Foreign built narrowboats reliability, durability, Resale

[Albion]

I think that is part of the truth but a little simplistic. Tata are using the same workforce, and posted a profit for the Jaguar Land Rover division of £1 billion earlier this year. The money is available for the kind of investment Tata made - money is global. Look at people like Guy Hands, although I think his modus operandi is questionable, but people like that can find huge sums when they want to.

 

 

I wouldn't argue with that at all. We call the bloke who comes round to fix a washing machine an "engineer" in this country! Says it all really.

 

I was at Jags when the action started to dispose of the Premier Automotive Group companies. Aston Martin went first, well before the others. All the US car companies found themselves exposed to the market forces and falling revenues at the time and Ford was one of the stronger ones. IIRC there was talk of Chrysler (or maybe GM) going bust at the time. GM disposed of Saab at the same time and there was some worry that they would pull out of the UK (the Vauxhall arm) leaving only the continental Opel arm running. After some action by concerned parties this never happened but it was a close run thing from what I remember.

 

The Institution of Mechanical Engineers, of which I am a member, has long raised the point with the gubbinsment about anyone being able to call themselves an engineer with no formal qualifications but, unlike on parts of the continent, we still allow the practice. My only worry about the heavy touch of a formal-qualifications-reqirement is that it might cripple small businesses (so important to the UK economy) where you can have a good engineer without formal qualifications, while you're using the qualification sledge-hammer to eradicate the cowboy engineers.

Roger

Edited November 23, 2011 by Albion

[starman]

Look at people like Guy Hands, although I think his modus operandi is questionable, but people like that can find huge sums when they want to.

 

 

Guy Hands is an example of everything that is wrong with this country. He bought EMI solely on borrowed money from Citibank, knowing nothing about the music business, wrecked it by trying to slash costs with the aim solely of selling it on and making a fast buck, sacking skilled and experienced staff and went bust. I know someone who was a senior exec there (not sacked) and who has many tales of his reign.

Citibank eventually took it back and have just resold the record companies to Universal and the hugely valuable publishing catalogue to Sony, killing off another fine British company.

"The sale and break up of EMI, home to Land Of Hope And Glory, represents a desecration of Britain’s creative traditions." Alex Brummer, This Is Money.

 

Read more: here

 

BTW, on the subject of Tata, it is easy to make a £1bn profit when most of the major investment on factories and new models was made by the previous owner. (Not that I have anything against Tata which is an excellent, forward thinking company and has certainly continued to move the company on.)

[DandV]

We have had the same disease here. The fortunes have been made by breaking business's up. Conversely we have largely unable to produce the people to build business's.

Also we suffered because of the loss of status of our engineers. The spectacular growth countries, including Victorian Britain, all highly valued their engineers.

We now have an abundance of accountants and lawyers manipulating how the score should be counted, or the rules manipulated, but far too few actually engaged in scoring the runs.

 

Cheers from a windy Auckland

 

Don

[starman]

We have had the same disease here. The fortunes have been made by breaking business's up. Conversely we have largely unable to produce the people to build business's.

Also we suffered because of the loss of status of our engineers. The spectacular growth countries, including Victorian Britain, all highly valued their engineers.

We now have an abundance of accountants and lawyers manipulating how the score should be counted, or the rules manipulated, but far too few actually engaged in scoring the runs.

 

Cheers from a windy Auckland

 

Don

 

Yeah but at last you won the rugby! The press here is busy exposing what a shambles the England team and the whole RFU were -- the players too busy, as you put it, manipulating how their appearance fees and win bonuses should be calculated, then actually trying to win a game. You've got a long way to go before you can match us.

[Doorman]

Personally I'd say one of the most important factors was the low regard in which British management have always held engineers.

 

Totally agree with that statement. From the shop floor upwards, under valued and under paid!

 

 

Mike

[Doorman]

Think this is where we started? I dont want to source from China,plus many of my competitors that do are now finding supplies from there both increasing in price and unreliable as far as delivery dates,and i wont comment on quality.

 

Ian

 

For a decade, I was in the business of designing, manufacturing and installing Security Shutters for industrial and commercial customers. From the outset, my main supply of electric tube motors where sourced from Germany and damn good they were too.

 

Midway along my business enterprise, economic pressure and fierce competition brought the advent of Chinese produced motors, at a fraction of the German priced alternatives. As usual, the 'get rich quick' merchants dived in with both feet and invested heavily in these cheap counterparts from the far East, (much to my satisfaction) at an extremely heavy loss, as their shelf life was very short incurring multiple warranty claims and tales of near disaster.

 

When you consider the cumulative weight of a five by five metre steel shutter in its raised position and that the only thing that's stopping it from cascading down like a French guillotine on someone's head, is a very badly made motor with a dodgy integral brake, would any self respecting engineer risk that sort of catastrophe, simply in the name of profit. Unfortunately, many did just that!

Edited November 25, 2011 by Doorman

[Dominic M]

Guy Hands is an example of everything that is wrong with this country. He bought EMI solely on borrowed money from Citibank, knowing nothing about the music business, wrecked it by trying to slash costs with the aim solely of selling it on and making a fast buck, sacking skilled and experienced staff and went bust. I know someone who was a senior exec there (not sacked) and who has many tales of his reign.

Citibank eventually took it back and have just resold the record companies to Universal and the hugely valuable publishing catalogue to Sony, killing off another fine British company.

"The sale and break up of EMI, home to Land Of Hope And Glory, represents a desecration of Britain’s creative traditions." Alex Brummer, This Is Money.

 

Read more: here

 

BTW, on the subject of Tata, it is easy to make a £1bn profit when most of the major investment on factories and new models was made by the previous owner. (Not that I have anything against Tata which is an excellent, forward thinking company and has certainly continued to move the company on.)

I agree with you about Guy Hands, but there is a good dollop of schadenfreude here because EMI bit him in the bum in a big way. However, whilst EMI was once a great institution, that ceased to be the case a long time before GH bought it.

 

Re Tata: presuming you are right about Tata benefitting from the previous owners's R&D I go back to my earlier point: why could no British investor see this?

 

Albion mentioned Saab above. GM ruined the car's status as symbol that people liked to own. They took it down market by sticking the body on to a Vauxhall Vectra chassis.

Edited November 25, 2011 by Dominic M

[Athy]

I had not realised that, DM - Saabs still look quite up-market to me. I remember that Ford did something similar when they bought Jaguar, one of their less distinguished models was created by sticking a Jag body on to a Ford Mondeo floor and engine.

VW, commendably, have succedded in taking a make in the opposite direction since they bought Skoda. One the butt of a hundred stand-up comics' jokes, they are now apparently well-made and certainly well thought of. Their new Yeti 4X4 looks rather hunky, though I have heard no reports of how it performs.

Edited November 25, 2011 by Athy

[Guest]

I had not realised that, DM - Saabs still look quite up-market to me. I remember that Ford did something similar when they bought Jaguar, one of their less distinguished models was created by sticking a Jag body on to a Ford Mondeo floor and engine.

VW, commendably, have succedded in taking a make in the opposite direction since they bought Skoda. One the butt of a hundred stand-up comics' jokes, they are now apparently well-made and certainly well thought of. Their new Yeti 4X4 looks rather hunky, though I have heard no reports of how it performs.

 

VW are allegedly de-speccing Skoda models in an attempt to create more of a distinction between the marques.

 

Seemingly people were starting to take the attitude 'Why buy a VW when I can get a VW, all be it one in disguise, for a lot less'

[Taslim]

Totally agree with that statement. From the shop floor upwards, under valued and under paid!

 

 

Mike

 

Me too. Our bean counters & reps got 'rewards' for this years performance. Design, build & QA got Christmas lunch.

[Albion]

snipped

Re Tata: presuming you are right about Tata benefitting from the previous owners's R&D I go back to my earlier point: why could no British investor see this?

 

Albion mentioned Saab above. GM ruined the car's status as symbol that people liked to own. They took it down market by sticking the body on to a Vauxhall Vectra chassis.

 

There is no way that Tata could introduce such sought after models, from the drawing board up, in the short time that they have owned Jag/LR so they clearly benefitted from models that were previously part way through devlopment. Good on 'em though because I can only wish the Jag/LR marque the success that it really does deserve.

 

On the point about using chassis from other vehicles this is so commonplace when you have a parent automotive company that it hardly merits a mention. If you think about it from the parent's point of view, the customer doesn't see the underbody (as it is known) and hence you can make the difference with the style panels (the body sides, bonnet, roof line etc). Jaguar did, as Athy has said, base the underbody of the X Type on the Ford Mondeo. I drove no end of early X Type development cars around that were ostensibly Mondeos in appearance but had X Type running gear underneath. I believe that the present Ford Fiesta has common underbody with the Fiat 500. The Jaguar X Type 2.0l diesel was a Ford Mondeo diesel breathed on by Jaguar engineers. The Jag 2.7 V6 turbo diesel was developed by Peugeot jointly with end customers such as Jaguar in the XF, Land Rover in the Disco, Toyota and Ford (just to name the ones that I can remember). Alfa Romeo and Lancia will use Fiat underbodies. Toyota Aygo, Citroen C1 and Peugeot 107 are the same vehicle. Vauxhall Movano vans are badge engineered Renault vans and so it goes on and on. You cannot really wonder at companies sharing technology and components rather than re-inventing the wheel every time.

The recently trumpeted announcement of Tata's new upcoming engine plant is probably more about the fact that their agreement to use Ford/Jaguar/Land Rover engines from Ford's Bridgend engine plant will be coming to an end and Tata will have to source engines elsewhere, than it is investment in the UK.

Unfortunately, as I have said before, there was no company in the UK automotive field that had the sort of money that Ford wanted for JLR (about £1.5 billion I believe) so, yet once more, the ownership passes to other foreign investors. We haven't had a wholly UK owned major car company here for many years.

Roger

[Doorman]

Me too. Our bean counters & reps got 'rewards' for this years performance. Design, build & QA got Christmas lunch.

 

Another great example of arse road rewards! Whilst it takes a team to run a company, let's not under value the main players.

 

I do recall one post on another thread some time ago, whereby the forum member remarked that even though he was part of a cutting edge team of aircraft engineers, his friend, a chef, earned far more than he did.

 

And it wasn't Gordon "Effing" Ramsey either.

 

Mike

[Doorman]

I'm not sure this sort of thing can be blamed on the Tories alone. The rich-poor gap widened considerably under Labour.

 

 

Yes, quite probably because Phoney Blair was an advocate of Tsar Thatcher's totalitarian dogma.

 

Mike

[WotEver]

I do recall one post on another thread some time ago, whereby the forum member remarked that even though he was part of a cutting edge team of aircraft engineers, his friend, a chef, earned far more than he did.

A friend of mine, a pilot with BA, was most upset when he found out in conversation one day that he earned less than the assistant manager of the Nuneaton branch of Sainsbury's.

 

Tony

[Athy]

A friend of mine, a pilot with BA, was most upset when he found out in conversation one day that he earned less than the assistant manager of the Nuneaton branch of Sainsbury's.

He gets much better views though.

[Dominic M]

There is no way that Tata could introduce such sought after models, from the drawing board up, in the short time that they have owned Jag/LR so they clearly benefitted from models that were previously part way through devlopment. Good on 'em though because I can only wish the Jag/LR marque the success that it really does deserve.

 

On the point about using chassis from other vehicles this is so commonplace when you have a parent automotive company that it hardly merits a mention. If you think about it from the parent's point of view, the customer doesn't see the underbody (as it is known) and hence you can make the difference with the style panels (the body sides, bonnet, roof line etc). Jaguar did, as Athy has said, base the underbody of the X Type on the Ford Mondeo. I drove no end of early X Type development cars around that were ostensibly Mondeos in appearance but had X Type running gear underneath. I believe that the present Ford Fiesta has common underbody with the Fiat 500. The Jaguar X Type 2.0l diesel was a Ford Mondeo diesel breathed on by Jaguar engineers. The Jag 2.7 V6 turbo diesel was developed by Peugeot jointly with end customers such as Jaguar in the XF, Land Rover in the Disco, Toyota and Ford (just to name the ones that I can remember). Alfa Romeo and Lancia will use Fiat underbodies. Toyota Aygo, Citroen C1 and Peugeot 107 are the same vehicle. Vauxhall Movano vans are badge engineered Renault vans and so it goes on and on. You cannot really wonder at companies sharing technology and components rather than re-inventing the wheel every time.

The recently trumpeted announcement of Tata's new upcoming engine plant is probably more about the fact that their agreement to use Ford/Jaguar/Land Rover engines from Ford's Bridgend engine plant will be coming to an end and Tata will have to source engines elsewhere, than it is investment in the UK.

Unfortunately, as I have said before, there was no company in the UK automotive field that had the sort of money that Ford wanted for JLR (about £1.5 billion I believe) so, yet once more, the ownership passes to other foreign investors. We haven't had a wholly UK owned major car company here for many years.

Roger

I agree with you. But Saab's niche in the "upmarket" bracket was destroyed by that shift to using Vauxhall base units. Their natural market moved away to Mercedes and similar. Their public were aware and did care.

[starman]

Saab's niche in the "upmarket" bracket was destroyed by that shift to using Vauxhall base units. Their natural market moved away to Mercedes and similar. Their public were aware and did care.

 

Completely true; as a Saab enthusiast and past owner of a number of 'real' Saabs I was mortified by the GM based versions. But the sad fact is that Saab since it was subsequently closed down by GM as part of its retrenchment has completely failed to find the financial and commercial backing to rebuild itself as an independent manufacturer.

We might not like it but the motor industry is now a global business; every project is, as Albion says, some sort of joint venture between manufacturers because the cost of development, even of an engine range let alone a vehicle, is so massive. These links are at every level, not just the obvious ones.

To ask why no British company could finance the future development of Jaguar/LR is, I'm afraid, to fail to understand this. Even Tata, once the present model range needs replacement, will have to follow the same route of joint projects and shared development costs with other firms.

To be honest, the Brits missed the boat way, way back - probably immediately after the war. By the 1960s we were relatively small scale as an international car manufacturer compared with GM, Ford, Toyota, Fiat etc. The way we mismanaged the industry after that just made things worse.

[Rebotco]

Completely true; as a Saab enthusiast and past owner of a number of 'real' Saabs I was mortified by the GM based versions. But the sad fact is that Saab since it was subsequently closed down by GM as part of its retrenchment has completely failed to find the financial and commercial backing to rebuild itself as an independent manufacturer.

We might not like it but the motor industry is now a global business; every project is, as Albion says, some sort of joint venture between manufacturers because the cost of development, even of an engine range let alone a vehicle, is so massive. These links are at every level, not just the obvious ones.

To ask why no British company could finance the future development of Jaguar/LR is, I'm afraid, to fail to understand this. Even Tata, once the present model range needs replacement, will have to follow the same route of joint projects and shared development costs with other firms.

To be honest, the Brits missed the boat way, way back - probably immediately after the war. By the 1960s we were relatively small scale as an international car manufacturer compared with GM, Ford, Toyota, Fiat etc. The way we mismanaged the industry after that just made things worse.

 

I'm bored! Anyone ever seen one of these?

 

Brian

[Dominic M]

I'm bored! Anyone ever seen one of these?

 

Brian

Well, you might be bored, but I think this is a fascinating discussion, and directly relevant to the original thrust of the topic. If you're bored by it, no one is forcing you to read it, let alone contribute to it in such a pointless negative way.

Edited November 26, 2011 by Dominic M

[Rebotco]

Well, you might be bored, but I think this is a fascinating discussion, and directly relevant to the original thrust of the topic. If you're bored by it, no one is forcing you to read it, let alone contribute to it in such a pointless negative way.

 

You're wrong. The topic is foreign Narrowboats, not cars. It has no relevance whatever to the original question, which was of interest to many of us. It is these later posts that are pointless. If you want to discuss cars, that's fine - but do it on a motoring forum, not a boating one. That's what's boring me.

 

Sorry, can't find a yawning icon!

 

Brian

[Dominic M]

You're wrong. The topic is foreign Narrowboats, not cars. It has no relevance whatever to the original question, which was of interest to many of us. It is these later posts that are pointless. If you want to discuss cars, that's fine - but do it on a motoring forum, not a boating one. That's what's boring me.

 

Sorry, can't find a yawning icon!

 

Brian

The relevance is about British or foreign manufacture. If this is of interest to you, then please post your interesting contribution. Do you have one?

[Rebotco]

The relevance is about British or foreign manufacture. If this is of interest to you, then please post your interesting contribution. Do you have one?

 

Time for bed. Night night.

Brian

[Guest]

You're wrong. The topic is foreign Narrowboats, not cars. It has no relevance whatever to the original question, which was of interest to many of us. It is these later posts that are pointless. If you want to discuss cars, that's fine - but do it on a motoring forum, not a boating one. That's what's boring me.

 

Sorry, can't find a yawning icon!

 

Brian

 

Topics on here often go all over the place especially when they have run as long as this one has. I'm sure posts on motoring forums do exactly the same, they sure do on the ones I subscribe to.

 

If you find posts and threads boring or that they have wandered too far off topic for your liking then the answer is dead simple - just don't read them

[carlt]

the answer is dead simple - just don't read them

Or gently steer them back on topic, without the off-topic whingeing.

 

You're not reading a novel, you know.

 

It is possible for you to change the ending.

[Doorman]

 

 

Sorry, can't find a yawning icon!

 

Brian

 

Have an ice cream instead