Slick Car Production

[MD]

Hope this hasn't been posted before but if it has, I am sure the moderators will know what to do.

If you haven't seen this before, it would make an interesting debate whether Fiat or VW should own Alfa ?

http://www.youtube.com/embed/nd5WGLWNllA?rel=0

[colcol]

The Phaeton is most likely the only car that VW makes in Germany, the Passat and Golf are built in South Africa, the Amorak is made in Argentina, the new Beetle is from Mexico, if and when they grab Alfa Romeo, i wonder where they will be made?.
If VW were running Alfa Romeo there wouldn't be the farce of a popular 159 mainstream car going out of production and not being replaced, you have got to feel sorry for Alfa Romeo dealers who now only have two cars to sell.
The Phaeton must cost a fortune, being built like that, i didn't know they were still making it, has it ever been sold in Australia?, i have never seen one, VW has a finger in every pie, cars covering every catergory, then underneath the VW - Audi - Skoda - Seat - Porsche - Lamborghini - Ducati all share components for large production runs and therefor cheaper cars and spare parts, Colin.

[Duk]

Very impressive!
VW have come a long way since the days of the original car for the people.

I recon the factory designers would have liked watching the 2 Iron Man movies 

[Beatle]

So if you were buying a Phaeton you'd ask for one built on a cool but sunny day?   Seems that would ensure the workers were in the right mood and therefore the car should be better built.

[MD]

To save kicking off a brand new topic, this issue is related to production of not only cars but many, many commodities now and definitely in the future.
Manufacturers are  increasingly making products that they do not want to be repaired and so they make it in a such a way that it is either not cost effective, impossible to fix or do not back it up with component spares. When you do this, the expertise stays with the manufacturer and the progressive demise of a whole host of trades that is eventually wiped out.
It takes generations to build up technical skills and experience and so once it dies, the consuming public are in deep doodoo. You can see this happening everywhere already.
The electronics repair business that used to fix your TV's and radios is all but dead and the techs in the game are all looking to get out if not out already.
Just the other day I was talking to a friend who repairs automatic transmission and he said that some of the new 6 speed units are all but a throw away item.
Much knowledge was built up over time from studying failures and improving the breed. The problem with the throw away of worn or faulty items is the failure to learn about the conditions that has caused the failure. Hence diagnostic skills are rapidly deminishing. If you have a well seasoned and gifted mechanic, it would do you well to pan out lots of TLC because these guys are going to more scare than rocking horse shit.

So much for conservation of energy and resources (both human and material) which there is so much hype about but in reality it's all piss and wind.

[colcol]

There used to be a lot Auto transmission repair places around, now they are a bit thin on the ground, because autos give little trouble and when they do, the car gets scrapped.
When i was a teenager, fiddling with cars, you used to be able to buy repair kits for water and fuel pumps, and get clutches re-conditioned, changeover brake shoes, now all gone.
Now it is cheaper to pay someone in China or India to build a new one on a production line, rather than pay someone [properly] in Australia to fix it.
If Volkswagon through Audi grab Alfa Romeo, i wonder where they will end up building them?, Colin.