Week 9 a.k.a. The Good And The Bad Design

"During the recent centuries, technology has developed in a frantic pace" - that is, in fact, very much true. Technology is developing now with the speed not seen ever before. New products are invented and produced every day, some of which have a good design and some of which do not. This is Week 9 of SPEAIT2021K course and I would like to bring up few examples of good and bad product designs.

1. The Centennial Light

This is the famous centennial light, a 120 years old lightbulb that has not been turned off. The story goes that in the late 19th century inventors were presented with a task to make an everlasting light bulb. Fast forward a couple of years and Adolphe Chaillet presented a beautiful lightbulb. It was an improvement on a design by Thomas Edisson and was mass-produced by Shelby Electric Company. This particular lightbulb was purchased in 1901 and was working ever since, resting for only 7 days over the course of more than a 100 years. However, the company did not gain much profit from this product, since people only had to buy a lightbulb once and never had to replace it. That is when planned obsolescence came into game and soon took over. Actually, similar story happened to women's original nylon stockings in 1930's and the SAAB cars, I strongly advice you to Google it.

2. BMW M50 engines

Another example of a good design is BMW's M50 engine series. These were put in BMW E34 5. Series and BMW E36 3. Series. Cast iron cylynder block and relatively low working temperature of around 88-90C are what made this engine so great. With proper maintenance, including using a good quality engine oil, changing said oil frequently (every 5000-7000 km), fueling it with normal gasoline (octane number not lower than 95) and not flooring it all the time, this engine's lifespan could easily exceed 500'000 km (there are engines still alive with a mileage of almost a 1'000'000 km). Furthermore, a 2.5 litre M50B25 is considered to be one of the most reliable BMW engines of all times.

3. BMW M52 engines

However, its successor, M52 was not so good. Cast iron cylinder block was replaced with an aluminum one, cylinder walls were coated with nikasil, connecting rods and pistons and intake manifold replaced with new ones. While still remaining a good engine, it was no match for its predecessor M50. With working temperature raised, M52 suffered from overheating. This problem was present in M50 as well, but due to cast iron cylinder block it did not cause much damage. However, in M52 cast iron was replaced with nikasil-coated aluminum, which was sensitive to it. Overheat the engine a few times and you may as well just throw it in the garbage. Naturally, its lifespan greatly decreased to around 200-350 thousand kilometres with proper maintenance and even less without it. That is the reason, why you are more likely to encounter well preserved E36 than E46, even though E36 are generally 10 years older.

Technology keeps evolving and so does marketing. That is exactly the reason why there is a saying that "It was better before".