Quote:
Originally posted by benz320
This sounds like - "Oh, I was happily selling my product at whatever price I could charge, until competition came along, how horrible for the consumer, he now had a choice! and got much lower prices! what can be worse than that!!".
How can you blame the Japanese for pushing these carmakers into more efficiencies and cost savings? That's good for the consumers, right? Oh, mercedes has been dragged into a race they are not "used to". Well, they better get used to it, and get used to it pretty fast - their market share is dropping, steadily! Sounds like a lazy athlete saying - "Oh, I am used to running 5 minute miles, and in 1902, I used to WIN based on 5 minute miles - but now these harder working athletes have come, and they run 4 minute miles, and that's unfair, I have to work harder now".
Mercedes should pay more attention to quality/reliability issues. They are hitting rock bottom on that (on NEW cars, again, I am not questioning cars older than 10 years). They also better start providing customers with some "value". Do you know that a CD player is an "option" on the M-class? Now come on, don't be SO cheap. Its a 40 grand plus vehicle, give the customer SOMETHING for it. Especially when others are giving FAR more, for the same price (or lesser).
Mercedes is just not as efficient as Toyota or Honda. You can't blame Toyota or Honda for raising the bar. You gotto blame Mercedes for not keeping up.
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I agree with you, but in the same way your statement agreed with mine in an indirect way. Read it again. I may have worded it like I'm blaming the japanese side of the market in a bad way... which I'm not really trying to imply, I'm simply stating that in an indirect way, the japanese efficiency side of things are the cause of some MB quality issues. Sure MB has to deal with it now because it isn't apractice they previously used, and obviously aren't as good at the efficiency game as some of the other makes, but like it or not in an indirect effect, the entry of the japanese competition is what made MB start pulling back their anchors.
Your quote you were making of "I can sell my product at whatever price I want" is/was partially true. I mean, obviously they weren't pushing prices out into the side of being rediculous but they were pretty much setting their own standards in the market because of the lack of competition... people didn't have all these other companies to compare to. Because of this they were allowed to spend freely enough to build at such high standards of quality and make profit. The entry of the japanese market was set as efficient and smart right from the start. That's the best plan of attack, and so MB starts pulling their anchors in and playing a new efficiency game because of it.. if they didn't they'd be in even worse shape.
To clear things up, I didn't mean to say that the japanese market should be blamed and put down because of the drop in MB quality, but that simply the effect of their entry threw MB off... which is clearly MB's fault... but none the less it happened.