Yeah, Chrysler is the parent company of Dodge and Jeep; it has no relation to GM.

 

Terry, did you tell the nice folks at G. Force Honda about this site? I'm sure they'd appreciate knowing about the good words you've put in for them here.

I'm also curious as to the practical problems (if any) involved with buying a new car in a different state. Did you have to pay for a temporary Ky. plate? Did you have to pay any additional sales tax or registration fee in Tenn.? Any other paperwork hassles?

 

As someone who works in quality, which means we constantly study the Japanese as the world leaders in the field, I can state that both assertions are correct, it is both bad manufacturing processes (which the workers have little control over) and bad quality parts. Deming lays the blame (for poor quality) squarely at the feet of management, but it is more than just that.

The reason those parts (like alternators etc.) are bad is in part because of bad manufacturing and engineering processes in the parts themselves (quality comes down to process in most cases, which is a management issue, which is why Deming's statement). The weakness in engineering is usually not in the engineering itself, but is usually a result of engineering being relatively disconnected from manufacturing and is often a result of lack of management dedication to quality (profits over quality is a bad but common priority here). Auto engineers in Japan are required to work on the assembly line as part of their training (and this is a simplistic example of very sophisticated things they do).

The sad part is that bad manufacturing processes are in fact more expensive overall than higher quality ones (but this is hard to see when you are in the trenches, it takes quite a bit of enlightenment to overcome false thinking so as to assign quality as priority one). In fact it takes a lot of effort, and a lot of time (years) to change a corporation, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

The Japanese have been honing their processes for decades (and I mean all processes: people, labor relations, supply-chain relations, engineering, detailed processes on the manufacturing floor, everything, and they are very scientific about it), and the American's have never caught up, although their quality has been increasing also. In fact overall automobile quality has been steadily increasing for about 30 years now, but the Americans generally trail behind the Japanese big 5 (Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Subaru, and Mazda (beware of Mazda's with FORD parts in them)).

More than just excellence in management of quality process, the Japanese also have government subsidized industry, non-existant anti-monopoly laws, and weaker unfair trade laws. They can run a division at a loss for years (allowing long range market development strategies), the mega-corporations can grow much larger than they are allowed to here, and they can have their own banks (illegal here). Toyota even has their own city (named just that). Management is in complete control, they have no labor unions to deal with. The entire economy is run like an oligarchy, so their industries have big financial advantages, and industries don't prey upon each other domestically (or smaller companies like Mazda would have disappeared years ago).

It is a "Japan against the world" mentality. They voluntarily enjoy a lower standard of living than we do to support their industry as it is considered a national asset (unlike here where big corporations are considered evil incarnate in popular opinion). Workers are "married" to the company, an 8 hour day is unheard of, 12-14 hours is typical for office workers, housewives see their husbands only on weekends typically. They also have a complicated system where it is nearly impossible for a foreign manufacturer to sell anything in their domestic market, so they have a captive market, a captive workforce, a captive economy, and a captive government.

Their ability to dump product into a foreign market below cost (because of their huge domestic financial advantages) has provoked tariffs and quotas here in the US. The reason they move plants here is partly because it gets around the quotas, and it is a genuinely friendly thing to do, all things considered.

It is kind of ironic that the very thing that originally made them a success, a near total control of the country by industry, which grew out of a near total national dedication to developing that industry (which came out of the post WWII devastation of their industrial infrastructure for you historians), is now stifling their economy.

The government supports of industry are propping up the bad along with the good and some large nearly insolvent corporations are now a drag on their economy because of massive debts that nobody dares declare bad because a huge domino effect would probably result. It would shake the world too, not just Japan, so they are trying to manage it down slowly to avoid a massive crash. To their credit they seem to be succeeding, but the pace is overly slow according to critics.

Well that is enough of a rant for now, I have vastly oversimplified a great many things, and have laid the blame for crappy American cars primarily at the feet of American overpaid and undereducated management (where it rightfully belongs, although the unions take some blame too for their obstructive behaviors). But in fairness I have also pointed out some advantages Japanese industry has that are absent here.

Just buy from the big 5 and you will be ok. :-)

 

Wow, what an amazingly informative post, Kurt! Thanks for that. I don't think any of us had thought to consider management, and I know I'm pretty ignorant of Japanese business culture as well.

 

Dave let me see if I can answer your questions and not leave one out.

(1) Ky. Temp. Plate? No I'm in their Loaner until mine gets here.

(2) Sales tax is paid to the state the vehicle is going to be registered in.
Additional fees? No

(3) No paper work hassles period:

Everything when HCH gets here will be done by Gary Force and paid to Tenn.

HTH

Terry

BTW; Just to mention this if the 06 HCH was going to Calif. which has different Emission standards than Tn. I can see that there could be a possible problem buying from one state with their emission standards and then trying to bring it back to a state with their emission standards. However that is not the case when we are speaking of Tn. and Ky. which have the same Emission standards.

 

That would be an issue with the previous HCH which came in ULEV and PZEV variants, but the new HCH is pure PZEV so it meets all states' emissions requirements.

 

I don't think that's a real issue because both variants of the HCH were offered in CA. However, there is something in CA law that forbids or limits the import of a new car from another state. I don't know the details but I think they make it very difficult to buy out of state.