On Fri, 06 Jun 2008 23:19:54 +0100, Duncan Wood wrote:

No more so than oil filters, headlamps, tyres, windscreens. Should
they all be forced to be one of four or five basic types? How about
front wings or bumpers?

Why not? This is only a car, something to move you from one place to
another, not a fashion accessory.

Because the advantages would be miniscule?

Would they? No need for motor factors to have massive stocks of umpteen
different type of what ever. Less transportation. Every garage could carry
the full range of common consumables for all cars, this would save the
motor factors delivery van doing a trip just to deliver a single set of
filters etc to a garage servicing a particular model that they don't have
stock for.

With fewer types economy of scale in manufacture kicks in, you just make
10,000,000 "filter, oil, type C" instead of 100,000 of this 3 million of
that another 750,000 of the other, oh and 50,000 of variant B of filter X
etc etc.

--
Cheers
Dave.