Sunday, January 13, 2008
Romney ramblings again......
Listening to a Romney speech on C-Span. He's talking at length about a '62 Rambler that he bought as a gift recently; telling how his grandkids instinctively grabbed for the seatbelt but didn't find one, and telling how the defroster made lots of noise but didn't work as well as modern defrosters. His point is partly valid (competition causes improvement) but it's oddly out of place when discussing Nash products.
Nash introduced optional seat belts in 1950, long before other American cars, and long before the Feds required them. It wasn't competition that put seatbelts on all cars, it was regulation.
And Nash introduced the first really good heater and defroster in 1938, leading the market by several years.
The Nash heater actually included a cleanable dust filter, visible here ... a feature that was unfortunately abandoned by Nash later, and wasn't picked up by other carmakers until the 1990s.
This picture shows the heater in place, at lower right under the unique dash-centered shift lever. You can also see the theft-proof ignition-and-steering lock, which was more effective and harder to break than the post-1970 Federal requirement. [Must admit, I included this picture mainly because of the pleasant lady driver!]
Moral: Competition is good, but it's irrelevant to the features Mitt mentions. In both cases his father's company was ahead of the competition and ahead of the regulation. And such innovative leadership is exactly what we need right now. Mitt has every right to emphasize his innovative genes, but it doesn't occur to him for some reason. His mindset is stuck in the purely quantitative bean-counting model of life and business.
= = = = =
Bit later, after more pondering: What really bothers me is not Mitt's political mindset. What really bothers me is that I, a mere dilettante and shade-tree mechanic, am more willing to defend and extol the qualities of Nash. While Mitt talks often about his father's job, he doesn't seem to understand his father's vocation, for lack of a better word. ¶ 7:12 PM
Nash introduced optional seat belts in 1950, long before other American cars, and long before the Feds required them. It wasn't competition that put seatbelts on all cars, it was regulation.
And Nash introduced the first really good heater and defroster in 1938, leading the market by several years.
The Nash heater actually included a cleanable dust filter, visible here ... a feature that was unfortunately abandoned by Nash later, and wasn't picked up by other carmakers until the 1990s.
This picture shows the heater in place, at lower right under the unique dash-centered shift lever. You can also see the theft-proof ignition-and-steering lock, which was more effective and harder to break than the post-1970 Federal requirement. [Must admit, I included this picture mainly because of the pleasant lady driver!]
Moral: Competition is good, but it's irrelevant to the features Mitt mentions. In both cases his father's company was ahead of the competition and ahead of the regulation. And such innovative leadership is exactly what we need right now. Mitt has every right to emphasize his innovative genes, but it doesn't occur to him for some reason. His mindset is stuck in the purely quantitative bean-counting model of life and business.
= = = = =
Bit later, after more pondering: What really bothers me is not Mitt's political mindset. What really bothers me is that I, a mere dilettante and shade-tree mechanic, am more willing to defend and extol the qualities of Nash. While Mitt talks often about his father's job, he doesn't seem to understand his father's vocation, for lack of a better word. ¶ 7:12 PM
