Saturday, May 26, 2007

Indiana's Lemon Law

I missed that Robert Duff had finished his examination of Indiana's Lemon Law with the post
Indiana's Lemon Law, How Does It Compare? (Part 3). He starts his post with:

So far in this series, we have determined that the Indiana Motor Vehicle Protection Act, Indiana's lemon law, is the least consumer friendly of our neighboring states' lemon laws with regard to: the deduction the manufacturer receives for the mileage on a vehicle in a buyback situation (Part 1) and the kind of vehicles to which the law applies (Part 2)....
He concludes that Indiana's lemon law surpasses our neighbors:
This time, it appears that Indiana's lemon law is the MOST favorable to consumers of all our neighboring states. The bottom line is that Indiana's lemon law protects new car purchasers longer than the other states' lemon laws.
My opinion remains that Indiana's lemon law protects the consumers a little and the makers even more. I wonder, though, if the Lemon Law has not been somewhat superseded by the market. I remember the Eighties as a time when GM was particularly hapless with its models. Since then Toyota and other auto makers have beat GM over the head about their reliability. I searched quick for statistics by auto maker for Lemon Law violations on Yahoo and Google but turned up nothing. I could find nothing on the Consumer Rights Blog, either. Answering this question might actually answer the bigger question of why Indiana's legislature cannot be bothered to give us a better Lemon Law statute.