Friday, September 01, 2017
Se-lu 10, we don't need no steenkin Murphy edition
Continuing on the subject of owning the conversation, comparing Amazon with GM.
What happens when a company owns the conversation? Vega happens.
The April 2000 issue of Collectible Auto has a satisfyingly detailed article on the infinite failure of the Vega. Lists a dozen horrible failure modes, each involving a dozen separate design flaws that worked beautifully together for disaster.
Example:
Another problem involved the two-barrel Rochester carburetor. The engine would shake so badly that it loosened the screws holding the top cover on the float chamber. The top cover would then jump up and down, which activated the accelerator pump, which shot raw gasoline through the cylinders and into the exhaust system. Fuel would then puddle inside the muffler and eventually explode. The early mufflers would blow toward the fuel tank, so later mufflers were designed to blow away from the tank.Note that they only fixed the last stage. They weren't bothered by the "shaking so badly" part. Most of the flaws were totally unforced errors, caused by a manager's Bright Idea to Advance Technology and Disrupt Innovation and Cut Costs. Nobody had the power to question the Bright Ideas, and even worse, the testing end of the process was explicitly designed to avoid testing anything.
"It astonishes me that not one of us thought of what would happen when we ran out of water. After the fact it certainly seems reasonable, but it never occurred to us. And the test system didn't let things fail. For example, if a test driver let an engine run low on coolant, and it burned up, he'd get fired. The drivers were out there checking coolant, checking oil, checking everything every shift."The WHOLE FUCKING POINT OF TESTING is to LOOSEN THE RULES and let Murphy do his worst. When you shut Murphy out of the room, you're totally wasting the entire effort. The simple fact that the Vegas NEEDED to be checked every day should have given the testing department a clue that everything was wrong with the car. Functional cars don't lose coolant and oil from day to day or even month to month. = = = = = Later thought: And what happened immediately after Vega happened? Toyota happened. Because Toyota DIDN'T own the conversation and the media, it had to do something that GM couldn't possibly imagine. Toyota had to make good cars. Toyota went beyond good. Toyota made PERFECT cars, within the limits of practicality and affordability. Now Toyota owns the conversation, and in the last few years is starting to act more like GM. No Vega yet, but turning toward the Vega vector.
Labels: se-lu
¶ 12:17 PM
