Why Do Cars Always Have At Least One Poorly Designed Component ?

You may have seen my recentpost and video about me changing the gear linkage on my Vauxhall Meriva.

Vauxhall Meriva linkage repair video

The gear linkage found on Vauxhall / Opel cars in general is a well known weak spot which WILL fail, sometimes in just a few thousand miles as shown by huge demand for both original spec replacement parts and uprated items made by various aftermarket manufacturers.

Now this got me thinking, Why when so many millions and millions of pounds are spent on development and testing with modern vehicles do all manufacturers still have one or two components that always fail prematurely when the rest of the vehicle is in general very reliable.

The parts that fail are usually fairly simple parts but if you actually take a look at the items yourself you can usually see that it is obviously very poorly designed and very cheaply manufactured  and you begin to wonder what were they thinking and why did they not find out about this when they do their extensive testing.

This part, the gear linkage on Vauxhall / Opel cars is a small and cheap item but when it fails it causes the car to be undrivable and can ruin the reputation of the whole or the company's range of vehicles past and present.

I just dont understand why for the sake of maybe an extra £10 on the cost of a new car that a company would risk many millions of pounds of profit from lost sales due to them gaining a reputation as a manufacturer of poorly made unreliable vehicles when in reality for what is effectively a negligible extra cost they could be known for their reliability and reap the benefits this reputation would bring.

Is it just me that thinks this way or do you feel the same.