4 ms·

Saving Detroit: It's the Cars, Stupid

16 points by astrec 18y ago

vaksel 18y ago
its not the cars, its the legacy. Domestic cars are pretty much associated with crap by default. Detroit can come out with a car thats faster, better looking, more fuel efficient, more luxurious, more reliable and cheaper than a honda civic. And most people would still buy a civic over it. Why? Because they either owned or know someone who owned a domestic product in the past that turned out to be crap.
- wensing 18y ago
  Why? Because they either owned or know someone who owned a domestic product in the past Or rented. Seems like almost every car I rent is a GM, and I always notice something flaky or broken about it (which is sad considering they rarely have more than 20,000 miles or so). I own a Toyota, but ended up driving someone else's Chevy for a while this weekend. I couldn't believe how cheap all of the components felt, not to mention how much my body ached after driving it for 2.5 hours.
  - mynameishere 18y ago
    You "couldn't believe" how cheap the components on a Chevy were? LOL. GM has been shite for many years. Even to this day the old lemon laws hover over them. Ford is the best of the bunch and I wish them well...
  - potatolicious 18y ago
    That's always been GM's problem. They have perfectly fine designs, but have always been built shoddy. They build a reliable car, and then sabotage it by stuffing it full of ill-fitting plastic interior parts. Every GM car I've been in recently has felt cheap. You know, interior materials don't cost that much - however much they are saving on this construction is nothing compared to how bad it makes them look. I know many people who work in the automotives field, and the general consensus is that GM uses the worst production methodology out of them all. Parts have high tolerances (i.e. shaky, loose, poor fitting) and that leads to shoddy assembly, which weakens reliability of an otherwise sound design, and generally just feels like junk. If GM tightened their manufacturing tolerances they would do wonders for themselves.
    - mrtron 18y ago
      I agree with your summary - but why have they even survived this long with such shoddy workmanship? GM's have been poorly built for at least 10 years. Same with Ford. My father owned an auto repair shop, and there seemed to be a big gap in quality between the old vehicles and the new starting in the early 80s. The old cars were tanks - built simply and reliably. The new cars much cheaper and poorly constructed, focusing on form over function. Back then Toyotas and Hondas seemed to be in their own class. The same old reliability, but built cheaper. They were ugly and didn't have many bells and whistles, but they ran forever. Since then the quality gap has remained, but Toyota/Honda have also overtaken the rest in style too.
- netcan 18y ago
  Well I agree that it's not automatic. But to say that the quality of cars has nothing to do with sales... That's a bit much. Reputation can be built, repaired, earned or lost. Up is harder then down. Japanese cars once had a bad name. So did Koreans. But their quality was (is) on an upward path. American cars once had a good name. Anyway, the only bit I found interesting was this: "They love to blame labor agreements, pension plans, and health plans for their precarious financial situation, yet didn't the companies negotiate and sign those deals in good faith? Surely the down-the-road financial burdens were calculable at the time." It's as if the world brought this down on them. They negotiated these deals. Maybe unions had at the time some sort of monopoly. So what? They still bought in. These manufacturers certainly have heavy negotiation power over their suppliers. They can even squeeze governments (around the world, btw). They point to these because it's easy to point at & absolves them. Now I am going to make an uninformed guess. The people in top positions at these companies are no longer the type of people that can make great cars, innovate, produce efficiently. If they are, it's a fluke. The no 1 job these guys have had for a while now is political manoeuvring. An ideal previous job is more likely to be head of some lobby group rather then managing a smaller manufacturer. That's just the way it is when the biggest influence on the company is its interaction it makes with governments: it gets good at it.
kqr2 18y ago
Cringely actually tried to design his own plane in 30 days in an interesting PBS documentary: http://www.amazon.com/Plane-Crazy-3pc-Gift-Set/dp/B00003A9RW http://www.amazon.com/Plane-Crazy-3pc-Gift-Set/dp/B00003A9RW Join Robert X. Cringely, computer industry gossip columnist and high-tech gadfly as he sets out to design, build and fly an airplane in 30 days
StrawberryFrog 18y ago
Put yourself in my position: in England, which has very few totally local car manufacturers. I'd buy a German car if I got rich (VW, BMW, Audi, Mercedes), a Japanese car (Toyota, Honda), even a French car (Peugeot or Citroen) if I don't. If I won the lottery I'd think of an Italian sportscar. But an American car, what possible use would I have for one of those? Change that.
jeroen 18y ago
The new design would have to carry two people and luggage, have an empty weight of no more than 625 lbs. and use an 85-horsepower engine. The biggest differentiator between cars and planes (as far as construction goes) is crashes. That changes both weight and price in a non-trivial way.

16 points by astrec 18y ago

its not the cars, its the legacy. Domestic cars are pretty much associated with crap by default. Detroit can come out with a car thats faster, better looking, more fuel efficient, more luxurious, more reliable and cheaper than a honda civic. And most people would still buy a civic over it. Why? Because they either owned or know someone who owned a domestic product in the past that turned out to be crap.

wensing 18y ago
Why? Because they either owned or know someone who owned a domestic product in the past Or rented. Seems like almost every car I rent is a GM, and I always notice something flaky or broken about it (which is sad considering they rarely have more than 20,000 miles or so). I own a Toyota, but ended up driving someone else's Chevy for a while this weekend. I couldn't believe how cheap all of the components felt, not to mention how much my body ached after driving it for 2.5 hours.
- mynameishere 18y ago
  You "couldn't believe" how cheap the components on a Chevy were? LOL. GM has been shite for many years. Even to this day the old lemon laws hover over them. Ford is the best of the bunch and I wish them well...
- potatolicious 18y ago
  That's always been GM's problem. They have perfectly fine designs, but have always been built shoddy. They build a reliable car, and then sabotage it by stuffing it full of ill-fitting plastic interior parts. Every GM car I've been in recently has felt cheap. You know, interior materials don't cost that much - however much they are saving on this construction is nothing compared to how bad it makes them look. I know many people who work in the automotives field, and the general consensus is that GM uses the worst production methodology out of them all. Parts have high tolerances (i.e. shaky, loose, poor fitting) and that leads to shoddy assembly, which weakens reliability of an otherwise sound design, and generally just feels like junk. If GM tightened their manufacturing tolerances they would do wonders for themselves.
  - mrtron 18y ago
    I agree with your summary - but why have they even survived this long with such shoddy workmanship? GM's have been poorly built for at least 10 years. Same with Ford. My father owned an auto repair shop, and there seemed to be a big gap in quality between the old vehicles and the new starting in the early 80s. The old cars were tanks - built simply and reliably. The new cars much cheaper and poorly constructed, focusing on form over function. Back then Toyotas and Hondas seemed to be in their own class. The same old reliability, but built cheaper. They were ugly and didn't have many bells and whistles, but they ran forever. Since then the quality gap has remained, but Toyota/Honda have also overtaken the rest in style too.
netcan 18y ago
Well I agree that it's not automatic. But to say that the quality of cars has nothing to do with sales... That's a bit much. Reputation can be built, repaired, earned or lost. Up is harder then down. Japanese cars once had a bad name. So did Koreans. But their quality was (is) on an upward path. American cars once had a good name. Anyway, the only bit I found interesting was this: "They love to blame labor agreements, pension plans, and health plans for their precarious financial situation, yet didn't the companies negotiate and sign those deals in good faith? Surely the down-the-road financial burdens were calculable at the time." It's as if the world brought this down on them. They negotiated these deals. Maybe unions had at the time some sort of monopoly. So what? They still bought in. These manufacturers certainly have heavy negotiation power over their suppliers. They can even squeeze governments (around the world, btw). They point to these because it's easy to point at & absolves them. Now I am going to make an uninformed guess. The people in top positions at these companies are no longer the type of people that can make great cars, innovate, produce efficiently. If they are, it's a fluke. The no 1 job these guys have had for a while now is political manoeuvring. An ideal previous job is more likely to be head of some lobby group rather then managing a smaller manufacturer. That's just the way it is when the biggest influence on the company is its interaction it makes with governments: it gets good at it.

kqr2 18y ago

Cringely actually tried to design his own plane in 30 days in an interesting PBS documentary: http://www.amazon.com/Plane-Crazy-3pc-Gift-Set/dp/B00003A9RW http://www.amazon.com/Plane-Crazy-3pc-Gift-Set/dp/B00003A9RW Join Robert X. Cringely, computer industry gossip columnist and high-tech gadfly as he sets out to design, build and fly an airplane in 30 days

StrawberryFrog 18y ago

Put yourself in my position: in England, which has very few totally local car manufacturers. I'd buy a German car if I got rich (VW, BMW, Audi, Mercedes), a Japanese car (Toyota, Honda), even a French car (Peugeot or Citroen) if I don't. If I won the lottery I'd think of an Italian sportscar. But an American car, what possible use would I have for one of those? Change that.

jeroen 18y ago

The new design would have to carry two people and luggage, have an empty weight of no more than 625 lbs. and use an 85-horsepower engine. The biggest differentiator between cars and planes (as far as construction goes) is crashes. That changes both weight and price in a non-trivial way.