Re: bashing Detroit

[scott miller <macatawa@hotmail.com>]

>not just k-cars and minivans .........but PROFITABLE k-cars and

I guess that's the problem, short-sighted profit goals.  Lowering quality 
does increase profits, but eventually you lose customers.  Industry analysts 
once applauded Chrysler’s lowering it’s per-unit costs, but even they’re 
sounding warnings that it’s gone too far.  The way our system is set up, 
Big3 executives are rewarded for short-term profit, not good products.  
That, then, is really their job, whether they like it or not.

And what about their customer base?  Some people will hold to their 
loyalties, prejudices, bigotrys, no matter how many facts are held before 
them.  Those are the kind of people that will keep paying top dollar for 
junk and call it patriotism.  I like to believe that group is shrinking and 
becoming less successful with each generation, like Detroit’s shrinking 
customer base.  I’d like to think the Big3 could transform into efficient 
builders of quality products due to customer demands, but they are huge 
bureaucracies surrounded by the union bureaucracy, lobbyists, lawmakers and 
agencies local and national, stockholders, suppliers, etc., all needing it 
to stay just the way it is.

Someday it’ll be all quattros and kumbaya, and I’ll be cruising in a 
restored ’96 Impala SS because I’m an individual, darnit!

Scott
’90 200tqw
’98 Econoline lease
’96 SuperV


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