Detroit Rescue Plans Revealed

With Congressional hearings starting Tuesday, everyone wonders what pitch
the Detroit automakers will use to try to convince Congress - and more
importantly, the public - that spending taxpayer money will rescue them.
Bits and pieces have leaked, and its time to start evaluating them.

Rick Wagoner, GM's CEO, has spent most of his career in finance related
functions, after having started as an analyst in GM's treasurer's office.
He will offer expert testimony on GM's finances. "There should be more
digits in these numbers" is one of his planned lines.

But, with a known lack of product experience, it is expected that Congress
will instead try to grill him mercilessly on car features and manufacturing
issues. During a crash course over the weekend, Wagoner learned to recite
all GM's current brand names in less than 60 seconds (his tendency to
include Oldsmobile was a particular stumbling block).

Ford's Alan Mulally is probably the best prepared of the three. With a
engineering background (at Boeing) he is likely to be able to impress
Congress that he knows how to lead a manufacturing company.

Yet he can't speak too highly of Ford products lest he be considered
dishonest. Before being appointed Ford CEO, he was quoted as saying his
personal Lexus was the best car in the world.

Chrysler CEO Robert Nardelli may have the least to say. His opening
statement, based on his experience at The Home Depot, is reported to be
simply "We can do it, you can help".

 

Doesn't everyone think the car they are driving is the best car in the
world "for them, all things considered?" If there were no constraints,
I am sure my current car would not be the best car for me, but given
my real world constraints, I bought the car because it was the best
one that met my requirements/constraints/desires at that time. I doubt
Mulally any more knew whether a Lexus was the best car in the world or
not than I do, but he certainly could have thought it was the best car
for him as far as he knew. I assume he knows better now When he was
running Boeing, I can't imagine him riding around in a Lexus and
saying, well it is a good car, but I was a dope for spending so much
for a pimped out Toyota. What high power, over paid CEO would ever
admit he bought anything but the best - especially when it was a
product produced in a foreign country?

Ed

 

At nearly $1,000,000 one would think so, but I think he said ONE of the best

 

Seeing the current Lexus E350 ads amuses me.
It looks and is so similar to my grey 300M. Under the Lexus only gains
on more recent VVT, 6 SP auto and more air bags.

Toyota copies very well as do a few other "foreign" cars.
Perhaps the smart tasteful car stylists, that seem to be absent from
recent Chrysler car body designs, were hired by this competition.

 

The biggest example is "Cab Forward" stuff which is the industry
standard now!

I wish the people who say bad stuff about American Cars would actually
go and look some.

 

This is how they pay the UAW workers.

This is how they pay the UAW workers.

This is how they pay the UAW workers.

A vehicle will only fetch X on the market. If you pay a higher labor
rate you have to cut materials and time. Lesser interior materials save
money. Specific horsepower is a function of cost in manufacturing
processes and material. using particular designs longer cuts tooling and
development costs making up for high cost labor. unflexible labor also
forces one to stick with present designs because the manufacturing side
can't handle new processes or new automation.

The UAW, as a classic old-school union fights change and has an
artifically high cost of labor. To think this doesn't show up in the
product is nonsense. They could make all the executives work for a
dollar a year and it won't fix these problems. Well it might let them
upgrade the dash pad in every car... maybe the carpet too, but that's
about it, the overall problems still exist.

 

----- Original Message -----
From: "Lloyd" <>
Newsgroups:
rec.autos.driving,alt.autos.dodge.trucks,rec.autos.makers.Chrysler,alt.autos.ford,alt.autos.gm
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 3:39 PM
Subject: Re: Detroit Rescue Plans Revealed

Lets look at your comparions:

First:

2009 Nissan Maxima:
Engine horsepower 290-hp @ 6,400 rpm
Engine torque 261 lbs.-ft. @ 4,400 rpm
MSRP: $30,160

2009 Dodge Charger V6 SXT
Horsepower 250-hp @ 6,400 rpm
Torque 250 lbs.-ft. @ 3,800 rpm
MSRP: $24,285

I'll bet you at lower engine RPMs, the Chrysler V6 actually has as
much (maybe more) torque than the Nissan V6. Just how often do you
drive around with the engine screaming along at 6400 rpm? For people
who drive sanely, the HP at 6400 rpm is irrelevant. The torque
available in the 1500 to 300 rpm range has a lot more to do with how
the vehicle "feels." I have a Nissan Frontier with the 4L version of
the Nissan V6. It is one fast truck, but it drives like crap in
traffic. You have two choices at a stop light - burn rubber or creep
away. The mid range torque is pathetic. Comapred to my old F150, the
Frontier is a pain to drive in traffic, and a horror on mud or grass.
I constantly spin the rear tires when on my farm unless I put it in
4WD. You can't ease into anything. It is like a switch - 4000 rpm and
a rocket, 2000 rpm and it won't move. I call it idiot engineering
driven by idiots in marketing. And don't forget just a coupel of years
back, all the Japanese manufacturers were dinged for lying about the
horsepower numbers.

Second:

Honda Accord EX Coupe

Horsepower 190-hp @ 7,000 rpm
Torque 162 lbs.-ft. @ 4,400 rpm
MSRP: $23,555

Dodge Avenger SXT

Horsepower 173-hp @ 6,000 rpm
Torque 166 lbs.-ft. @ 4,400 rpm
MSRP: $20,515


The Chrysler engine has more torque where it counts. I'll bet it is a
lot easier to maintain speed in traffic with the Dodge than with the
Accord. And the Avenger is $3K less expensive besides.

I used always rag on Chevrolet for selling engines that devloped big
horsepower numbers at ridiculouly high rpms, but the Japanese are well
beyond anything as silly as GM used to do. If you want to ride around
with the engine buzzing at 4k+ rpms all the time, Hondas are great. If
you like nice undramatic smooth efficient acceleration, they are
horrid.

Ed

 

Well said.

 

Ed, you know as well as I do that the quality and durability of a lot of the
Chrysler
models is WORSE than terrible.

I think they are on the road to change but I would rather have unprotected
sex with
an infected woman than buy a Chrysler at this point.

 

Actually, I disagree completely. I have yet to have a Chrysler product
let me down or expire with less than 200,000 miles. Actually, I've never
had one expire even OVER 200k miles, I've sold or traded with it still
running. Admittedly, I've avoided buying ones that I thought were not up
to snuff- like a Neon or anything that had a Mitsubishi engine. There's
no other brand that I'd buy used with over 100k miles on the clock like
I just did my 99 Cherokee (which is proving to be yet another
indestructible vehicle). If they go out of business, I'll keep finding
used ones to buy as long as I can. Then Ford. Then German.

 

5. Usage of incorrect or inferior materials in headlight lenses that
cloud over on upper mid-line vehicles - like the LH cars.

 

When I worked for a supplier to Visteon (Ford) and Delhpi (GM), GM would
set up brainstorming meetings with us that lasted for days to jointly
try to figure out ways to cut costs in the product we manufactured and
sold them. One of the legal ground rules laid out up front by them was
that any idea that resulted in a body being eliminated from the assembly
process in their plant involving our part had to be automatically
rejected due to GM/union agreements (I do not believe Ford was under the
same constraint - it was something that GM uniquely had to live with due
to agreements that had been made years earlier, according to the way it
was explained to us by our sales rep.).

 

While some models see it sooner than others, that's pretty much
everyone's cars with plastic lenses. It's a function of the plastics
best suited for the job. The UV/hard coat quality varies, but ultimately
all the plastic lenses will cloud if the car is outside in the sun and
driven or the headlamps are used. Even mercedes plastic headlamps will
cloud over.

The only way to avoid it at present that I know of is to use glass.

 

That's really a kiss of death. Elimination of assembly steps, combining
parts into one part, and elimination of secondary processes are some of
the best ways to reduce cost with no negative impact on quality.

 

you can't blame the mfgrs. for that. IIRC it is written into the MVSS
that addresses headlamps that any non-sealed-beam headlamp will have a
one piece lens/reflector assembly and that the lenses will be plastic.

For example, the VW Corrado uses a housing with a replaceable glass lens
in Germany, but the US-model ones got dangerously inferior one piece
plastic units. (thank you eBay Deutschland)

nate

 

I don't see it evenly spread among the various makes, Brent. I have a
'99 Concorde, my wife has a '99 Buick Century. They both are in the
same driveway, not garaged. The Buick's headlights show no
discoloration. That Concorde gets driven a lot more than the Buick, but
it is the same with my other Concorde - a '98 that only gets used
occasionally on family trips, so it does not appear to be attributable
to amount that it is driven. It (headlight lens
replacement/restoration) is a constant topic of discussion on the LH car
forums. I realize my observations are over a limited sampling and that
you could be right, but I could see some manufacturers using better UV
coatings on the lenses than others for any number of reasons. My
suspicion is that that is indeed the case (I could be wrong).

 

I think the angle of the headlights may have a lot to do with it. A
century, IIRC, has a "ships prow" kind of front end while a Concorde
takes a lot more direct sunlight on the headlight lenses. They'll all
cloud up, eventually.

nate

 

That is BS! If lenses cloud over it is a preventive maintained problem.
It one applies a polymer polish like NuFinish to the lenses on occasion they
will never get cloudy

 

Please tell me where in the owner's manual it directs the owner to do this.

Oh, that's right, it doesn't.

Please show me where they show any advantage at all over glass lenses.

Oh, that's right, glass is far superior.

"Mike Hunter" talking out of his ass again... don't you ever get tired
of flapping your gums?

nate