A lot of the cultural issues come down to one thing: the bulk ownership of Japanese automotive companies are by banks, which are interested in long term return on capital investment. US automotive companies are slaves to the stock market, which in the 90's said that you want 0 capital, and only by stamping your 'CocaCola' brand onto a product someone else actually designs and manufactures. How do you ever get investment into a product that won't have more than 5% ROS, like any dot-com. How quickly times change.

A wonderful thing happened at my company recently: a relatively young Bill Ford is running the ship, of a company whose stock is still controlled by a single family. He is putting people in high places that are NOT about to retire, with the intent that there will not be any changes at the top for a long time - longer than a product cycle! Let's see if it works.

Another disconnect is the 'Webster' definition of quality versus the public's use of the word quality - which really combines both quality and reliability and craftsmanship. Thanks to warranty cost, it is easy to push for a 'quality' improvement. It is very hard to put a $ value on 'reliability' when the company will never get a direct cost return - just a few lost customers when the product fails at 75K miles.....

I hope to be at the July NHIS race (18th, right?) Hope to see you there.

------------------
Dave Youngren
NER ITA RX7 #61