Reputation abroad of American-made products

Paraphrasing from article in the Baltimore Sun: =A0=A0=A0=A0Keith Reinhard, a former international marketing executive, gathered a sampling of anti-American sentiments in his travels around the world. =A0=A0=A0=A0He spoke of shifting attitudes toward American goods in recent years. He traveled to South Africa as a marketing exec eight years ago, and successfully billed Neutrogena as "America's #1 Face Cream." When he visited South Africa earlier this year, he saw a billboard advertising DaimlerChrysler Smart Cars:

=A0=A0=A0=A0"German engineering. Swiss innovation. American nothing."

=A0=A0=A0=A0"American origin used to be a selling point," Reinhard said.

Reply to
James Goforth
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Reply to
Steve Mackie

A shame but I can think of quite a few reasons why.... nothing startling, we all know of the problem children, but they are so entrenched that nothing can be done about them.

The instant Lawyer Lottery called "liability" Once you get big enough and have a little money, people start looking to take it from you through the legal system. It's easier to legally steal money than it is to work for it.

Government social engineering... on the medium plane of performance where most of us are, a lot of non-performers have been protected due to factors totally unrelated to job function. Be the right protected group or right sexual preference and you have much more job security than the poor bozo who works his ass off on the bleeding edge trying to develop a product or service.

Government has been trying to get rid of manufacturing jobs for years in an attempt to emulate the Japanese movement from manufacturing to intellectual product development and production. However the Japanese industries are supported by their government, whereas due to our "anti trust" frenzy, our legal / government structure ( DOJ anti trust fanatics) attempt to destroy any company that gets too big or too successful.

The politically correct thing is to dislike Microsoft, but at least their products work together (mostly) instead of all the vendor finger pointing in the past when separate computer systems sitting right next to each other, were totally incompatible.

So, so those three reasons, government, social, and economic are some reasons why American eingineering and products are not longer world leaders. Add the american educational system k - 12 to the list.

I remember, many years ago, there used to be "science" and "engineering" clubs and contests for young people....can't remember the name of the awards that were given out, but a lot of kids growing up, dreamt of becoming a famous engineer, builder, even a famous scientist recognized for their contributions to their field of endeavor. Now a days people laugh at these "crazy ideas" and go back to their ipod and playstation. The american educational system is more concerned with getting us all to "be nice to each other", rather than fostering development, ingenuity and innovation.

An old adage, the first generation makes the wealth, the second generation conserves the wealth, the third generation squanders the wealth. I wonder where current day america fits in ???

my .02 cents

Peter

Reply to
Peter

It seems to me that everything domestic made after model year Y2K is crap. Refer to my previous Impala sob story posts for more.

To their credit, I have the following high-mileage domestics STILL RUNNING FINE in my driveway:

  • 1988 Ford LTD Crown Victoria
  • 1990 Chevrolet Beretta GT
  • 1998 Ford Ranger (2.5L 4-cylinder engine)
  • 1974 Chevy Van 30
  • 1999 Pontiac Grand Prix

And what do I have that's broken down, at only 108,000 miles?

  • 2000 Chevrolet Impala

...I see a lot of newer Chevrolet vehicles for sale on the roadside lately, for some reason, alongside all the old Toyotas, Hondas, and land yachts of various stripes with insane engine displacements.

By the way, I've *NEVER* owned or driven a non-domestic vehicle. What's the pros and cons of driving a Japanese car versus an American one? I've heard enough bad stuff about European cars that I don't care about them at all, and they're grossly overpriced anyway.

~Jody

Reply to
Jody Lee Bruchon

products work

All horseshit.

Product liability is not a factor in the automotive industry. It's a factor in the medical equipment, pharmaceutical and general aviation businesses, and GA brought the problem on itself mostly.

Affirmative action is an annoyance and no more to large companies, all of which have boilerplate "divisions" to send minority and protected deadwood to. It's an issue to small companies but other countries have similar or bigger issues with ethnic "diversity".

Antitrust has been totally castrated by the last three administrations so that isn't it either.

Microsoft is "politically correct to dislike" but also practically so since Microsoft products work poorly as compared to all surviving alternatives.

America has serious issues but you haven't touched on them yet. Keep looking. You will find them in the areas of finance, moreso than regulation or tax (though our tax structure is anti-innovation and rewards the lazy wealthy.)

Reply to
RapidRonnie

German cars are "overpriced" and so forth but they DO drive better than other cars, and Japanese cars are more reliable (but rust badly.) I look forward to Chrysler simply being a badge for Mercedes Benz technology.

Reply to
RapidRonnie

Not for a long while.

Reply to
who

You're claim that Japanese cars are more reliable then domestic is your opinion. I do not share it, and neither do many others.

Reply to
80 Knight

M$ products work to well with other programs, such as viruses!

Reply to
Some O

There was lots of Junk before Y2K, in fact NA vehicles in the 70s reached a low point, just as imports were improving.

Too bad you missed out. I got my first Japanese car in '70 a Datsun. It was great for urban travel. Nice to drive, peppy and very good fuel mileage. The Japanese took over from the Europeans and those early crap cars from the UK. UK cars suffered until they had high speed motorways, where they could see what happened to them there- engines that blew up under our high speed driving. They learned, but sadly now UK cars are mostly built in Europe.

European suffered with the exchange rates going against them. That's why many Japanese and European vehicles are now built in the USA, Canada and Mexico.

Reply to
who

It goes both ways, Mercedes uses things like Chrysler's excellent engines. Now if only Mercedes would use Chryslers cruise control controls!

Reply to
Some O

products work

uhh...we are talking about engineering advances in general not just specific to the automobile industry as innovative engineering advances can be used across several industries.

you are specifically referring to "ethnic" diversity. How about age, sex, sexual preference etc. And the boilerplate divisions which you refer to happen to be a factor in "discrimination" cases.

As you said, it's an issue to small companies.... and small companies are a major driving force in this economy.

Again...wishful thinking. Anti-trust is alive and well...AND the European Union has well demonstrated the ability to control american based corporations by their anti trust laws.

Like Wordperfect, netscape navigator, Adobe in all it's forms. Novell Netware. Theres a long history of hardware and software companies that reached their zeniths and went belly up OR have declined dramatically from what they once were. Microsoft is alive and doing well..

My personal opinion after quite a few years of trying to get brand X to even acknowledge brand Y is that Microsoft has achieved a pretty high level of interoperability and compatibility among not only it's product line but also of many other vendors.

Do you still want to go back to locating and loading individual device drivers for individual pieces of equipment from dozens of manufacturers. If you have another company that have achieved anything close to what Microsoft has done for the consumer and business computing market ...see

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please let me know...I'd be very interested in studying their track record.

Yup.... America has serious issues and I've only mentioned a few as this is an automobile newsgroup and not a political science or economic forum.

Reply to
Peter

Nine times out of ten, the busted company was in fact in gross violation.

Good for them. Someone should, and we won't.

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Where I used to work I accessed a Unix server through a Macintosh for technical things and business was done on a VAX/VMS system. We had few technical problems. It worked very well. We were putting Linux on PC hardware for dedicated Unix system access and that worked even better than the Macs. Then the company merged with another company whose mook bastard IT director was a Microslut and all that went out. Now in an all-Microsoft environment half the systems don't talk to each other. It's a nightmare over there and in fact they have made me offers to come back. Each time I tell them that when the IT guy is gone come talk to me.

If you bought devices with good drivers you never had a problem in the old days. You had the docs and if worse came to worse you wrote your own. You had, if you were a company of any serious size, people on staff that could. The skill set has atrophied.

Sorry, M$ is a mediocre-at-best product that survives because of the stupidity and shortsightedness of American business. When I can load Solaris, Linux or FreeBSD on a random PC without any real manual configuration whatever and it works better than M$ Windows XP from the computer vendor's own customized load...almost always the case....something is hugely wrong. In fact, where I work now, I have my desk PC set up to dual boot xp or Solaris, and I can use all our supposedly IE-dependent internal web apps flawlessly! IT doesn't even know.

Reply to
RapidRonnie

Or, in a nutshell, Borg mindset. Prior generations are just as guilty. Their children. They made em, trained em, got their toys. Question is, which, if any, generation is gonna do something about it? Nevermind, I'll just turn on the TV as usual. SOS, different day.

Reply to
Jonny

I tend to agree, RR

Reply to
hls

We have a 2000 Impala LS that has 155,000 miles on it and is a great car to drive. Had to do some repairs, but nothing out of line for a 6 year-old car with these miles. Also have a 1997 Dodge Dakota 4X2 3.9 that has 195,000 miles on it. No unusual repairs here, either.

Ken

Reply to
NapalmHeart

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