>What do you think happened with the Golf 3 engine design? They made the camshaft structurally weaker, so the engine will blow up more easily.

Wow, talk about an oversimplification. The Mk3 moved from an 8-valve to a 16-valve engine; yes, this adds more valvetrain failure modes but also brings myriad other benefits, increased power, better fuel economy, reduced emissions…

The idea that a carmaker would purposely engineer flaws into core engine components in order to drive future sales doesn’t make much sense.