Re: American Auto Industry

Posted by HH56 On 2008/10/12 13:54:50

V8, not sure how to take your post. I have not been around unions much either. Had glancing relations but in all, my end of the industry has been pretty much non union except for a very nasty period when 1 office location was forced to join after some violence. The factory was another matter entirely as that was all union and seemingly lots of strife and lots of things not done on time because "he can't do that because it's not his job" stuff.

What I was referring to labor/value wise was imaging equipt made in US that sold at the time in the 100-250K range (now it's 500k-1mil. For the same amount, the overseas equipt was much better made and had considerably more bells and whistles because that's what their customers expected and demanded. The German equipt especially was very heavy construction. Hit the side of a table on the European stuff and you'd hurt your hand, on the US stuff you'd see if the table dented. Same with features--functions were included on foreign, and extra cost option on domestic. When our salesmen lost an order, it was always "because we can't sell any cheaper", so since it wasn't because of extra metal, switches and motors what else is left. That company was finally taken over by a foreign one, as was most of the others in the same situation--like I said 6 majors down to 1.

As to cars, the company used Ford for vehicles through 70 to mid 80's. In my experience with a new one every 60K or 2 yrs, the old saying Fix Or Replace Daily was never more appropriate.

P12, as to the Ultra won't go there. Whatever problems (and there were some), I only say that Packard with a few dozen engineers was able to do it before Chrysler and Ford who had hundreds of engineers. Those companies took longer, also had teething problems and they also had the benefit of hindsight and prior work. GM, with thousands of top notch staff, of course was the pioneer but even some of their first attempts were less than spectacular. Studebaker--also much bigger than Packard had to partner with another company.