In 1948 a Chevy sales film mentioned Volkswagen as an icon of Hitler. Twenty years later the actual car was the enemy in this 1973 film aimed at GM factory workers. It cites the losses in various other industries. Textiles were mostly gone. Home radios and TVs were all gone. 20% of autos were foreign.
Unfortunately the film is based on another lie. It correctly pushes the value of work:
Hard work is what made us strong. We are only strong when we compete with the whole world. We can’t rely on the government to help with tariffs and taxes.
The problem with US cars was poor DESIGN, not poor workmanship. The assembly line scenes focus on the Vega. The Vega’s problem was NOT assembly line absenteeism. The Vega’s problem was unnecessarily stupid design and intentionally poor testing, before the assembly line was tooled up. GM’s president, along with the CEO of Norfolk Southern, cooked up a drunken plan to save a few cents on shipping by designing the cars so they could be shipped vertically. This required a total compromise of engine design to avoid oil leakage when vertical. The aluminum block was another Oh Wow Innovative Disruption, also unnecessary because GM already had two GOOD four-cylinder engines. Then the testing was intentionally botched.
Toyota’s design was the opposite of Innovative. Toyotas were like 1940s British cars. Toyota engineers made sure every design element and every material choice was perfect before assembly started, and made sure the assembly procedures were foolproof. Murphy is the key. When it’s hard for workers to make mistakes, they won’t make mistakes.
I wouldn’t blame the workers for rejecting this disingenuous pitch.
The lie is even worse for the other lost industries. We didn’t lose textiles and electronics because of poor design OR poor workmanship. Both industries had excellent quality. We lost textiles because the corporate bosses wanted slaves instead of workers. We lost electronics because the corporate bosses wanted safe defense contracts instead of risky customer products.
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We have a perfect controlled experiment now which wasn’t present in 1973. Most Japanese cars we buy here are made in America by American workers. They are still high-quality cars, still superior to American-designed cars. Workers are the constant, bosses are the variable. American workers can do excellent work when they’re using Japanese designs and supervised by Japanese management methods.
Polistra's Mill 