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Old 09-12-2013, 10:34 AM   #192
wakespeak

 
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Drives: 2020 ZL1 1LE
Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: Austin, Texas
Posts: 1,325
I would say the Oshawa and other Canadian operations were created to work around the health care and pension costs of US workers.

We're past that now as everyone, including GM, builds cars that can be assembled easily, and therefore successfully in terms of quality and consistency, by robots and humans.

The current Camaro's Zeta platform happened to be designed in Australia. The Epsilon platform, the best front drive platform currently, was designed in Germany. It seems US engineering leadership was a miss until recently too.

In the middle of this mess there were bright spots of US leadership that made the Corvette and the Cadillacs world class. The Volt is a very cool product that will help GM balance sales of performance vehicles and trucks.

The Alpha platform was designed under US leadership and looks to be fantastic. Somehow engineers were allowed to actually design a great car platform in the US. This coupled with a cleared stack on the manufacturing side points to a really good competitive position for GM. The next Camaro should be excellent as long as the same guys that brought us the current Camaros and Cadillacs still own the product decisions.
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