SWMBO would have preferred a Japanese car - back in 91. Oriental cars being reliable in her opinion and of course she knew them as she is from the Orient herself.
But I persuaded her we should have a new Maestro - attracted to the engine and the internal space.
(As mentioned) we were down in Dorset camping a week later and for the first time she touched the window winder at her side. Instantly the glass just dropped straight into the door bottom - as though it were set up as a joke.
(You can guess how that went down if you had been used to a Toyota.)
I must have told a few people too - as did she. That can`t have helped either - though I suppose the maker was a gonner anyway by then.
Edited by oilrag on 23/05/2009 at 22:08
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India is and will ever more churn out ever better grads by the tens of thousands, quite what countries like the UK are going to end up doing to earn our keep Im not sure.
This comment has saved me a Thousand words. Read it again and again, cos Boy is it true. frightening really, truly frightening.
MD
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Quote:>> ""So in a nutshell BL didn't have its saviour model its Golf."
""It did, but it was a child of BMC, not BL and was therefore ignored for development... the Maxi... it had everything that was needed, but wasn't liked by the senior management"".
The Maxi was quite successful but it was a car people bought with their heads, not their hearts. The VW Golf Mk 1 had perfect looks in its day, everything about its appearance was right. The Maxi, which had been around for a few years when the Golf arrived, looked ungainly partly because it used the doors from the Austin 1800, so one had to get past it looking like an 1800 'gone wrong'.
I'll vouch for the fact that the Maxi was quite a good car - may parents had two of them.
They were nice to drive but they were not very reliable and they rusted badly.
Of course, the VW Golf has lived on and is now on the Mark 6 model, plust there are lots of other cars based on the Golf. There was never a Mark 2 Maxi, unless you count the mechanical update (plus new grille) they had to do because the original version was so poor.
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Contrast that with an F plate MG Montego Turbo that a friend owned. I have never known anyone drive a car so hard so consistently for so long. If it had dropped its guts in disgust after six months, you wouldn't have blamed it, but it was 100% mechanically reliable in the five years he had it. Minor niggles only, and well over 100k when he eventually destroyed it using a bus shelter and a concrete post. Still a quick car, even by today's standards (0-60 in 7.2 secs).
I guess it was the inconsistency that caused the problems. My dad did a brief stint as a spot welder at Cowley in the early 70's and reckons its a wonder anything that came off the production line worked at all, such was the lackadaisical attitude of both workers and management. It all sounded like an "On The Buses" style game of work avoidance, skiving and pulling the wool over management's eyes. Oh, and the unions would have them out on strike at least once a month. He actually left because he couldn't earn enough money to get by because of the constant walkouts.
Edited by DP on 23/05/2009 at 23:31
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Still goes on now. I have a brother in law who "works" in a well known transport related production facility in the UK. I won't say who or where to spare his and their blushes but he often volunteers for nightshifts if he feels like a rest. They do very little and get paid an unsociable hours rate for it. He openly admits that all they do if they fancy a night off is log a fault with a vital piece of equipment and everything stops until the daytime maintenance crew come to inspect it. Often a "loose connection" apparently but of course health and thingy prevents them from touching the workings of the machinery so they have no alternative but to play cards, have a brew or go for a kip.
I have tried to explain the effect of this attitude but neither he nor his colleagues appear to give two hoots. They think it is funny in fact.
Irritates me quite a lot but it does still seem to be the way of things in such places.
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What gets me is that back when Rover was bought by BMW, leaving Britain with no home-owned motor indudtry to speak of, politicians and economists were keen to point out the Britain could no longer compete as a car manufacturing nation as it wasn't economic.
And yet Honda, Nissan, Toyota, BMW (Mini and Rolls-Royce) have set up new factories here, while Ford and Vauxhall continued to build cars here although Vauxhall might soon be gone and I think Ford only make engines here now - is that right?
Edited by Sofa Spud on 23/05/2009 at 23:57
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Ive found its amazing how efficient and willing to work ive become since I only get paid if I actually work. Two sick days off in 7 years.
I wouldnt want to be an employer these days, let alone 30 years ago, getting people to work to the best of their ability is most likely illegal.
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With you there Stu. I have had a total of five days sick leave in 30 + years. Two days when I had Chicken Pox and three when a woman in a VW Golf decided to drive over the top of my car at 60 mph. Woke up in hospital after that one.
Anything which merely involves handkerchiefs and Lemsip can be lived with if there is no one else paying.
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Me too - 5 days in ten years (serious case of Man flu last July)
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whats time off?
though this last 5 years ive taken to going on those modern things
ah yes holidays
nice too they are
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Now Im self-employed, I have one week in Devon off a year and I still spend the week fielding calls and taking bookings. I have the holiday more for my other half than for myself
I wonder how sick days claimed would be affected if everyone was self-employed?
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i turn mine off
lifes too short when you get to my age
another death in the family yesterday
Edited by Pugugly on 24/05/2009 at 01:19
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I wonder how sick days claimed would be affected if everyone was self-employed?
It's not just the self employed that have a sense of responsibility or work ethic.
I've not had sick day or other skive off in 30 years...must be bonkers.
(Did take 2 lots of bereavement leave though if thats a crime)
Never quite understood the idea of companies paying people not to work and then wondering why they're going bust..;)
Edited by gordonbennet on 24/05/2009 at 01:23
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You definately cant be an MP then GB otherwise you would be cruising in the med on some businessmans boat and charging us the expense of polishing the chrome on your imposing constituancy vehicle :-)
We do seem to have an ingrained culture in much of this country of doing as little as possible for the maximum wage and should anyone question ones motivation, go for a tumble over a paving slab and at work and sue them. In all honesty, I dont think many companies have a chance and Im suprised we still have any industry at all.
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Never quite understood the idea of companies paying people not to work and then wondering why they're going bust..;)
Or why Unions cannot accept that there have to be procedures in place for those who can't or don't want to work for a living and put the pressure of all their work on their colleagues by taking time off sick all the time... You can sack someone for high levels of sickness, but where i work it can take the best part of 18 months to go through the procedures, yet the Union still want it torn up, I do wonder who they think they think they are protecting...
Just to keep it on a motoring theme, I'd heard that back in the 60s and 70s some car firms (and others - BAE?) had "unwritten agreements" that people would take a week or two "sick" each year to top up their holidays - is that actually true?
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"unwritten agreements" that people wouldtake a week or two "sick" each year to top up their holidays
Where a mate supervises in 'public service' there's a culture of sick time being somehow owed to the employee and needing to be used up (he doesn't)...you really couldn't make it up.
It drives him up the wall as do many of the people there who don't appreciate what cushy little numbers they have...maybe not the highest salary paid but bearing in mind an average week will be 25 easy hours makes their hourly rate one of the highest.
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Neither he nor his colleagues appear to give two hoots. They think it is funny in fact.
Oh dear, HB - you have seriously depressed me. I had believed those attitudes were largely a thing of the past. Since the 80s I have considered myself lucky to have reached retirement without a constant despairing worry about depending on 'British workers' to balance our payments, since those wonderful financial whiz-kids have kept us afloat instead. And then we found they had feet (and maybe brains) of clay too.
As has been asked above, who will be the next saviours of our economy?
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People won't agree, but I'll make my point once again on this issue.
It isn't really fair to blame BL in the 1970s for the state of the British car industry. It is true that they had their problems, but it must be remembered that, in the UK at least, Rover was still a major player as late as 1995.
The real reason the British car industry died was misplaced patriotism, as opposed to non-patriotism.
The Germans continued to buy VW, Audi and Mercedes. France persevered with Peugeot, Citroen and Renault. The brands that failed due to largely quality related concerns -- NSU, Simca etc, didn't damage the overall industry. Buyers kept the faith, and abandoned the brands with the issues.
In the UK a similar phenomenon occurred. Austin, Morris and Hillman(/Chrysler) were slowly forgotten about, as patriotic Brits turned to the safe and reassuring arms of... Ford and Vauxhall. Because of the common language, and ancient British links (even though both brands had ceased to be truly British subsidiaries in the 1970s), the people who wanted to keep on supporting the British industry turned to these American brands (and their German subsidiaries in all but name) in droves.
So, slowly but surely the proper British companies were strangled.
It's still seen today -- Vauxhall, a producer of a fairly nominal number of cars in this country, and Ford, a producer of none, remain installed as the "British" brands of choice.
Well done Uncle Sam, you did us over good and proper.
If these two had never existed, I firmly believe that some of the British companies would still be around today.
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There is the wider background of the country being brought to it`s knees by the Unions too in the 70`s.
I had a friend who worked in industry at the time- everything shut down repeatedly by those rolling power cuts - workers in dark areas using torches to fumble around.
Unions giving workers no say in whether there would be a strike or not and generally behaving as though the car plant was behind the Iron Curtain - with no competition for the product.
I`m not `anti Union` either - but living through those times was just unbelievable in retrospect.
Didn`t many of the Union leaders and line workers actually buy a Toyota, or Honda themselves?
Edited by oilrag on 24/05/2009 at 09:37
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I don't accept the premise.
The argument I've so far seen boils down to what might be likened to discussions about angels on pinheads.
By any measure, car making in this country (bar the current crisis & universal turmoil all car makers globally are experiencing..) has never been as profitable, advanced & successful - unless you count pre-war days of the commonwealth where British cars had virtual monopolies & the immedaite post-war period where there was no effective capacity outside America & the UK anyway.
You might say 'But, they're all foreign owned! A MINI is no more British than bratwurst.. '
- I might say - when they were British owned - what did that really mean? That British capitalists owned the shares rather than insurance companies or pension funds - what difference did (or does) that ever make to Honda workers in Swindom, Nissan makers in Sunderland or MINI workers in Abingdon? Nought really.
You might say 'Oh, we don't have the expertise any more, the creative engineering, the design input...' - don't we? Aren't those 'foriegn' car makers still employing British workers,
engineers, designers. Isn't the creative centre of F1 still based primarily within these shores?
What golden age do the lamentists hark back to? Was it 1930 or 1950 or 1970- just how many car makers then had world beating designs or export successes? Maybe an hounourable exception might be the Lyons Jaguar era - maybe also Bentley - other icons are few & far between though. The original Mini was a great success, you could also point to classic British sports cars & roadsters, notably MG & latterly the MGB. Tastes & markets move though - today, the latest MINI, Lotus & Caterham carry on that tradition successfully.
The only real difference I see is that the names on the share cetificates may need a bit more effort to pronounce & companies might not have a Lord or Sir as the chairman anymore.
No, the British car industry is alive & kicking.
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Simple really: more reliable and better built foreign competition. That James Ruppert guy wrote a "bestselling" book on this subject: news to me as i have never seen it on the shelves but may buy it it I see it.
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