car door mouldings.

twhitehousescat

AdrianC said:

KimJongUn88 said:

oldagetraveller1 said:

clive0510 said:

up untill about 5 years ago nearly all cars had door mouldings- ie a plastic moulding about 1/3 of the way up the car door, some painted body colour and some plain black. but new cars don't have such a thing. I wonder why?.

The manufacturers have possibly realised that they can be sold as an after purchase "enhancement" too. e.g. no spare wheel/tyre but we can sell you a spare and kit for £100+ to replace the compressor and gunge.

Or as an extra at point of sale as in so-called "protection packs".

No. Not a single manufacturer sells door mouldings as an added extra. 

They used to in the 80s.

AdrianC

angrycrow said:

Could they have gone in pursuit of weight saving to improve the laboratory emission figures. That's why everyone's spare wheels went. 

No, it isn't.

The 5kg of a space saver and jack, on a 1,700kg softroader, is totally irrelevant.

The £10/car saved in manufacturing cost is far more relevant, together with the packaging problems of sticking a suitable alternative for a mahoosive great big wide manhole cover alloy under the boot floor of a Corsa...

jimbo6977

Due to side impact protection and aerodynamics cars are a lot less square than they used to be so short of covering the whole door in a duvet a la Cactus there's a limit to the effectiveness of protective strips etc. 

oldagetraveller1

KimJongUn88 said:

oldagetraveller1 said:

clive0510 said:

up untill about 5 years ago nearly all cars had door mouldings- ie a plastic moulding about 1/3 of the way up the car door, some painted body colour and some plain black. but new cars don't have such a thing. I wonder why?.

The manufacturers have possibly realised that they can be sold as an after purchase "enhancement" too. e.g. no spare wheel/tyre but we can sell you a spare and kit for £100+ to replace the compressor and gunge.

Or as an extra at point of sale as in so-called "protection packs".

No. Not a single manufacturer sells door mouldings as an added extra. 

Oh yes they do. Where did you glean that from?

http://www.original-genuine-spare-parts.com/a/toyota/PZ41_/PZ415B285000-yaris_p13_seitenschu_(toyota).htm

And you only have to go through build your Toyota on their website to see that various protection packs and accessories may be purchased extra, including door bling strips.

clive0510

the reason for doing away with the spare wheel is clearly to have more space in the boot for other stuff. Customer maybe able to order a spare wheel, tyre, jack etc. but what about if there's no where in the car to put it.

Ditzy_Mitzy

Are we talking about plastic rubbing strips or the black/dark/differently coloured bit below the beltline on 1980s cars?  If the latter, it wasn't actually plastic at all; it was paint.  I assume the purpose of it, other than styling, was to provide protection against stone chips and so on when rust was a big problem.  I had a Ford Orion with it: Diamond White above and greyish black below, it looked quite nice and seemed to offer some protection to the bottoms of the doors.  It also had big plastic rubbing strips.  
Modern cars all seemed to have weird rippled sides, which don't have anywhere neat to fit rubbing strips.