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Just build a car designed to last 8 to 10 years without needing to buy new wipers after 3 months, tires after 8 months, stuff that works. No need to make 12 models, this one has 2 pieces of chrome, this one 4, this one has a roof hole, that one has a locking gas cap cover. Don't change the model for 3 years, just improve on what you had.<...>



The original VW Beetle approach. I agree with that. There is no need to re-tool the sheet metal and redesign everything just to get a new look when they could make a basic body style and then simply make improvements on that through the years.

As far as reliability is concerned, the US cars are much more reliable than they used to be. When I was young it was extremely rare for a vehicle to last 100,000 miles. The odometers didn't go that high, and if you "flipped" the odometer, it was a cause for celebration. Now I can "flip" them twice and still drive them.

I need a mini-van to haul my music gear to the gig (PA, sax, guitar, synths, etc. and I've had 3. A 1984 Plymouth Voyager almost 200,000 miles, a 1995 4 cylinder Dodge Caravan over 200,000 miles and currently a 2002 Dodge Caravan with 130,000 miles and counting.

The Caravan I'm driving now has had nothing major done to it. Other than tune up items, I've replaced the battery once, wiper refills once (they are due again) and the tires once (at about 100,000 miles). I drive it conservatively, slow acceleration, anticipating slow downs so I use the brakes as little as I can (I'm on the original set), and I get 5 miles per gallon more than the car is rated for (that's 100 miles per tank - see http://www.nortonmusic.com/environment.html and scroll down to the sub-heading Automobile for details).

Of course, driving the car sanely hurts the vehicle manufacturer. The car companies instead of building a product that lasts and selling fewer items in a smaller company, decided long ago to sell as many cars and replacement parts as they could therefore growing the company as big as they could and maximizing profits. But nothing can grow forever.

The industry term is "Chiclets items", products like the chewing gum namesake are not meant to last but instead are to be chewed up and spit out.

They used intensive advertising to tell the public that they need a new car every two years, and actually designed parts so that they do not last forever (they make a lot of money selling replacement parts).

When the imports started becoming more reliable than the domestics, and using that as a selling point, the US car companies started responding (Quality is job one) and now US vehicles are much better than they used to be.

But after all those shoddy quality for "maximum Chiclets" years it was difficult to change public perception. The general public remembers driving those US Junk cars while the Hondas and Volvos seem to last forever. It's difficult to change a person's mind once he/she has been burned. For example, I got sick eating too many strawberries as a child and to this day I cannot eat strawberries even though I tell myself I won't get sick if I eat them.

Plus the US industry is still geared towards the Chiclets approach and longer lasting cars that don't need replacing hurt the huge bloated Chiclets industry. So even if they can convince the public that they changed their ways, they have to reorganize, close factories, get rid of laborers, get rid of management and become a much smaller company that sells fewer units but units that last longer. And that's tough to do.

Plus while the majority of people really wanted fuel efficient vehicles, through the advertising, product placement in movies/TV, and pressure from dealers, the US Auto companies were busy telling the people they would be looked down upon by their peer group if they drove anything smaller than a gas-guzzling SUV. So too many people bought those Hummers, Escalades, Expeditions and their slightly smaller brethren like the Jimmy, Navigator, etc., and when the gas prices shot up (partly caused by the increased consumption of these behemoths), they regretted their purchase, saw the foreign market producing cars that get 30-50mpg and that was one more "nail in the coffin" of the US manufacturer.

They have been going for this quarter's bottom line instead of long term stability and profitability. This is the problem with corporationalism (as opposed to real capitalism).

A small company only needs to make enough money to pay the employees and the owners a decent salary (with of course the owners making a more "decent" salary). There is no need to make more and more and more profit every quarter, but simply enough so everybody can live comfortably.

A huge corporation needs to make more and more and more and more profit, every quarter, or the stockholders will sell their stock and invest somewhere else. As mentioned before, nothing can grow indefinitely.

So in effect, the stock market becomes a legal Ponzi scheme, and the day of reckoning has come again. Look at history, it's not the first time. Each depression/recession may be better or worse than the last one, but they do come in cycles. And each time it takes away the hard-earned lifetime savings of the investors and leaves them worse off than if they buried their money in a jar in their back yard. They CEOs win, the investors lose. Every Ponzi scheme has it's few winners and many losers.

This is what Karl Marx saw as the problem with Capitalism/Corporationalism, and he had good intentions to fix it. Unfortunately, communism had it's own set of problems that were harder on the population than Capitalism so it failed.

I'm not smart enough to devise a system that doesn't have the excesses of Capitalism/Corporationalism or the shortages of Communism, if I was I'd write a book and perhaps initiate change. I can see the problem, but I don't know how to fix it -- and I've thought about it a lot.

As Alvin Lee once sang, "I'd love to change the world, but I don't know what to do. So I'm leaving it up to you."

Sadly,
Notes

Bob "Notes" Norton smile Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com

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