ernestolopez

Wow! I didnt know Tennesse was a 3rd world country.-I guess I need a passport to visit New Mexico.hahaha!

This has been a great post for discussion.
The Lecture on the Peoples car-Folkswagen,The third reich built a car for the masses.


Now the free markets export the goods.Love it!

Moviela

Audi's are currently built from kits in China. You do not want to take those cars any where you cannot hike back.

Audi's made in Germany are not assembled by pony tailed blond women, 50ish master mechanics, nor fair haired boys for the most part. Most plant workers speak Turkish.

The real quality comes from the tooling and automation used in the assembly. Germany excels in providing workers that can build, maintain, and inspect work to meet design specifications.

Mexico suffers from the burden of the Spanish legal model which allows 13 families to control the country to the detriment of the citizens. Graft and corruption are a necessary part of life. Typically car factories have plenty of workers, but productivity per worker is low, and there is a lack of competent technical and engineering people to correct problems as they arise. Corruption affects locally sourced materials. A German company installed a zinc based chassis coating line, however, raw materials not meeting specifications were applied, and those owners are experiencing high rates of body perforation in snow areas. Quite often people need to be dispatched to Mexico to keep the line moving. Simple things like keeping computerized measuring machines calibrated baffle Mexican workers.

Some of the problem is if you pretend to pay workers, they pretend to work. A California company was making wiring harnesses for Chrysler. It took a skilled worker about an hour to lay, terminate, wrap, and test a harness. Actually several workers did the work, but total was one man-hour. The cost of a man hour was $30 for wages and benefits. The work was moved to Mexico where the wage was $2 per hour. The sharp pencil boys (accountants) were thrilled until Mexican management reported that the well trained workers needed two days to do what Californians did in an hour. The cost of a harness went up by $2.

There has to be a reason we require a statement of origin. I will look for Germany when buying a car. Huaraches on the other hand....

MonzaA5

Who cares abut the relationship between Germany and Mexico? What does that have to do with the quality of cars that are made in Mexico? And why are you comparing Mexico with Europe, South Carolina and Ohio?

No offense to you personally, but I would never buy a "premium" car made in Mexico, China, Jamaica, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea or some other third-world sh*thole. If Audi wants to sell cheaply-made cars, they better price them accordingly.

MonzaA5

You are greatly exaggerating. If human labor was not a significant factor, there would be no reason to build an assembly plant in Mexico.

MonzaA5

You have no idea what you are talking about. Most German auto workers are indeed German men in their 40s and 50s. Those jobs are so coveted and hard to get, there's no way the German trade unions would let an illegal Turkish migrant anywhere near the assembly line.

mahumujug

wow...

I have to say I am suprised.

gunsmoker

FYI, the legalized Turkish minority in Germany is of substantial size.

MonzaA5

Fair enough, but it's still ludicrous to say that most workers at Audi assembly plants are Turkish. How many Turks do you see in this picture?

gunsmoker

Why, do you expect the German Turks to not look like Caucasian brunettes?
I do agree with you on the blanket statement - it's not all Turks that work at those plants.

MonzaA5

I've been to Germany many times and can certainly tell a turk from a German brunette. Turks do not have pink skin and northern european facial features...