That may all be true. I think companies are now relying on airbags to do a lot of the legwork in crashes nowadays. but the talk was of reliability not safety

That’s not a great method either. Safety is not reliability

The thing about the early VWs, like the Beetle, was they couldn’t pass the updated safety standards the US passed in the early '70s: safety glass, reinforced cabin, etc.

I hear what you’re saying, and I don’t know what else they might do for the formula. I just knew from somewhere back in my head that that’s the basic way they do it

Methodology is mileage divided by money spent on repairs