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Making a tradeoff of "weaker" parts to save money at the expense of reliability to the point of early failure is a design flaw.
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While Honda may make millions of vehicles, they have only made a limited production run of Ridgelines. I would guess that the R and D costs per vehicle sold are extremely high for the Ridgeline in comparison to say the Accord, and the budget to "bury" better parts in the accord production run are likely higher than in the Ridgeline. Bottom line is we are paying for the penny pinching necessary to put the Ridgeline in the marketplace with the hope that it would catch on and then more effort to be placed in the redesign generation. Unfortunately I thing the Honda strategy is backfiring and the lack of perceived quality for a somewhat expensive vehicle is going to backfire and keep the Ridgeline as a "unique" and "special" use vehicle that will never make it a profit for Honda.