Dont hate the country :
But business practices are what they are !
Been to the USA in 89 , and the Average citizen is nice as can be .
Dont hate !
its just dont like over paying , in the past this sort of info was not well distributed or known ,
and unfortunately for those who like large margins , consumers are better informed now …
Im into electric helicopters now , and the local prices are deadly , if not for the HK dealers and Ebay , I simply could not afford to play .
Same with flashlights , if I had to pay 150+ for one flashlight , I might have 2 or 3 flashlights …
Sure fire 6P sold for about $130 Australian … [ Not the LED one ]
At the same time you could buy a Solarforce L2 with holster and battery for $25 shipped [ No contest ]
And I still have those batteries [ they havent died as yet ]
Its not so much blame for making the inferior one, its voting with our wallets, one can only hope those who make inferior products or overpricing are getting the message and have an interest in improving their offerings.
Being patriotic in that sense didn’t help Detroit did it? People tried to buy American cars and the Japanese adapted to the first oil crises and Detroit just kept building big heavy cars.
Ford eventually had to advertise that they weren’t #1 in quality but they were working hard to get there. All the consumer report rankings showed the Japanese cars consistently above the America models.
Eventually a lot of people just quit buying the overpriced and lesser quality U.S. cars. Once you lose consumers it’s hard to get them back. Japanese cars are less expensive, built better and yet wages in Japan are higher than they are here.
Being patriotic only served to unable bad behavior or poor decisions. Paying someone with a high school education $80k to put a tire on a new car with a union refusing to be realistic resulted in Detroit becoming a ghost town. Yea America, you’re the best in everything.
The problem at least in detroit was hardly labor costs given that it’s maybe a few percent of an auto’s total price, but the complete lack of overall quality and that’s the responsibility of the people put in charge to ensure it. Building more economical cars for example is not the job of the guy turning bolts on the door, and I feel it’s more appropriate to blame people who failed miserably at this job. Unions are a convenient scapegoat due to what are perceived to be high salaries, but perhaps folks should instead be asking why theirs are so low as to be beaten by inflation even as GDP growth exceeds it.
The problem with “buy american” slogan is that instead of focusing to fix these problems so that the products win on their own merits, it asks the consumer to turn a blind eye to repairable issues. Personally I would pay some extra margin to support neighbors in close proximity (as I would think most humans as innate instinct), but I won’t suffer a worse product for the privilege of doing so.
Actually, it’s quite appropriate to blame everyone involved in the building process. A quality culture is the combination of efforts coming from everyone with hands in the process. To suggest workers don’t have significant quality responsibility is naive, at best.
If any group is intransigent on this matter, then the product is going to suck simply because no business will survive by producing and rejecting and correcting even a modest amount of waste (including warranty repairs and devalued product). Waste destroys margins and that destroys the ability to pay for everything else - especially R&D.
Having guided union committees over significant business cost issues, I can say that I’ve seen some excellent and poor examples of both workers and leaders on both sides. The good situations were fantastic . . the bad were often needlessly so because one side insisted on only blaming the other side and not accepting adequate responsibility for their own performance.
Personally, I look to buy from my countrymen as long as the product is competitive in features, quality, and price. The argument that it must be the best is generally tortured to support one’s own biases.
So True. Remember when those ford electric cars came out in 2000? Now everybody who is hip or cool drives a modded Prius? I feel that it’s management and the designer’s partial fault too. Instead of innovating, they just churn out updated copies year after year.
The American car industry suffered the same hubris the British car industry did, it’s the best because we make it.
This is sadly just not the case, British 70’s onwards cars just sucked big time, the japs rolled in, looked at the issues, fixed them and continue to crank out a quality product.
Now looking at lights, since I’m more familiar with bike lights than torches, a British bike light of reasonable out put runs at £400, I picked up a good, Chinese xm-l fluxient light, does the same job, bought from a British supplier with a warranty and money back if not satisfied guarentee, I paid less than £100.
Studying the forums, there is no reason to believe the British product will last longer, and as they were generally 3 xp-g vs one xm-l the output was poor for the price posted. Money is tight, I had to pick the best value for me to carry out my task, unfortunately, I don’t possess the cash for country loyalty, as I suspect many others don’t.
That’s why we’re content to be techno freaks, buy what is essentially a kit light, make it right then enjoy it.
I had the same thing happen like the lights but with computer stores, back when 4-8 GB SD memory cards where around 70+ dollars at retail stores. If you bought them online usually from a Chinese re-seller, you save like 40 bucks. E-retailers really killed electronic/computer stores like Best Buy & Circuit City.
The guys turning screws the end are of course not entirely without blame, but their responsibility is fairly limited in the sorry affair since it’s not their job to create a productive working environment. Unions ironically emerged out of the extremely antagonistic relationship management choose to have with labor. Then, instead of responding by fixing the relationship by addressing grievances in a reasonable way as it’s done in every other country with a successful auto industry (and labor unions), people were put in a position to fight for every little thing so they took the only avenue available.
It’s a systemic failure, but the system was built and run from the top down. Don’t let the people collect the really fat paychecks escape their responsibility.
There is just nothing cool about a Prius, modded or otherwise. I rember the old Honda CRI’s that got mileage in the 50’s. Even the first gen VW Rabbits/Golfs got mid to high 40’s and made the Prius look inefficient. The newer diesels in Europe make the hybrids look like gas guzzlers.
The technology that goes into these cars is quite cool, and very unique in a car of relatively low cost. Old cars can sometimes achieve higher numbers due to zero emissions control, lower safety standards and features (weight), and anemic power. No one would buy them if they were sold today. Older EPA test schedule also produced higher numbers.
Diesels also don’t do as well as the numbers might suggest given 1) euro test schedule produces higher economy claims and 2) diesel is higher density (meaning you get less fuel per barrel of crude). The real difference is maybe 10-15% due to higher combustion ratio/temperature and thus more thermodynamically efficient cycle.
The prius and the like are the first real departure from the same ICE/transmissions the industry has used from day one.
I would not buy a Prius so please no personal attacks, but keep in mind the Prius is a much larger car with more power then a honda CRX, and its a gasoline vehicle not a diesel, you would need a diesel hybrid to make a direct comparison.
Also technological enhancement comes from improving and learning from current technology, if no one ever made a hybrid, then they would not be able to make a better hybrid, and some of the hybrid technology also helps future electric cars
As for the union debate, unions aren’t perfect, but neither is exploitation of employees preferable (except for who knows how many employers), hence why we have labour laws, environmental standards, worker safety boards etc. How many of us would volunteer to work for 5 cents an hour in a first world country, or be forced to work till injury or death? What is preferable a government mandated wage or a collective bargaining unit?
A government mandated wage or collective bargaining aren’t the only two choices. The only government mandated wage in the U.S. is the minimum wages and very few people are at that level after they leave high school.
Unions certainly aren’t the only problem with Detroit but they were a problem. The company was the problem as well as I mentioned…they kept turning out big “boats” that weren’t well made.
The market can work fairly well however for setting wages. It allows for flexibility which unions in many cases do not. You’re worth what someone will pay you.
The first Japanese cars weren’t that great but they were cheap. They continued to improve while still keeping the price down. American companies (and their unions) weren’t able to do that. They got greedy and complaisant maybe along the lines of Surefire in the flashlight industry. They were #1 so why change?
The British at one point had great designs but in particular their electrical systems were crap (Lucas). Anyone who has ever had a British Leyland product knows all about that.
The market place is efficient and ruthless. If someone makes a better mousetrap they get all or most of the business. Patriotism isn’t doing anyone a favor. If you screwed up it’s not really doing you a favor if some people continue to buy your product for a while. It just causes you to delay making the necessary changes…like the Detroit companies.
I’m not personally arguing that top selling cars can’t be made by a unionized workforce. It’s all in the implementation. If everyone works together (as they certainly do in Japan) rather than having an us vs them mentality that can work. It just didn’t work in Detroit.
German Japanese car makers have a different attitude to making cars …
In the USA it was a top down method = info and orders flowed down from the top :
Japan and Germany have included a Bottom up flow of info [ regarding problems and QC ]
If an operator on the line notices a problem , they can shut down the assembly line , and the problem will be immediately seen to and addressed .
I worked for Nissan here in Clayton , and they did not like people pointing out problems , or trying to improve QC …
I got my ass chewed on many a time for trying to improve QC and time management etc …
For trying to make things better ? I was a trouble maker .
I worked afternoon shift and we got blamed for everything !
So I implemented a way to separate production , day shift and afternoon shift from each other …
I was warned to stop , but I said get bent !
One week later [ after everyone on AS started doing the same thing ] , it was discovered that all the crap came from day shift ! [ we got blamed for it ] , and all the bosses on day shift got an ass kicking for it … [ Yeah - I was a trouble maker ]
Strange - really strange attitude for a car maker …
Nissan folded in Aust cos they made crap , compared to the Nissan cars imported from Japan .
Cant blame workers in a top down system !
Market set wages should work, but guess what, any corporation who wants profit at any cost looks for ways to defeat paying market wages, out of many examples there is offshoring, lobbying for immigration with the claim there aren’t enough skilled workers (often its that workers aren’t willing to work for less then market wages), forcing your employees to work off the clock while threatening their jobs if they don’t, paying salary and jacking up the hours of work, being on call or making employees work at home after work, giving an employee a set amount of work while claiming it will take x hours, but in reality it takes many more, and i’m sure here are many more methods that are not listed here.
How many millions of people work for minimum wage?