buy at home

[Marin]

How many workers work in the Boeing plant? Are they almost near dead?

Well, the ones in South Carolina aren't, that's for sure.

If you travel and work in countries around the world it's hard not to see that the work ethic in the US (in general, there are certainly plenty of exceptions) is sinking fairly rapidly.

This is certainly the case in the auto industry. BMW set up a fantastic plant in South Carolina to build the X3 and the X5 but...... it's highly automated and the cost of the labor force is far less than the cost of a similar labor force in Germany. So between not needing a large workforce and the workforce they do need being comparatively cheap, it was a very smart move for them and the South Carolina plant consistently outperforms the company's other X3/X5 plant in Germany. This is not my theory, by the way. It's what the CEO of BMW America told me.

He also had nice things to say about the attitude of his South Carolina workforce which he said is much different than what he has observed and encountered in other parts of the country. BMW's experience in South Carolina was a factor in Boeing's decision to expand there. As was Michelin's but we did not visit their facilities or talk to their managers.

America has excelled in the service industries, the "do you want fries with that" jobs. This is something that I have found is not done nearly as well in other countries, particularly in Asia, but I don't know why.

 

[beachbum29]

I try but most stuff in Canada costs way too much money. Some years ago I noted a brand name Irish sport coat in Dublin was about 50% more than the same coat in the US. Price out an Acura MDX made in Canada vs the same unit shipped into the US. Or, as I saw last week, in Canada gas at the pump going for $1.15 per litre vs $2.85 per gallon at the station near my home in Utah. The answer of course is in country taxes.

Some years ago I was so proud of my new US made Suburban, until I crawled under it and saw a sticker on the bumper that said Assembled in Mexico.

Buying made in the US or Canada is as noted by others, a guessing game as to country of origin.

An article caught my eyes some years ago where BMWs made at a spiffy new US factory had fewer defects than the same model assembled in Germany. Ditto the Mercedes M. And if one believes Consumer Retorts, buying any German car is a path to maintenance yipes. I noted the same when I switched from German to Japanese builds.

Marin, your new Ford PU - is it a diesel?

I've had only Mercedes for the past 15 years & a couple are still in the family with the oldest being 21 yrs old & still a daily driver.

 

[Andy G]

=beachbum29;1I've had only Mercedes for the past 15 years & a couple are still in the family with the oldest being 21 yrs old & still a daily driver."

Ditto. 'Rommel' is 17 years old, I just wish my sister would stop asking if it is a diesel though(it's not)

 

[expat]

Marin re post #23 at one time the BIG three prefered to make their top of the line luxury models in Canada because of a higher build quality, not to sure if that still stands.My 2009 GMC is Mexican assembled and seems just fine, although the parts come from the same assy line the USA and Canadian assembled trucks use, maybe its where the automated robots are built that matters now, who knows.

 

[beachbum29]

=beachbum29;1I've had only Mercedes for the past 15 years & a couple are still in the family with the oldest being 21 yrs old & still a daily driver."

Ditto. 'Rommel' is 17 years old, I just wish my sister would stop asking if it is a diesel though(it's not)

We call our e320, "goldy locks"...

 

[123]

Hmmm. Here in Brazil a Chevrolet is a Suzuki or an Opel, a fiat is something nobody know of in Europe. I not even try to buy European because import is crazy taxed.

 

[Northern Spy]

Hmmmm... I wonder then if the truck will come with a cool Mounty hat?

At one time, ten or so years ago, the RCMP contracted their marketing to Disney for five years to regain control of their image. Might have gotten a hat then.

 

[expat]

I am afraid the boys in red serge have shoot their own image badly enough that a mouse might not be of help them.

 

[FF]

and is now exactly 30 years old

You might have been a year early!

Ford claims the next F 150 will be aluminum , should last lots more than just 30 years

 

[Marin]

My 1973 Land Rover and our Range Rover have aluminum body panels. But this got started because steel was very hard to come by in England after the war and the car companies were allocated steel based on the volume of their exports.

So Rover conceived the Land Rover to be an export farm vehicle so they could raise their steel allotment for their car lines. They built the Land Rover body out of aluminum so as not to bite into their steel allotment.

Aluminum proved to have other advantages so they stayed with it when they designed the Range Rover which came out in 1969.

The downside is that aluminum is very soft compared to steel and an aluminum-bodied vehicle gets dents if you look at it too hard. I would not want a pickup made of it, or at least not the bed. You can use thick aluminum but then you sort of defeat the purpose of using aluminum in the first place.

 

[expat]

Land rovers were built of aluminum because they got it cheap from the British Goverment from war surplus, Range Rovers were built from Aluminum because that is what they used to build a cheap mockup body to cover the running gear and driver on the prototypes and they even kept the same boxy utilitarian shape knocked up as a temp body.