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<...>It all comes down to this - Ford, GM and Chrysler had a huge head-start in North America, certainly over the Japanese. They had everything going their way - and it's hard to not think they blew it. GM went from No.1 in the world to bankruptcy - this is a clear sign of mismanagement - not bad luck. I know darn well that our engineers in the US and Canada can compete with the world's best, but it doesn't look like they were given a chance - management faulted on this.



While they took home obscene salaries for running the great American car companies into the ground.

I wish I could make a salary for doing a job wrong. How many factory workers would stay if they consistently completely failed their job?

I have owned a lot of vehicles in my time, and all except 2 were US built. I bought a 1972 1/2 two cylinder Honda from my sister (nice car 49mpg highway - impossible to replace major parts) and a Fiat Spyder when I got divorced (red sports car for my second puberty). The rest were Ford, Chevy, Olds, Plymouth, and Dodge. I got the best reliability by far out of the Mopar products.

There was a quality problem in the 1970s with US cars, but they fixed that. During that era the foreign cars got their foothold in the US market. Again a management problem. I used to have a neighbor who retired from the Chrysler Corp assembly line. He said during those years the workers could have made a good car if management would have let them, but the assembly line moved so fast that the work could not be done properly by the best workers. So you miss a weld, drop a few screws, do something sloppy in a rush, miss something altogether, and go on because the next car is here already.

As in engineering, most things have to find a balance. The balance between building quality and cost effectiveness is not only in design, but in running the entire company. And when management blows it, and still get millions of dollars in bonuses, IMHO it's a major flaw in the corporation.

Now that we own almost 3/4 of GM, I hope they come out of it OK.

Notes

Last edited by Notes Norton; 06/05/09 06:20 AM.
Bob "Notes" Norton smile Norton Music
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