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Old Man Honda made piston rings before WW2.
Out of the rubble of post war Japan he started making the vehicles that would bring Japan out of the devastation that was brought upon them by their arrogance and stupidity.
He built a small motorcycle that was a revelation to the world, and he focused on quality and reliability. He lsitened to his employees and incorporated thier ideas into his products. The relationshsip was one of mututal respect and pride in the quality of the finished product. Working for that old man was a priviledge.
In the 60s he gradually expanded his basic transportation into an auto manufacturing industry, that by the early 70s was producing some of the most efficient and reliable cars on this planet.
My father averaged 39.5 MPG in a 77 Honda Accord that I bought totalled at a salvage auction. He drove up and down US 1 in the Florida Keys as a volunteer for the American Cancer Society. They paid him 39cents a mile and he got over 39 MPG, in 1978.
In the 50s GM owned the American auto industry, but their innovation was primarily focused on styling over substance. Innovation and attention to efficiency resulted in the Corvair, followed by the Vega. In the early 70s GM stated that it was impossible to build a car that got 40 MPG, only a few years before my father was driving his recycled Accord down one of the busiest two lane highways in the US getting damn near 40 MPG.
The giant GM conglomerate versus the little uneducated ex mechanic with a dream, who had to build his dream in the shambles of his native country, while the giant enjoyed the war time influx of capital the likes of which we will probably never see again.
Here comes the 50s innovation is the overhead valve engine, which dated back to before WW1 but was sold as a great design advance. Many of the planes and tanks in WW2 had much more advanced engines than the revelation small block Chevrolet engine, but the advertising blitz kept the faithful in line and they bought and bought the latest twist of the sheet metal benders to keep up with the neighbors.
In the 60S they started gluing in the windows and covering the sloppy workmanship with a chrome moulding. Who cared about the fact it rusted out in months, it looked so damn good. Why worry about paint quality, use lacquer, because it looked so damn good.
Meanwhile the conflict between union and management escalated with the quality and customer base paying the ultimate price. The arrogance of assuming the buyers loyalty would go on forever continued as labor cost skyrocketed in an orgy of spending and short sighted stupidity that ignored the most basic understanding of treating the customer as if he was the most important part of the equation.
Quality went from poor to abysmal. The techs working at the dealerships which sold GM cars were screwed by warranty labor rates that were less than 1/3 of what the customer paid. Poor designs meant engines falling apart in months and rust holes in the same period of time.
Japan had recovered from the devastation of WW2 and old man Honda was building the best cars on the planet. While GM was watching a failure rate of 80% on some of its engines in 100 k miles, people were driving those tiny little Honda imports 200k miles and more and they weren't even adding oil between changes.
Here comes OPEC with the embargo and gas prices skyrocket. Gas lines and odd even fill up days make mileage a premium. More Japanese car companies come on the scene with more small economical vehicles that just don't fall apart until they are decades old and with hundreds of thousands of miles.
The quality of American cars continues to decline until their huge market share evaporates.
Today 25 years later they are finally waking up to the facts that they have not tried to compete. The Unions are a figment of their long ago size and power. The war was lost by both sides, and the enemy of WW2 rose from the ashes of nuclear devastation and won the last battle. Japan was guided on this path by American industrialists who showed them how to do it right, while we quarreled and bickered amongst ourselves until our own citizens rejected our products.
Now in their final gasps of breath we keep them on some misguided life support subsidizing more of the same stupidity. The greatest country the world has ever witnessed is drowning in the abyss of the govt credit card gone wild. To big to fail. what a joke. We were beat by a tiny country that we annihilated in a conflict long ago, one the rose from the dust of the only atomic weapons ever dropped on human beings.
In all of this unbelievable stupidity we still argue about why.
I'll tell you why.
The customer is always right, even when he or she is wrong. Ultimately we will have to pay the price of our collective short sightedness.
regards
Mech
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