Posts Tagged Chrysler
Last you a lifetime!
Posted by redlinedoc in I never saw THAT coming on July 14, 2009
I found myself unaccountably angry at statements from the auto manufacturers the other day. The mouth of Sauron from Chrysler tells us that to save money and jobs (and get a handout from Uncle Sam), that they’re dropping several lines, among them the PT Cruiser. Not much new. One of the reasons they’re dropping the cruiser is that they put a bad engine in the thing; but it sold. So what!?
So what? So I’m one of the poor schleps that bought a PT Cruiser but had some misgivings about the power train. I put a lot of miles on a car, somewhere around 36000. I bought their extended warranty because it came with ‘lifetime’ oil changes. I figured at 30-40$ a clip and I change oil monthly. Dutifully I took the car in for changes. Once day I heard a horrible racket from the engine. It was the power steering pump, I later found out. My mechanic looked at the car and realized (he called me under the car) to see the broken front motor mount, the torn highpressure power steering link and the torn oil line. Hmmmm.
Cars are for me rather like black boxes. These even -=I=- with my untrammeled vision could easily see. The oil had been changed a mere 3 days before! The dealer never did get back to me. I stopped using the oil change service.
The car will last until it dies. I keep it oiled and well fed but I know that time is not on my side. Now that its been orphaned things will only get worse. The fat cats at Chrysler will dine well and sleep without ethics. What saddens me most is that the country I love, the country I fought for, the country I raised my children in is eating itself, or rather being eaten alive by the corporations who made it.
There was a time when things were built to last. There was always a wink and a smile when some things had built in obsolesence. Where are the buggy whip manufacturers, the boom box makers, the 8 track fabricators .. but things were built with an eye toward building customers.
My next door neighbor when I was a kid used to tell stories of his dad who ran a general store in Coventry CT. One of the customers (in the late 1800′s) came in complaining about the axe he had. ‘Best axe I ever bought’ said he ‘ six new heads, seven new handles. Last me a lifetime’.
Moments of madness
Posted by redlinedoc in Commentary of the times on July 13, 2009
I was driving home this evening listening to the discussion about why the financial institutions are putting out the same hybrid products that brought us this wonderful recession, hearing the pundits explain that it brings capital into the markets and although its a bit (a bit?) risky, these instruments help to drive the market. Ok. I’m no financial whiz but didn’t we just loan billions and trillions of dollars to these self serving financial institutions to NOT have them bet the store? Wasn’t part of the project to make them more fiscally responsible? Somehow we the poor schmoes who pay taxes are subsidizing a very wealthy gambling habit. We’re bound to lose. We may be the house but in this case we hold none of the trump cards.
Trump cards? Isn’t this banking? Isn’t this where the banker sits across the table and says “Well Joe, opening a restaurant is a risky business and we’ll need some collateral” — or so it was in the past. Now we have bankers betting (your house) on 10:1 or 100:1 odds knowing that the worst will be that the government will for a time be paying into their bank. Where are their ethics.
Ahh ethics. It seems that capitalism trumps ethics. Do undo others before they do unto you. The Ivory Tower at Havard spoke several weeks ago about plans to include teaching ethics to the business school. Its the piper teaching the cobra. Once the cobra leaves the nest, well then its just a bunch of snakes isn’t it?
It wasn’t until the sentencing the other week that I got it. Bernie Madoff…. made off with our monies. Too sweet. such onomatopoeia. No one saw the deal too good to be true, 30:1 winnings? Get real folks. Its all about the casino, and we the taxpayer have been at the largest gaming table ever, Bernie and his friends (and there are more no doubt) are pikers compared to the banks and so called financial houses that take our monies and throw it on the international craps table. Oh lost a few billion in that scheme. Not to worry Uncle will back you. . . .and he has.
Heads on pikes
Posted by redlinedoc in Commentary of the times on June 22, 2009
It seems its a day of good news bad news. The good news seems to be that the boys at Goldman Sachs are snuffling at the trough and ready to suck up those great well deserved bonuses for having put us in the worst recession since the 30′s perhaps worse than that. I fear that we missed an opportunity for heads on pikes. I’m not ordinarily a gory sort of fellow; however, if a few of those egregious folk had their heads up along the boulevard perhaps fewer of these guys would be snorting at the trough so soon. Its a sign that regularion has lost and that we as a nation have or will loose big time now that the game is a foot and the money is liberally flying around again.
It makes me wonder in some ways what the big call is for CEO’s. I hear one company after another looking for the most expensive CEO guy they can find. I have no problem paying for success. Its the paying for the failures. United Airlines, General Motors, Chrysler, Hewlett Packard — each of those men and women walked away handsomely endowed with bonus and super bonus and stock options. As each of these companies tanked and drew down the economy we threw MORE money at CEO’s. I’ve yet to see cat skeleton’s around full cat food bowls. I believe if we all went to reasonable executive pay and said NO MORE! that indeed CEO’s would be paid proprionately and reasonably. Perhaps we should make the CEO take some of the risk (not with fako securities from the board but with his own monies. Perhaps, as in days of yore, CEO’s should bear a percentage of risk and win-lose with the company.
Danny DeVito, ever a mirror for the times, did it well with ‘Other People’s Money’.
The Harvard business school recently announced that they might teach business ethics to their grads. What a concept! Such things as stealing from old ladies is wrong, wiping out the life savings of people and towns is poor for future business, and the future. My son said that if once in a while if the inchoate mob, those who lost nearly everything, had an opportunity to be in a closed area with the hedgies and mutualaholics who ground their savings from real to immaginary numbers that much of this would be object lesson.
But then, that’s pretty gory.
Heads on pikes. Not a lot. Just a few. Some in Wall Street. Some on K Street. Some along the mall. Sobers the crowd and makes us remember that there really are people who are responsible. Until then, its still “Buddy can you spare a (discounted) dime.”
The mouth of Sauron
Posted by redlinedoc in Uncategorized on June 21, 2009
I’ve had my bouts with American cars and probably won’t buy another for some long time.
The first was with GM diesels. In the late 70′s there was a gas crisis and my dad decided that the best way was to go diesel. The local dealer sold not one but two impala diesels. One never worked all that well costing before its well earned retirement 0.72 cents per mile. The dealer never really got it right, going through one battery after another. Finally the car spit out its transmission parts, the torque of the engine far greater than the transmission design. The dealer offered to repair the transmission splitting the difference so that ‘no one would get hurt’… 1300$ would be my share. I went to the local transmission fixit place who completed the entire repair, 340$. Ahh well. The war of the batteries continued burning out one battery then another, the dealer only charging me the 75$ swap charge each time. Finally the dealer fessed up; he was only and oils and lubricant’s fixer for diesel and had no idea what was going on. Several weeks later the car gave a groan, spit out many parts on the ground. I gave the car to the local trade school. They could not understand why I would give them a car with a working radio.
I swore off GM.
Recently I read that GM had made a V-6 2.8L engine with a firing order 1-2 3-4 5-6. The crankshafts reliably cracked around 30K miles. The solution. Wait. Most of these cars have only 5oK warranties. Hmmmmmmmmmmm.
Some years later I buy a Chrysler PT cruiser. I did the research which suggested that the repairs were more than average. Little did I suspect it was a plan on the part of Chrysler. I got a plan with the car which included oil changes. The oil change guy at the dealership must not have been part of the dealership plans. He never saw the leaky high pressure lines and in doing the oil change managed to rip another line under the car.
Some time later, my mechanic, not at the dealership, goes to change the timing belt, a necessary repair. To do this requires complete disassembly of the right side of the car. Success. But now it needs adjustment. The plate to adjust this is located directly behind the front motor mount. One of the local dealerships suggests “cut it off and weld it back” REALLY!
None of that is as pertinent as the words from the leadership at Chrysler. As they were marching down the road to bankruptcy, one of their fearless leaders, who no doubt will be reinstalled and highly bonused and paid by the American taxpayer in the name of saving his job, announces that “we put a bad engine in that car (the PT Cruiser); but, we’re not making them anymore”.
Words of comfort, direct from the mouth of Sauron!
Let them eat cruisers …
Posted by redlinedoc in I never saw THAT coming on April 21, 2010
The big boys at Chrysler appear to have taken the pipe, 4 BILLION (with a ‘B’ folks) in losses since exiting bankrupty! I doubt that will stop the executive piggies from snorting at the money trough in the name of needing to pay the best and brightest.
We need to remind ourselves that the Mouth of Sauron himself, the Chrysler damage control guy, at meetings this past year said “Oh .. we put a bad engine in that car — but — (pregnant pause and I presume a wolfish smile), we don’t make them anymore.” Not making one of the mechanically lousiest cars on the road is scarcely a strategy designed to win hearts and minds of Americans.
The car had a sluggish start. It was very retro, very cute, very flawed. The power train with an automatic could scarcely get the car out of its own way. Add a turbo and stickshift and it did go. Fixing the cars, it was my mechanic’s nightmare, was another thing. It would appear that the engine had been dropped into the car without regard for access. After all what fool would want to fix this? Access to the engine required removing the right side of the car and all the steering gear there. The engine mounts blocked access to such non critical parts as the timing belt adjustment.
I attended school at UCONN (University of Connecticut) which at the time had one of the finest civil and mechanical engineering departments in the country. I have friends from MIT, CALTECH, CASE to name but a few. They seem pretty competent. Is it possible there’s a large vacuum at Chrysler which sucks the smarts out of the engineering staff, followed closely by the moral vacuum which removes all traces of morality. I have long thought that American ingenuity can solve most problems. The difficulty is that American greed removes the problem solving substituting marketing glitz, full of sound and fury, signifying, nothing.
business+ethics, CEO, Chrysler, ethics, executive+compensation, other+peoples+money, Sauron
No Comments