chateau.murray RemoveThis @btinternet.com wrote:
> On 28 Feb, 17:01, Rick Cortese wrote:
<snip>
> In Europe, few people get the American car "thing". They're perceived
> as being large, ill-handling and badly built. Cadillac is trying over
> here, but has a mountain to climb. Chrysler has done little better,
> although the PT cruiser attracted some decent sales. And Jeep, of
> course, has done well.
>
> This is partly because Jeep has an amazing brand image. In addition, a
> lot of (maybe all?) the vehicles are built in Austria, at the Steyr-
> Daimler-Puch factory, where quality control is excellent. Anecdotal
> evidence says the US-built ones are nowhere near as well made. I'd be
> interested to hear opinions from you....
Hearsay vs. documented fact OK? My brother worked at the Ford assembly
plant in Milpitas for 15 years before it was shut down, family friend
was an administrator there.
To a casual observer it would have seemed that a class war was taking
place on the factory floor. They actually had one worker who confessed
on 60 Minutes, a TV news/magazine program in the USA, to dropping car
bodies from a lift he operated from 3 stories up when he got bored. My
brother said he had confessed to other employees that he did it because
he liked to see people run. Even with the TV program and numerous
complaints from fellow workers the union went to the mat for him and he
kept his job. This was more or less regarded by the rest of the workers
as "Management has given the OK to kill us for fun."
Theft was rampant with the low moral. They eventually had to have
security guards inspect lunch pails for stolen stereos and carburetors.
When this was going on a new technique was developed: Line workers would
get the biggest thermos they could buy and gut it just for stealing
parts. Management never caught on from what I understand. One guy had a
backpack type harness and a loose jacket he would wear. He would hang a
stereo in the small of his back while wearing the bulky coat and walk
right past the security guard.
Coordination on the line was terrible. They used to make the Mustangs
with the hood latches/pins that came up through the hood. It wasn't at
all uncommon for the pins to be fitted and a hood w/o the receiving
holes to be put on the same car. The SOP was to slam the hood as hard as
it took to latch the hood, which bent the hood but enabled them to drive
it off. This was seen as preferable to stopping the line. From there the
car would go to chassis where my brother was responsible for fixing the
days mistakes. It was more then a full time job for him. Stupid stuff
like defective gas guage sending sending units would be installed
because of a lack of testing. It was then his job to remove the tanks
and replace the sending units. This is just an example, he has literally
hundreds of examples like this of replacing faulty componets after they
were installed rather then Q.C. them before they went into the car. If
the car ran well enough to make it off the assembly line with no
observable faults, it was considered a dealership problem. Once at the
dealership, if the car made it off the lot it was considered the buyer's
problem.
My family being farmers all drove trucks, mostly Fords. Since the truck
line was at the same plant my brother would herd the purchase through. I
can't remember all the details but it was something like a local
dealership would order the truck which would give him a way to pull the
paperwork out of the system. He would then hold the paperwork to make
sure none of the assembly took place on a Monday or a Friday. Mondays
the work force kind of straggled in suffering from massive hangovers and
Friday was payday<?>. There were 4 liquor stores in the immediate area
around the plant that would cash paychecks with purchase so more then a
few pints of Sloe Gin influenced the quality of anything made on a Friday.
When Ford started closing plants Milpitas was in contention with a plant
in Michigan. The final check that fixed the decision with all other
things equal was the rampant employee theft.
>> Stay informed about: US bull 
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