Quote:
Originally Posted by ken0042
Agreed. Looking at GM, do we really need a Cavalier and a Sunfire? While I'm sure a number of costs are shared, it still has to be more expensive to roll out a different body for each mechanically similar model.
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A big part of this reason is the unions. x number of shift and x number of workers at x $ an hour have to produce x number of the particular cars in their wage scale, at a certain plant. All those cars can't be branded Chevrolet, or Pontaic.
The big 3 all have great ideas...but becoming so bloated, somewhat due to mismanagement, and also due to the union demands taking up a lot more resources then other manufacturers, those ideas can't be acted on either quick enough to hit the market in time. Also, the restrictions of suppliers to be able to make enough of each of parts or enough availablity of parts on short order. This is needed to be able to prodcue enough units in order to to justify rejigging a plant or two, and add on top of that all the union issues surrounding those changes, to be able to move quick enough to implement the ideas.
As for quality, GM's Oshawa plant has won numerous times the top quality plant of the year, and to be honest, the last 2 or 3 years, the reputation from the 90's is still somewhat unfairly hung around the neck of GM.
Gm and big 3 Trucks are the top of the line quality wise, and yes, no matter the economy trucks will sell. Toyota tried to enter the full size market and have had nothing but major recall problems.
I've pretty much owned GM vehicles my whole life, and excellent reliability, and when things did go wrong, there are both enough dealers and cheap enough parts, to fix. In contrast, the 5 year old Acura MDX we had for 2 years and recently sold, I sunk $8000 into. Those costs are easliy 30-40% higher then a comparble GM bill, mainly because there are no "rebuilt" parts such as alternators, everything is OEM. This, opposed to something like that happening in the past on a GM car, I could easily get something rebuilt.