[Leica] IMG: American Styling

[jhnichols at lighttube.net (Jim Nichols)]

I owned a 2000 Catera, Jim. Difficult to enter and leave, heating and A/C 
problems, but, on the road, it drove like a dream. That was the last GM buy 
for me.

Jim Nichols
Tullahoma, TN USA
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jim Shulman" <jshul at comcast.net>
To: "'Leica Users Group'" <lug at leica-users.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2009 7:25 PM
Subject: Re: [Leica] IMG: American Styling


> 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=comcast.net at 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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