From: Spike Jones (spike66@attglobal.net)
Date: Wed Dec 26 2001 - 17:46:16 MST
Dehede011@aol.com wrote:
> BTW, as one fellow had the impression that Japanese cars were
> superior to ours, My personal impression is that their superiority
> exists mostly in the minds of their marketing departments and a few
> Americans that they have managed to impress. Ron h
Consider the case of the Geo Metro/Toyota Corolla. As you may know if
you read Consumer Reports, they rate cars using customer feedback. The
Chevrolet Geo rated about one standard deviation below average whereas
the Corolla rated one sigma above. The punchline is that it is exactly
the
same car. Both were manufactured at the Fremont Taxifornia, right up
the
street from where we had Extro5. Being loss leaders, neither car was
significantly modified by either Toyota or GMC.
The investigation caused a huge uproar, with Chevrolet accusing the
Fremont plant of sending them the Monday and Friday cars, with the
nice Tuesday thru Thursday cars going to Toyota. A huge investigation
ensued, which exonerated the Fremont plant. The cars were pretty
much random, but the customers were claiming their Toyotas were
better, according to Consumer Reports.
Chevrolet then investigated their dealers. Perhaps the dealers were
treating the buyers of loss-leaders with no respect, causing them to
perhaps dislike their cars and take less care of them. That theory
was not proven.
It was never adequately explained why a Japanese car scored 2 sigma
higher than an American car, even tho the machines were mechanically
indistinguishable. I dont know how that incident ever finished out, but
I now view with suspicion those reports that Japanese manufacturing
quality is inherently better than that of the US or Europe.
Those of you who notice motorcycles, next nice spring day count
the number of Harleys you see on the road. All this expensive iron
from a company that was nearly buried in much cheaper Japanese
imports back in the mid 80s. spike
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