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To: Elroy Jetson who wrote (165206)	11/19/2008 11:54:24 AM
From: Dan3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 306849

Re: GM, Ford, and Chrysler don't make quality vehicles because it's not important to them. Their system is makes flawed vehicles by design. When Deming offered his services to them they weren't interested Japan and Germany attacked us in WWII, which is equally irrelevant, ancient history. GM and Ford do fine in Europe where you don't have ridiculous gas price variations and the UAW to deal with. I traded in a 10 year old Acura for what is now a 9 year old Ford (Mustang Cobra Convertible). The Acura left me stuck at the side of the road twice with electrical problems, needed a new exhaust every 3 years and new (horribly expensive) rear calipers every 4). It's tune-ups were expensive and required every 3 years. The Ford has had nothing go wrong, has the original exhaust, original calipers. I had the brakes done recently and the rear pads were replaced once before at 45k miles - that's all it every needed (in addition to oil changes). I had them replace the 9 year old battery because I thought it was too old, but the dealer told me it was fine and didn't need it!

To: Elroy Jetson who wrote (165206)	11/19/2008 12:02:03 PM
From: Jim McMannis	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 306849

Comparing the manufacture of a car to that of refining and distributing oil is tenuous at best. Cars are sums of many parts. Manufactured parts have tolerances. Those outside tolerance are discarded. This is costly. Cheating on tolerance is one way auto makers have taken quality out of cars. They had to to this to save money, on for competitive reasons another to shift money to sweet labor deals and pensions. Another was to save money is to cheat on materials. For instance Ford replaced aluminum with phenolic plastic on certain intake manifolds. Saved in the short term but cost them $375 million later and a lot of alienated customers whose engines were blown and out of warranty. I think there is a direct correlation of the quality of American cars and sweet labor contracts and pensions. At least thats what I've seen after buying the sames cars every 2 years for the last 15 years. When your production costs are $1394/car more than foreign car makers cars produced here you have to cut corners somewhere. Big 3 auto workers cost $75/hr. Toyota in US workers cost $50/55/hr.