C172 Still In Production After 60 Years.

[onetrack]

After seeing the liability payout figures for Toyota and VW (just to name 2 auto manufacturers) in recent times, the claim that auto manufacturers face no liability claims, falls flat on its face.

You would have to go through the auto manufacturers financial statements with a fine tooth comb, just to try and get an reasonably accurate estimate of what recalls, lawsuits, and civil and criminal penalties have cost them. They sure aren't trumpeting it to the world.

At a glance -

Toyota - US$1.2B in regulatory fines in the U.S. for the "unintended acceleration", Govt punitive action ...
US$3.4B for the "rust in pickups" action ...
Unknown $ figure for the cost of over 10,000,000 recalls in the early years of this century, as Toyota dropped the ball on QC ..
Unknown $ figure for the total payouts in individual "wrongful death" lawsuits and civil class action claims.

VW -

A reputed US$19B in punitive damages ... just in the U.S. alone ...
An unknown number and cost (to me) of VW recalls ...
An unknown figure for financial compensation, for a huge number of VW owners who were deceived by cheating on emission figures ...
An unknown $ cost figure for Australian VW owners, that is yet to hit the courts ..
An unknown $ punitive penalty from the regulatory Australian ACCC if it wins its "misleading and deceptive conduct" case against VW.

There are many other auto manufacturers that have had massive payouts and punitive damages awarded against them.
The fuel tank fire problem with Ford Pintos, the early Ford Explorer rollover problem, the dozens of models with faulty fuel systems that caused fires .. the list goes on.

I would hazard a guess, that the legal fraternity in the U.S. have funded their luxury lifestyles out of the hundreds of millions they have made from auto manufacturer lawsuits alone ...

I guess the simple fact is, that the C172 liability insurance cost factor is purely related to the low number of C172's produced - and the fact that most of the C172 crash lawsuit claims would have been centred around fatalities, and that most of those fatalities would have been wealthy and high-income earners, thus seriously increasing the payouts, as the claims probably took "loss of potential earnings" into account.

Probably what is more interesting, is that there is no similar "liability cost factor" in the price of a Jabiru. I suppose that is partly because the Jabiru has not been in production as long as the C172, and partly because the Jab is a relatively "crashworthy" aircraft with good cabin strength - and partly because Australia hasn't got quite as litigious as the U.S., yet.