There were two blokes, each driving a WW2 vintage US Army Jeep. You know, the simple 4wd workhorse of the US Army in WW2 and the Korean war.
One commentator regarded the Jeep as so useful that it was the weapon that won the war!
Good little truck. Could go anywhere in simple discomfort at a top speed of about 45 mph.
That suited bloke 1. It very much did not suit bloke 2.
B2 wanted a better Jeep, but could not afford a Landcruiser.
He decided that he would gradually change over parts of his Jeep to Landcruiser parts and that would get him where he wanted to be, only very slowly. No problemo. He had plenty of time, but no money.
The first thing he saw was the Landcruiser wheels: lovely large diameter, big rimmed wheels. He couldn't really get them to fit the Jeep, so had to jerry-fix the axles with very extended hubs. And that only worked for the rear wheels. It wrecked the steering on the front axle, so he stuck with the orignal Jeep wheels here.
The wheels at the rear stressed the suspension and the brakes failed to work properly, or even consistently. The stability of the Jeep seemed better, and the higher ground clearance was useful. But he soon discovered that the price he paid was less stability on lateral inclines. Very bad because in the bush it was mostly lateral inclines.
Anyway, B2 persisted.
At his next meeting he pulled in alongside B1's Jeep, in the service station. B1 was just getting in. He'd finished his lunch, showered, changed clothes, visited the dry-cleaner and had some dental work done. Even at 45 mph he'd arrived hours before B2 who now had to travel quite slowly as a result of his Jeep being unbalanced, far less maneuverable and a real pain to steer with the rear wheels wanting to track independently of the steered direction.
B2 spotted some Landcruiser seats and an very new looking dashboard in the back of the service station. He tossed out the Jeep seats and replaced them, bolting the dashboard to the firewall of the Jeep. In the dark it sort of looked OK.
The seat rails didn't meet the Jeep's anchor points, so he had to bolt them to the floor pan. It now had too many holes and was less rigid than before. The rear wheel tracking problem got worse. None of the instruments on the dashboard worked, of course, and the stereo, sat nav and airconditioning controls were useless, naturally.
B2 potted along, now he could only max out the speed at 25 mph, and the floor pan was too weak to carry the normal load.
But there was a benefit to slower travel. He could see more easily his surrounds. At the side of the road he spotted an very new looking Toyota Landcruiser V8 engine and gearbox, all attached.
Wow! He tried to fit them into his Jeep engine bay. No go, alas! No room at all. The gearbox would sort of fit, but the anchors were wrong and any connection to the drive shaft would be another patchup-not-real-good job.
He put the engine and gearbox onto the load tray of the Jeep.
It's maximum speed was now 15 kph. He was ho ping to find more spares over time to be able to fit the engine, airconditioning and instrumentation to the correct wiring loom. He'd grow old waiting.
B1 could still get around, carry loads and be there on time.
And therein lies the challenge of gradual improvement of an functional efficient system by random incremental change in its features. An integrated set of sub-systems with coherent and parsimonious interfaces is not improved by random changes. It is degraded.
Here's an example in real life of what has to be done to improve a vehicle by marrying it to another.
It took engineering, it wasn't a piece of 'gross morphology cut and paste, it was re-engineering all over the place.
Are mutations as evolution’s engine?
Putting it simply, or more technically
No!
