Originally Posted by
FDXLAG
No argument, but every vehicle made has a cost associated with producing it. Quality, safety, reliability, and utility all add to the cost of a vehicle. When you are competing to sell vehicles and yours starts with a 5K price disadvantage due to retiree labor costs you might have to give up something in quality to compete in price. Same goes for taxes.
But, if they would have listened to Deming in the first place...They would have made higher quality vehicles. And, they would have sold more of those vehicles. Thus reducing the retiree cost per vehicle.
Bad management. Plenty of blame to go around.
P.S. I haven't purchased a non UAW/American Corp car in the past 22 years. (Although, it's getting harder to figure out exactly where the thing is made) The quality improvements are quite impressive. YMMV
This helps:
UAW Car Buying Guide