American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States and in most circumstances ...

, a lemon is a

vehicle A vehicle (from la, vehiculum) is a machine that transports people or cargo. Vehicles include wagons, bicycles, motor vehicles (motorcycles, cars, trucks, buses, mobility scooters for disabled people), railed vehicles (trains, trams), ...

that turns out to have several manufacturing issues affecting its safety, value or utility. Any vehicle with such severe issues may be termed a lemon, and by extension, so may any product with flaws too great or severe to serve its purpose.

Terminology

The concept of describing a highly flawed item as a "lemon" predates its use in describing cars and can be traced back to the beginning of the 20th century as a British and American slang term. The British use is derived from the US use and is less precise or specific: to be "sold a lemon" is little different from "sold a pup". Its first attribution to mean a problematic car was in a

Volkswagen Volkswagen (),English: , . abbreviated as VW (), is a German Automotive industry, motor vehicle manufacturer headquartered in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1937 by the German Labour Front under the Nazi Party and revived into a ...

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Julian Koenig Julian Norman Koenig (; April 22, 1921 – June 12, 2014) was an American copywriter. He was inducted into The One Club Creative Hall of Fame in 1966. Early life and education Koenig was born to a Jewish familyHelmut Krone as part of an advertisement campaign managed by William Bernbach, all advertising executives with the firm Doyle Dane Bernbach in 1960, which was a follow-up to their Think Small advertising campaign for VW. Economist

George Akerlof George Arthur Akerlof (born June 17, 1940) is an American economist and a university professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University and Koshland Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley ...

in his 1970 paper " The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism" identified the severe lemon problems that may afflict markets characterized by asymmetrical information.

Laws

New vehicles

New vehicles may contain flaws or defects in workmanship, caused by design flaws or by an error during the automotive factory build process. These errors can range from parts being installed incorrectly to a tool that was used to build the car not being removed or a batch of materials with structural or chemical flaws. The idiom "Friday afternoon car" was used to describe new cars that had been delivered with numerous faults or suffered from an excessive number of warranty claims early in their lives – based on the premise that assembly line workers were far more likely to make errors at the times when they were perceived to be least interested in the standard of their workmanship. Consumer protection legislation typically labels vehicles as "lemons" if the same problem recurs despite multiple repair attempts (such as three times in a row over a short period, where previous attempts have not corrected the problem) or where defects have caused a new vehicle to be out of service for a prolonged period (typically 30 days or longer) for repairs. Lemon laws primarily serve to force manufacturers to buy back defective vehicles or exchange them. Depending on the jurisdiction, a process similar to vehicle title branding may also be used to warn subsequent purchasers of the history of a problem vehicle. While this portion of a vehicle's history is usually not retained with the title when exporting it to another jurisdiction, at least one jurisdiction (California) has started compelling manufacturers to brand the titles of any previously reacquired vehicles that they import or export from the jurisdiction.

US Federal law

The Magnuson–Moss Warranty Act is a United States federal law enacted in 1975 to protect consumers from deceptive warranty practices. The Act was sponsored by Senator Warren G. Magnuson of Washington with co-sponsors Senator

Frank Moss Frank Edward "Ted" Moss (September 23, 1911 – January 29, 2003) was an American lawyer and politician. A Democrat, he served as a United States Senator from Utah from 1959 to 1977. Early life and education Frank Moss was born in Holla ...

of Utah, and U.S. Representative

John E. Moss John Emerson Moss (April 13, 1915 – December 5, 1997) was an American politician of the Democratic Party, noted for his championing of the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) through multiple sessions of the United States House of Repre ...

of California. The purpose of the Act was to make product warranties more easily understood and enforceable, and to provide the

Federal Trade Commission The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is an independent agency of the United States government whose principal mission is the enforcement of civil (non-criminal) antitrust law and the promotion of consumer protection. The FTC shares jurisdiction o ...

with a means of better protecting consumers. The Act does not force a manufacturer to include a warranty with its products but if there is one it must be in writing and comply with the rules of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act.Guide to the CA Lemon Law
Magnuson Moss Act and relevance to "lemon" vehicles

Used vehicles

While

used car A used car, a pre-owned vehicle, or a secondhand car, is a vehicle that has previously had one or more retail owners. Used cars are sold through a variety of outlets, including franchise and independent car dealers, rental car companies, buy h ...

s may be plagued with the same problems that beset new vehicles, used vehicles may also have been abused, improperly maintained or poorly repaired, been unprofessionally rebuilt after a collision or tampered with in some manner to conceal high mileage, mechanical defects, corrosion or other damage. One form of lemon is called a cut and shut or clipping, a form of body collision "repair" based on buying a wrecked car and sawing off the wrecked section to replace it with a matching section from another (similar) car. If improperly repaired, these vehicles may be inherently dangerous; at high speeds, or in an accident, the car may come apart due to the weaknesses of the welds or pins connecting the two segments of the vehicle or mismatches of segments. In the UK ''cut and shut'' cars are treated like any car that has had major repair work resulting in what is essentially a new car. They must first be inspected for road-worthiness, be assigned a new registration number and pass the standard

MOT test The MOT test (or simply MOT) is an annual test of vehicle safety, roadworthiness aspects and exhaust emissions required in the United Kingdom for most vehicles over three years old. In Northern Ireland the equivalent requirement applies aft ...

. If this is successful, they will be given a "Q" registration, meaning they are a kit, or composite car, and not an original unit from the manufacturer. In some states of the USA, the sale of ''cut and shut'' vehicles is illegal. Cars created using two or more large sections of previous ones are sometimes called "zipper cars".

References