They are both great cars, that will be rewarding to own.
The Mercedes doesn't have 3 times more parts, but it probably took four times longer to make, and they paid the folks that make it, a lot more than the Honda. It's actually, probably better "bang for the buck," although it won't seem like it, on the surface.
The reason is that all those little things that go into high quality take lots of time.
I can write a pretty complete app that does some cool stuff in a day or two. I do it often, when I write test harnesses for my libraries and whatnot.
However, if you want that app to be ship quality, and highly usable, you're looking at over a month.
The thing is, many folks would consider my test harness lash-ups to be their "shipping" product, and will use that as a basis for estimation.
Your base assumption seems to include that quality is valuable for its own sake. I don't totally disagree, but I'm wary of assigning value based on effort rather than output.
Depending on why you are buying a car, the Accord is very likely much better bang for the buck than the S-class Mercedes. And depending on the situation, the prototype is often better value than the shippable product.
That is why Honda is a bigger company than Mercedes. They do decent quality (Hondas cost more than Kias), but at scale.
I worked for a "Mercedes-level" photographic equipment company for years. People were often quite surprised, when I told them the size of the company. It was like Roadhouse "I thought you'd be bigger."
Our prototypes were incredibly expensive. A $2,000 (retail) body prototype would be insured at half a million bucks.
I just find, in my experience, managers expect Mercedes-level quality, for Kia (not even Honda) prices, and (if you are lucky) mature Honda assembly line development speed.
That can lead to real Jurassic-scale disasters. If you want that level of quality, you need to plan for it.
I'm working on the app that I'm doing, because I was helping a friend of mine evaluate contractors for his dream.
The promises they made were absurd. After a couple of these, I just said "Screw it. I'll do it for you."
He'll be getting Mercedes quality, but he'll need to wait a bit longer for it. I am pretty good at doing damn good; damn fast.
But he also won't be paying a dime for it, so I think he's good with that.
>That is why Honda is a bigger company than Mercedes
I was curious if this was accurate. Here are some recent numbers for revenue and unit sales:
Honda -> $144B revenue
- 12.4M motorcycles, ATVs, etc.
- 3.3M automobiles
- 5.7M generators, small engines, etc.
Daimler -> $207B revenue
- 2.4M automobiles
- 0.5M trucks
- 0.4M vans
- 0.03M buses
So, Daimler seems to be about 40% larger in revenue, but Honda sells almost 40% more automobiles. But 2.4M automobiles for Daimler seems like it's still comparable in scale.
Honda seems to still be largely a motorcycle and small engine company, in the global picture, while Daimler has a substantial business in heavy duty commercial vehicles including nameplates that aren't necessarily associated with Mercedes by the average person.
High quality != high feature count. You are conflating the two with your anology.
You don't want to daily drive a 30 year old performance oriented Mercedes.
An Accord however, most generations can hit 300k miles easily.
The Mercedes is more expensive because they put more investement into refinement and luxury. Make the doors feel right. Ensure the torque curve is flat and starts at a low RPM, usually using turbo chargers that will fail by 200k miles. Lots of carefully placed sound deadening.
I doubt it. Luxury goods don't proportionately more cost much more to produce than commodity goods.
Instead they often derive their value from perceptions and exclusivity. That is people perceive the object to be more value for their own reasons, or they are made more expensive as a proof point of exclusivity / conspicuous consumption
> The more the product promises the customer, the more luxurious it is; the greater the extent to which these promises are fulfilled, the better the product’s quality.
While this is an interesting way of thinking about it, I find personally it to be both non-standard and not useful.
I'm generally not inclined to force or coin a definition of a concept that is intrinsically messy. Instead, I think it is better to take almost an anthropological view: unpack what different people and cultures mean by a word.
With this in mind, I recommend the following article from MIT's business school, because it embraces the vagueness and complexity of quality:
> It's actually, probably better "bang for the buck," although it won't seem like it, on the surface.
A car's primary function is to move its passengers from point A to point B, safely and timely. Both cars do this very well, but the Mercedes will probably be costlier over their respective lifetime (fuel, parts, service).
The only way for it to be a better bang for buck would be to turn its secondary functions (comfort, prestige, signalling) into a primary tool. For instance, if a broker or salesperson finds that owning the car gives them the added confidence to project the image they want during negotiations and thus contributes to their overall success, then it becomes a worthy investment.
My experience is that most customers are unwilling to wait for and pay for quality, especially if someone in the market sells a competing product (which itself is of low quality)
Know how much a Honda Accord costs?
About 25 Grand.
Know how much a Mercedes S450 costs?
About three times as much.
They are both great cars, that will be rewarding to own.
The Mercedes doesn't have 3 times more parts, but it probably took four times longer to make, and they paid the folks that make it, a lot more than the Honda. It's actually, probably better "bang for the buck," although it won't seem like it, on the surface.
The reason is that all those little things that go into high quality take lots of time.
I can write a pretty complete app that does some cool stuff in a day or two. I do it often, when I write test harnesses for my libraries and whatnot.
However, if you want that app to be ship quality, and highly usable, you're looking at over a month.
The thing is, many folks would consider my test harness lash-ups to be their "shipping" product, and will use that as a basis for estimation.