I agree with this. Some NIMBYs are seriously irritating. We had people moving into my small home village.... into the RAILWAY street. With the railway tracks being right in front of them and impossible to miss. Guess what they complain about ever since..... Now, for some people there may not be much choice where they move in.... and of course anti noise regulations should be obeyed..... but in this particular case... those people sunk hundred thousand of euros into those new homes..... it is hard to imagine that they couldnt afford to move somewhere else. Or buy better sound proofing..... but I am sure they favour paying their layer instead. NIMBYs are a modern plague..... we would still be in the stone age if if was for them. Cheap power, cheap mobility, cheap holidays, cheap internet.... but god forbid that I have any visible infrastructure nearby. It is just not possible.... you cant have a modern live without infrastructure and this infrastructure has to be somewhere. And I would not assume that "they" are building it right there to personally annoy you. but because its the god damm best place for it. I am seriously pissed about those people being responsible for every god damm infrastructure project taking decades here because they absolutely have to sue through every single court they can find. While I agree about people moving towards loud things I disagree about the motorcycles. You cant really evade them like stationary objects and they are often particulary loud and tend to attract a certain type of person that you rarely want driving arround your neighbourhood. We have this one biker idiot here that just loves his afterfire..... in the middle of the night. I always admired VW for one thing. Their marketings ability to sell what is basically the same car at at least 3 different price levels: Skoda - the most economic option Volkswagen - add some acoustic insulation, a few similar only comfort related features and done. Ohh.... and add the VW logo and raise the price by several thousand euros. Audi: Spent 100 euros more on interior, allow the occasional technological experiment and restrict most premium features to it. Print the Audi logo on top and give it a hefty hefty price raise. Done. Now this is of course very efficient in terms of manufacturing but the issue you run into is that people tend to notice it over time. Seing "premium audi" lights go into my companies skoda back then is rather amusing but you can imagine the face of the 80000 Euro Audi owner when he realizes that the... ahem superp audi quality leading technology, 3 times the cost of a regular competition part actually goes into a 15000 Euro Skoda as well. Ouch.... There is indeed very little room for Seat. It cant be cheaper but if you are already willing to pay the Volkswagen Premium over Skoda.... why not buy a VW in the first place? Likely higher value stability. Seat seems to try to be the less boring option compared to VW but the type of customer willing and capable of such an price tag tends to heavily favour the most boring option. For less rich customers, buying a Skoda with all the bells and whistles is often a far more attractive option while the people with real money wont even look below Audi. And then the "individual" segment is probably not exactly free of competition either. So yes... it is hard to see a long term role for Seat. I think that Toyota in this regard did it better... having one premium brand and a mainstream brand for almost everything else.
They currently want to make Seat into a Sporty Car make but its still to close to the VWs to make sense too me. Also one thing that annoys me is that VW doesnt let skoda have bigger engines on the smaller models for example the Skoda Fabias biggest Engine is a 110HP 1.0L Engine while the biggest engine on the Polo is a 2.0L 200HP Engine why cant we have at least a 150HP Engine in the Fabia?
I managed to find a ranking of brands in 1985 by average reliability according to Consumer Reports, where a model with the top score is a +1 and the lowest score gives it a -1 Toyota - +1 Mercedes-Benz - +0.97 Mazda - +0.83 Honda - +0.79 Nissan - +0.78 Subaru - +0.71 Mitsubishi - +0.57 Datsun - +0.54 BMW - +0.42 Volvo - +0.31 Lincoln - +0.27 Audi - +0.21 Saab - +0.2 Volkswagen - +0.07 Mercury - -0.09 Ford - -0.1 Oldsmobile - -0.24 Dodge - -0.24 Buick - -0.34 Cadillac - -0.45 Chrysler- -0.46 Pontiac - -0.56 Chevrolet - -0.58 GMC - -0.63 Plymouth - -0.77 AMC - -0.82 Jeep - -0.96
HOW IS BMW MORE RELIABLE THAN JEEP???????????????????????????????????????????????????????? DISSAPEARING OIL MYSTERY? OHC I4 VS PUSHROD I6? WHAT????????????????????????????? Excuse my harsh words.
I may have an answer: German engineering. I've always heard that German cars are some of the best built cars you can find. German and Japanese both.
Kinda have to agree nowadays we only can build engines but not even those are as good as they were because they are chocked by emmissions and so on.
