Lemon-Aid, Nader Style

As the acknowledged national champion of the consumer, Ralph Nader is deluged weekly with letters complaining about a wide variety of goods and services. Because Nader won his early reputation as an auto critic, hundreds of the letters concern defective U.S. and foreign cars. Nader carries on a particularly lively correspondence with owners of lemons--new cars in which everything seems to go wrong. Now he and two associates, Lawyer Lowell Dodge and Engineer Ralf Hotchkiss, have drawn heavily on those letters to write a book, What to do with your bad car / An action manual for lemon owners. The book, which came out last week, is every bit as tart as the title implies.

Only a minority of owners wind up with complete lemons. But much is heard about them because the problems of car owners are being documented as never before. One study in 1969 of 10,000 cars by the Missouri affiliate of the American Automobile Association found that 50% of new autos have "potentially dangerous defects." The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics last year declared that for the first time, auto price increases were not compensated for by improvements in quality. Nor was there much comfort for buyers in the Federal Trade Commission's statement last February that new-car warranties are virtually meaningless. The auto industry has admitted to lapses, though management tends to blame what General Motors Chairman James Roche calls "the effect of employee attitudes toward product quality."

The first lesson from Nader and Co. is how to avoid buying a trouble-plagued car. Nader suggests that the cautious purchaser should steer away from delicate options like automatic speed controls, eyelid headlamp covers, power windows and power antenna--all of which have a high frequency-of-repair record. But heavy-duty suspension, says the book, is "a must, even for urban driving." The buyer should hire an outside mechanic to check over the car before accepting delivery from a dealer.

For the new-car owner already stuck with a defective automobile, Nader suggests several ways to ''creatively seek out points of corporate vulnerability." Among them:

PROTEST. An individual letter of complaint seldom moves a manufacturer to replace a car or refund the purchase price, but a buyer can greatly increase his leverage if he allies himself with other consumers and takes his case to Government agencies or others concerned with consumer protection. Nader suggests that carbon copies of a letter of complaint to a manufacturer should be mailed to the dealer, a lawyer, the President's Committee on Consumer Interests, the buyer's Senators and Congressman, the Federal Trade Commission, the Nader-sponsored Center for Auto Safety in Washington, a local newspaper or radio "action line," the National Automobile Dealers' Association and the state or local dealer-licensing authority.

THE LAW. If letters bring no results, the buyer can formally "revoke acceptance" of a lemon by returning it to the dealer and demanding a refund--though the procedure is complex and should be undertaken only with the assistance of an attorney. A disillusioned buyer can also file suit on the basis of the manufacturer's claims about his product. Almost every state recognizes the principle of "express warranty." This means that a manufacturer must live up to any promises made by a dealer or in the company's advertisements. Recent court decisions have held that advertising claims of quality, safety or trouble-free operation carry the same obligation for the manufacturer as a written warranty. Courts have sometimes ordered compensation for the time and trouble that a lemon has cost its owner. In a Seattle case, a buyer got a Buick Skylark in return for a defective Opel station wagon; the difference reflected the loss incurred by the customer in trying to correct the Opel's defects.

LAST RESORTS. When conventional methods fail, owners have occasionally won redress by putting lemon signs on their cars and parking them near the dealer's showroom. One technique that Nader does not recommend was used by a buyer in Oneonta, N.Y.; he shipped his $6,900 Chrysler Crown Imperial back to Chrysler Chairman Lynn Townsend, paying $94 for freight charges. Another owner kept a 14-month diary of his auto troubles and let the manufacturer know that he had sold the story to Road and Track magazine. The auto company paid him a full refund on his car, but the story ran anyway.

Lemons, of course, are often in the eye of the beholder. Automakers insist that quality-control checks catch most ill-assembled cars and that autos today are more reliable than ever. But spokesmen for the Big Three auto companies agree with Nader that the more options on a car, the greater the chance of something going wrong. Automen also agree that letter writing is effective. "When trouble arises, write the company," says a Ford service expert, "but please be specific. Most of our letters from self-proclaimed lemon owners do not include the serial number of the car, when, where and from whom it was bought, or the mileage. How do you resolve a vague complaint?"

Nader and his associates also take broadside swings at cars that, while not strictly lemons, embody hazards in their design. But the main purpose of the book is to provide a continuing voice for disappointed car buyers and to share successful ways of obtaining redress. Nader intends to publish future editions based largely on readers' letters, outlining any new methods they find for squeezing dealers and manufacturers. Not only that, says Co-Author Dodge: "We plan to use the technique of the consumer-written book in other areas."

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