of dollars in market capital over the Dylan Mulvaney marketing disaster, for which they later groveled for public forgiveness that Bud Light has just sponsored a Pride parade that featured naked adult men exposing their genitalia in front of children. I don't remember to whom you attributed the original quote, but it would seem Corporate America has "forgotten nothing and learned nothing." My fear is there may come a time in the not so distant future when there will be no alternatives to Bud Light or Dodge.
While I have no information, there is a reasonable chance that the sophisticated computers in your truck are programmed to refuse to operate with a third party fuel pump. Or even a new flawed fuel pump if it isn't installed by the dealer armed with special tools to confer the appropriate blessing on the new pump. In addition to ESG and DEI, companies are pushed to have a continuous revenue stream and one of the easiest ways to achieve this for expensive items is to capture dollars that would otherwise go to repair shops. Apple is notorious for this and the rest of the consumer electronics industry is following their lead. Not that it's limited to electronics (John Deer) Plug "right to repair" into the search engine of your choice.
Well said. Total decline in initiative, honesty and ingenuity. Hale the death of meritocracy!
Victor: We have followed your podcasts and commentary on The Blade of Perseus frequently. I am unaware of any updates on the state of your lake home which was severely effected by the winter snows. Could you kindly give us an update?