A Woman at the Wheel

The woman who is taking over at General Motors has said that she will "focus on quality", a damning admission if there ever was one. One would have assumed that the company had been focused on quality all along, but it seems that assumption was incorrect. The truth is that, as usual, "the proof is in the pudding", and for the last 40 years, at least, GM cars have been largely rubbish. So, only lunatic-fringe super patriots heeded the call to "buy American", while most Americans joined the rest of the world in buying Asian and European cars.

Ms. Barra has also said that she intends to reduce the time between design of a new vehicle and its rolling out of the plant. Boy, I thought that was part of the problem; the fact that shoddy workmanship was the result of trying to put a new product on the market too soon, without enough time to test it properly. The woman has been at GM for 30 of her 49 years, so, one way or another, she has been part of the company's failure. Of course, she deserves the chance to prove me wrong, although I must confess that I really won't find out for myself, since I'll continue to drive my tried-and-true Japanese car.

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