The absurdity of Donald Trump

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Something else we should remember about auto technology: General Motors, or Big Auto:

It's been noted that GM was never hit with an antitrust suit -- but for decades on end, GM behaved as if it were in mortal fear of being so. A culture, rather than a smokefilled-room conspiracy, grew up of Chevy not outdoing Pontiac too hugely (in dollars, I think, not so much cars off the lots), and Pontiac not crushing Dodge, and so on round and round the GM ambit. That is, competition was not pushed à outrance; that spice was missing from the mix.

Innovation comes through competition, and is the more stimulated the more intense the competition is. GM thought it found reason to avoid that, when perhaps a more cutthroat approach might have been nearer the ideal for service to the end users, the customers.

But who needs any conspiracy when you have the subtler debilitations of a culture? It doesn't even have to be consciously recognized by anyone, insider or out.

I expected the above kind of fallback argument to appear, that tw might salve his ego; again, tw does not seem to sufficiently recognize a) this power density dates back fourteen years and there's nothing at all to say it doesn't date farther back yet, and b) we bought that VW for 14Kdollars if I remember. Not exactly big auto money; not an especially low price either. The vehicle, used, had very modest mileage on it. It now wants some work done on its valve cam timing -- we won't know if it's just the cam gear or if it's the timing chain (a quite critical component, and timing chains or belts are durable but they aren't immortal and the car now has 155 K miles on it) until our mechanic goes in there.