ERD50
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
And government mandates such as 5mph impact bumpers, air bags, bumper heights, emission standards, CAFE requirements, etc. One I was personally involved in was the CHIMSL (center high mounted stop lamp). Can't remember how this became a government mandate but all of a sudden we had to engineer this into every car. You can't believe how much time and effort this took and the dollars required to meet the goals and deadlines all set up by our government. I am not bitching about the requirements, but we had to jump through hoops to make this happen within the time limits allowed. It just makes me sick to think of how much stuff we had to work around that the foreign mfg got a free ride. Sorry, I'll stop!
Please don't stop - this is good stuff you can't get from newspapers or the 10:00 news.
Q - didn't the foreign mfgs need to make those changes to import their cars too? I assume so, so I'm not getting why this was unfair to GM versus Toyota-Honda etc. I don't doubt the timeline and bureaucracy was a problem, although I do think the high stop lights are a good idea overall.
-ERD50