[Leica] IMG: American Styling

[jayanand at gmail.com (Jayanand Govindaraj)]

Jim,
I have always thought of GM and Ford as pension funds which make cars on the
side. It could not have lasted. Now that GM is in Chapter 11, does it not
make sense for Ford to go down that route as well and rationalize their
liabilities as well? Otherwise, how will they compete?
Cheers
Jayanand

On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 5:55 AM, Jim Shulman <jshul at comcast.net> wrote:

> There are many things that helped to kill the US auto industry, well above
> the styling excess of 50s and 60s cars.
>
> Corporate Arrogance would head my list, beginning with lackluster to
> dreadful quality control.  The prevailing feeling in the 50s and 60s was
> that customers would trade in their cars every two or three years, so why
> build a car that would endure?  One former Ford executive who, when I asked
> about the metal parts of early Mustangs that were not galvanized or
> painted,
> said, "these cars were built to last as long as the payment book."
>  Consumer
> Reports recently discussed the relative quality of the US automakers
> product, which still fell short of many of their competitors' models.  GM
> was considered not bad, Ford was considered better, and Chrysler still
> abysmal.  Given this, would you put your money on "not bad", when for the
> same money or less you could own "excellent"?
>
> Next would be tone-deafness to consumer preferences about auto size,
> mileage, and safety features. For every excuse that Detroit offered, a
> foreign competitor would answer with a product that offered size,
> efficiency, and safety that exceeded customer expectations.
>
> Then would come internal inertia, where the organizations were more focused
> on their corporate needs than the customer's demands.   Those of us who
> remember the awful generic GM autos of the 80s can attest to the problems
> of
> putting "badge engineering" above customer demand for cars differentiated
> by
> both style and engineering.  Cadillac Cimarron, anyone?  Or the
> Opel-derived
> Catera?
>
> Finally would come the myopia of executive leadership of the past
> thirty-plus years, which believed that their successors would fix the
> problems they avoided.  Alfred Sloan predicted in the late 1940s that a GM
> defined-benefit pension plan would eventually bring the company to
> financial
> ruin.  When GM owned 50% of the US car market, it was less of a
> concern--but
> as market share declined (and as retirees lived longer than their parents
> or
> grandparents) it became a huge problem.
>
> Jim Shulman
> Wynnewood, PA
> Who is still waiting for his '57 Dodge to come out of the repair shop.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lug-bounces+jshul=comcast.net at leica-users.org
> [mailto:lug-bounces+jshul <lug-bounces%2Bjshul>=comcast.net@
> leica-users.org] On Behalf Of Ric
> Carter
> Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2009 8:06 PM
> To: Leica Users Group
> Subject: Re: [Leica] IMG: American Styling
>
> I'm a child of the '50s and '60s
>
> I LOVE excess;^)
>
> ric
>
>
> On Jun 23, 2009, at 7:57 PM, Jerry Lehrer wrote:
>
> >
> > If you are trying to show us some of the excesses that helped to
> > kill the American auto industry, you
> > are succeeding!
>
>
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