RE: bashing Detroit

[scott miller <macatawa@hotmail.com>]

There is hope, one of Chrysler’s top dogs is a friend of a friend, and the 
younger top execs seem to hold promise.  He's a car nut and builds show 
cars, and is responsible for the greatly improved (IMO) designs there.  Even 
borrowed my quattro when he was up North on his boat.  The new people aren't 
afraid of change.  One thing in their way is the bureaucracies at the big3.  
My brother tried to put smaller wheel arches on a particular car line, but 
the company rule required big wheel arches for tire chains.  Couldn't change 
that for years.  Two keys - same problem.  Some of this was even due to 
competition between divisions.  They focused a lot of effort on keeping 
weird, antiquated regulations on DOT books too, knowing foreign cars would 
have trouble meeting them.  US bumpers that don't flow with the original 
euro design, round headlights when Europe used rectangular, sealed beams, 
etc.  They'll never have to compete squarely with cars in their European 
forms here in the US, but US design euro-cars are improving fast, and the 
weird regs are slowly disappearing.  My brother's prediction that the big3 
won’t last a decade didn’t happen, but they may yet face tougher times.


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