"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
Dave Liquorice wrote:
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.

Look up 'efficiency' 'cartel' and 'jobs for he boy' and 'unions' to see
why things are the way they are.

I'm sure people know why things are like they . I thought the OP was
looking for reasons as to why the authorities shouldn't legislate to stop it
being that way.

tim