[SLL] Interesting? Off topic Car Stuff

Tue May 29 12:51:30 PDT 2007

Shucks, I should learn not to procrastinate on responding here.

First, Russ beat me to press with the Washington Post article link which
states that the showcase Toyota plant in Kentucky is NOT unionized, though
the natives are apparently getting significantly restless.  Strangely, it
seems that a big reported gripe is how they treat people who were injured on
the job, though I thought that it was telling that "fired them" was not
mentioned at all.

As to Toyota not matching the level of compensation that certainly seems to
be dragging Detroit down, the Toyota rep, who, if he is actually Japanese,
was well camouflaged with an Anglo name, said that they preferred to be able
to maintain a stable workforce rather than have a "feast or famine"
approach, as he accused Detroit of doing.  Well, that's commensurate with
the now somewhat tarnished, but probably still underlying, "employment for
life" Japanese approach.  However, since Toyota hasn't had any famine
recently (they are building another plant in Mississippi right now), the
jury is still out on whether they will actually adhere to that philosophy
when and if lean years should occur.  Since they are way ahead with cars
designed for the gasoline-deprived Millennium and certainly have achieved
"critical mass", it may be a long time before that answer will be known in
practice.

---------------------------------

Then, Bill took the word out of my mouth -- "hubris".   It's pretty endemic
in this country, and may be one of the most fertile of the seeds of our
destruction.  The last time I went back to Boeing, for instance, both the
company cheerleaders at "orientation day" and the new hires (over a hundred
were being processed in one swell foop) traded arrogant bad-mouthing of
Airbus.  It was selling its junk only because of heavy subsidies by the
government, eh?   Of course, this was before Boeing got its come-uppance
when Airbus achieved more sales per year than Boeing.

Having come off of 10 years doing safety certification at the FAA, where one
of the fascinating aspects was the opportunity to see across proprietary
barriers throughout the industry, I knew that Airbus built a fundamentally
good and getting better product (well, they had to buy their way into new
markets, but that is common, cf. Hyundai, Kia).  In fact, I had read a
scathing letter from the CEO of American Airlines, accusing Boeing of being
arrogant and inefficient, and having a spare parts operation that was far
inferior to Airbus's.  I tried to explain to the troops that the A320 was
the first fly-by-wire commercial transport, showing Airbus's technological
acumen, and suggested that no airline would trade a few million on the
purchase price for a maintenance and passenger approval headache with a 20
year life expectancy.  I was not very popular.

Boeing should have seen the success of the Airbus attack coming, because
they themselves had similarly pulled the rug out from under Douglas -- the
previous world leader in the commercial transport aircraft -- by playing the
707 card while Donald Douglas was smugly telling the airlines, "Buy another
round of DC-7s and then we'll talk about a jet."  Oops!  You snooze, you...

Actually, Donald Senior's hubris may have been encouraged by the fact that
Boeing's postwar answer to the DC-6/7, The Stratocruiser (derived from the
B-50), had tanked disastrously, seriously damaging Boeing's credibility in
the airline market.  Even then, the DC-8 might actually have been a somewhat
better airplane, but it was basically a "me too" and was too late to market
for Douglas to recover (also, Boeing got a huge boost by selling the KC-135
version of the 707).

I have this vision of Donald Senior hearing this unfamiliar whistling noise
overhead and looking up to see the 707 climbing to 35,000 feet at Mach 0.7+
and disappearing over the horizon -- ultimately taking his company with it
(putting Donald Junior in charge didn't help at all either -- more hubris).

Incidentally, the Lockheed L-1011 may have been a marginally better airplane
than the DC-10, but again, it was too late and didn't sell well enough in
the presence of "DC-10 momentum" to justify the investment.

Boeing was just among those doomed to repeat history -- but on the short end
of the stick vis-a-vis Airbus (like, even though we had done research on
fly-by-wire in the lab, it wasn't implemented until the 777 and still isn't
on the latest 737s (the 777 is another "catch-up airplane" that probably
succeeded because Boeing had twisted the FAA's arm hard enough to get
approval for a two engine aircraft to fly more than one hour's flight time
from the nearest airport -- the significant innovation -- while Airbus was
competing with a four engine model).  I think that the Boeing Executive
Council has gotten the message now, and the company has responded well
(though it's sadly not the same place that it used to be -- even the
buildings where I most recently worked are now "pasture land" in Renton).

Maybe the 787's success will restore them to the role of cocky SOBs again
and history will repeat and repeat and...  As the great sage of the 20th
Century, Pogo Possum, once said, "We has met the enemy, and he is us."

Then there's the crap I keep hearing about how the US, and Seattle in
particular, is such a Nirvana of high-tech.  I keep trying to tell people
that just because a bunch of techies live here, it's the geography -- plus
some accidents of nature, like Bill Boeing, Bill G. and Jeff Bezos -- that
have put the place on the map.  The city "per se" doesn't have anything to
do with generating or supporting that environment -- note the US being 16th
in the world as broadband penetration is evaluated today -- and what we have
is both expensive and lame.

By the way, some in Seattle's city government are working diligently right
now on a proposal for the city to participate in a total build-out of FTTH
at 25 Mbps SYMMETRICAL, probably in partnership with some company.  The
proposal is very pregnant and should surface in a month or two.  Since the
Mayor probably prefers to spend twice to three times as much just to hide a
few blocks of highway 99 below ground, be prepared to scream very loudly.

Well, same as the above with Detroit.  In our inventory is a new Accord V6
with 6-on-the-floor, a '93 Toyota MR2, highly tuned (and sick in the head
gasket at the moment, probably due to running a bulletproof engine at 15+
psi boost), a '90 Mazda 626 and a '91 Chevy.  The Mazda chugs right along at
123K miles while its contemporary Chev, with 20% less miles on it, is a
wreck and has taken a lot more maintenance (I acquired it from my mother
when my brothers 86'd her driving when she was approaching 80 years on
Earth).  And, Mazda doesn't even have the best reliability rep of the Jap
manufacturers.  The Accord was the top pick by BOTH Consumers Report and Car
and Driver, and with the highly disparate criteria for evaluation that these
rags have, that's a small miracle.  And the MR2 -- well, Detroit has NEVER
made a car like that, performance or sex-appeal-wise in a tidy, all-out,
mini-Ferrari package.  No, not the Fiero, Bill :-) Not even the brute force
'vettes or 'stangs, IMHO.  At the moment, the Solstice GXP may be the
closest.

Even though any moron could see that fuel was going to be at least a
periodic crisis sooner rather than later, Detroit continued to concentrate
on what are basically trucks with fancy interiors sold at egregious
mark-ups, and didn't even bother to develop the answer to the fuel (and now
pollution) creeping crisis by having the answer vehicles hiding in the
wings.  Hubris indeed.  Instead, they so tarnished their reputation for
reliability and appropriateness that it carries on in incipient mythology
even when the cars have apparently gotten better, if only by copying, and
even adapting, the successful Asian models (the Ford Fusion is really a
Mazda 6 -- me too, me too.  Wrong!).

So what's the point of all this aircraft and auto analogy?  My suggestion
for your consideration is that, once hubris has put a person or organization
in an "awkward situation", coming up with "me too" products that may be just
as good as the competition is not likely to extricate one from the
quicksand.  It requires the SUCCESSFUL introduction of some radically new
concept (jet engines, extended over-water operations, plastic primary
structures, etc.).  BUT, success also requires that the competition has
fallen into smug disregard of the realities of the world and is asleep at
the switch, or has screwed up badly (as the A380 delays and costs have kept
Airbus from executing a rapid response to the 787 challenge).  It's not at
all apparent that the Japs are about to fall into either of those traps with
their automobile industry.

Nevertheless, I would take some issue with the suggestion that we are
creating incompetent managers.  My experience has been that there are many
very sharp managers around -- sharp enough to identify the side of their
bread with the butter on it.  They may make decisions that appear to be
short-sighted and not in the best interests of the citizens or the country;
however that may be an indication of their astuteness in perceiving the
approaches that are necessary to advance their careers, and even remain
employed, as driven by forces outside their control.

What forces?  I would suggest a two-word diagnosis: "shareholder value" --
and that means this quarter -- not in five years, the way it did at one
time -- laissez-faire capitalism now run amok.  Some dorks in NYC who are
making six or seven figures take a drag on their joints and pontificate
about the profit per share expected of a corporation in a couple of months.
They can trash a company's paper value  with a "so, what have you done for
me lately" attitude -- not just if it actually loses money, but if it misses
the arbitrary profit target by 10 cents a share.  Who, or whose agents, are
responsible for this revoltin' situation?  Well, what do you expect of YOUR
mutual fund, if not the best performance of the litter?  Go to the chorus
and follow the bouncing ball -- "Ohhh, we has met the enemy and he is us, he
is us..."

How do we rectify this situation?  It may take a real fall with pride
goething, such as the unfortunate venture in Iraq (in which hubris led Shrub
to ignore and repeat the lessons and mistakes of Nam and Palestine) taking
its toll on our economy and reputation, to ultimately bring us down a few
notches.  If so, will we get with the program and rebound as Boeing is
apparently doing for at least the second time, or will our auto industry --
and even our government -- fall short and disappear, as Douglas Aircraft
did?  Will we get over the smug and sanctimonious conviction that we can do
no wrong and we are the greatest country ever on Earth, just because we say
so and were at one time, and without any further effort on our parts (even
though we are more and more owned by other countries -- Earth to citizens,
come in...?  Tune in next decade...

Thank you for indulging me (you are aren't you?) in these observations.  If
you have gotten this far, thanks for "listening"; if you have not, oh well,
at least I purged my buffer temporarily.

Given the PCQ (Potential Crustiness Quotient) that often pervades
fundamentally geek-subject lists :-), I would hesitate to wander so far OT
in fear of the type of flames I have experienced on other lists, even while
wandering not nearly so far from the list's focus.  It pleases me that we
are able to function more as a community of folks with some similar
interests and get to know more about each other than simply compare our
expertise with the Bash shell, or whatever turns you on.

Now, I WILL click Send.

Ken Meyer

-----Original Message-----

From: linux-list-bounces at ssc.com [mailto:linux-list-bounces at ssc.com]
On Behalf Of Tom Redfern
Sent: Sunday, May 27, 2007 8:43 AM
To: Linux List

Subject: Re: [SLL] Interesting? Offtopic Car Stuff

On Sat, May 26, 2007 at 12:07:16PM -0700, Garl Grigsby wrote:
>
> >>A lot of this stuff requires levels of quality that are not compatible
with
> >>mass produced passenger cars.  Quite a few years ago, some Road & Track
> >>magazine editor pointed out that anybody can design a water pump for a
> >>Rolls Royce.  It takes a genius to design one for Chevrolet.
> >
> >And G.M. doesn't have many genii considering the low quality of their
> >products.
> >
> Little of the quality problems have to do with a lack of skill the
> engineering department(s). Most of it is caused by poor cost cutting
> decisions driven by the fact that GM is being eaten from the inside by
> the unions.

GM is dying due to a long history of poor choices in design and
productions, and bad management decisions.  Companies like Toyota killed
it, and I would point out that Toyota uses union labor right here in the
old USA and is doing just fine.  It's always easy to blame the bottom,
the workers, because you don't know how to manage them.

This country is  stuck in a mode of producing very incompetent management.
These companies are hiring administrators  who have no clue what it take
to actually compete in a real market, and these people need  fall guys.
"Unions", representing to them the mass of labor, are the most readily
available target.

It is always a  poor craftsman who blames his tools, and it is a poor
manager that blames his help.

--
------------------------------------------------------------
* Tom Redfern: 837 NE 58th St, Seattle WA 98105            *
*     Phone:   (206) 985-2173                              *
*     Hobby:   <www.seatttlevirtuallibrary.org>            *
------------------------------------------------------------

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue
of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks
and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people
of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent
their fathers conquered.
                         -- Unknown.  Falsely attributed to  Jefferson.