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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Richard Nehrboss who wrote (44812)	1/28/1999 3:25:00 PM
From: Knighty Tin	Respond to of 132070

Richard, I agree with most of your comments except that the union has nothing to do with lousy engineering, design and any attempt at quality control (it may have a bit to do with the latter). As Ross Perot said before he went into politics, "these folks just don't know what they're doing." And he was talking about management, not workers. I've heard the story both ways on unions at auto plants. I am an old union dog, but some of the folks at the Fremont GM plant used to tell me how they worked totally stoned all the time. Most but not all were union members. I swore to never buy anything from that plant. Now, Toyota showed GM how to make cars and both incentivize and discipline employees, and Fremont's Prisms are A-One quality. Still has the union. So, that's not the source of the problem, IMHO, but a reflection of the problems that exist. I am a bit surprised a car guy such as yourself would ever buy a Jeep product. They have always had a lot of features, but, they have always been junk. The only good thing about them is that you could fix them with rubber bands and chewing gum back in the pre-computer days. You just replace the old rubber bands and chewing gum. <G> I am not a car guy, and that is why I rate reliability as my number one priority. Any time I waste sitting around a car dealership is greatly resented. And any money I spend fixing a car makes me apoleptic. <G> For me, that means Japanese, though I have had friends tell me that some of their European cars are o.k. Oddly enough, everyone I know who owns a Volvo or an Audi, usually rated very reliable, has nothing but trouble with it. I think my sample is just too small. I once owned a Fiat sports car because it was cool. Never again. No matter how cool the car looks, you don't look cool riding in the front of the tow truck or pushing the sucker. <G> MB