Interesting documentary comparing British to German (car) industry

[Tempest 0]

Just watched this documentray on the iPlayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03866cj/Das_Auto_The_Germans_Their_Cars_and_Us/

 

I feel completely for the comments made about how engineers are disregarded in the UK compared to Germany, where I naturally started a career as an engineer, only to end in the UK amidst a nation of bankers and insurance brokers, which is probably why Britain was hit more severely by the recent crash compared to Germany.

 

Biased in places, of course, but largely true, and worth watching. Why else do we not drive Allegros and other highlights of British industry on this forum :lol:?

 

Nicely summarised, too, that Britain does and did have the skills to make beautiful and good cars, but largely down to mismanagement (still blatantly obvious even in today´s British conglomerates, not to mention in government, where you see loads of highly paid CEO that are too incompetent to even lace their own shoes) and the unions fighting their petty little, typically British, class war (a left-over from Victorian ages gone by).

 

The documentary fails to mention that

 

a) BMW actually took over Rover because they also wanted the Landrover technology, a segment they would have grandly missed out on; sadly the public now buying more X5s et al than Landrovers (although that may be changing slowly, but Landrover is no longer British!)

 

and

 

b) that China, currently Germany´s largest export market, thanks to which they managed to survive the financial crisis, is now slowing down, and that this is already predicted in Germany to have a massive effect on the German economy. It does raise the general question whether our model of capitalism, blindly placing all our bets on continued economic growth, is ultimately going to fail in a catastrophic manner.

 

and

 

c) the Euro was Germany´s biggest trump card to keep its exports going beginning of the noughties, when due to the strength of the D-Mark German exports were becoming too expensive, and the introduction of the Euro effectively devalued the currency (my parents as so many other people living in Germany at the time will be able to testify how all important daily commodities like food and clothing became twice as expensive).

 

and

 

d) the documentary fails to report on the how German trade unions have had to swallow major setbacks, too (Nokia closing shop, Opel closing factories - OK, that´s American, so who cares :lol: - VW renegotiating or trying to renegotiate worker contracts, but thanks largely due to a veto-shareholding by the state of Lower Saxony, these attempts are quickly thwarted, and yet VW manages to stay profitable with a Winterkorn on 15 million Euros a year!), and how it´s not all threat rosy in Germany, and that that is not all down to Germany having to bail out countries like Greece and Spain.

 

Still, as an engineer I would much prefer to have an interesting engineering job, but in a nation of bankers that will probably stay a major challenge.

 

Tempest

[James. 9]

I've literally just finished watching my pre-recorded copy this too Eric. How bizarre !

 

I agree with your closing remark. It's hard to get accross to the kids at school the importance of engineering. They're all surrounded by clock watching office monkeys so they see that as the accepted career choice.

 

But when you have such levels of institutionalized incompetance coupled with an out dated desire to hang on to class, it's no wonder there's been such a massive decline in manufacturing and engineering.

 

That said, we have some really good, forward thinking kids. I just wish there was more opportunities for them down the line.

[Portent 0]

I watched this a couple of days ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. I agree on the sentiments that engineering should be regarded higher in this country.

 

I work in IT for banks and the signs are very worrying on the decline of the financial industry in this country. So while people decry the bankers be careful what you wish for unless there is something else to replace it.

 

It is a huge shame that none of the Hagee British car makers managed to survive. What's the largest UK car company now? Caterham?

 

The euro was massively beneficial to Germany, as was the post war regeneration.

Edited August 6, 2013 by Portent

[moneypit23 0]

It's hard to get accross to the kids at school the importance of engineering. They're all surrounded by clock watching office monkeys so they see that as the accepted career choice.

 

That said, we have some really good, forward thinking kids. I just wish there was more opportunities for them down the line.

 

I know this only too well but there is a widespread misconception in the UK about what engineering actually is.

 

As a teacher of Design & Technology (but Engineering as of September :)), I have deal with children and their parents who think that engineering involves a blue overall, getting dirty and being male. The idea that pretty much everything we have today only exists thanks to the efforts of engineers and on-going technological advances is lost and breaking the chain of thinking is going to take a long time.

 

Having said that, there is a big drive to promote STEM (science, technology, engineering & maths) subjects and when I introduced GCSE engineering at my previous school it was very successful and attracted, without sounding too harsh, better kids.

[seanl82 23]

I think thats true too. I'm a Weapons Engineering Technician in the Navy, and it may sound bias again but I truly believe/know that as those coming through basic trade training are certainly the smarter and level headed ones. There are obviously exceptions, but in the large part those that choose engineering as a career have far more drive, commitment and enthusiasm than those who choose an (IMO) lesser career.

The fact that they will achieve a Foundation Degree with distinction guaranteed, as well as years of experience gives them the jump over those that decide to go to Uni as well I think. If they are smart enough to join as an Officer, a full Degree with honours is what they WILL achieve.

The Armed Forces are on a downward spiral like most other industries due to penny pinching bureaucrats, and there is now talk of scrapping the Foundation Degree and making the training more centred around specific roles. This will only diminish the level of competence and intelligence within the Engineering Branch, which really doesn't help matters in the long run, but does save a couple of quid short term. Every person going through professional training and doing the Foundation Degree now has to fill in a questionnaire and are asked as a class what they think about the proposal. Rest assured everyone is fighting against it, as its the only reason 90% of people go onto the course. the measly £120 extra coupled with the responsibility of a Section Head certainly doesn't make it worthwhile, especially as they have changed the the Pension terms as well now!

As far as the Class thing goes, this is more evident in the Navy than probably any other Job, although they call it "Tradition." Officers, especially those higher up the food chain, certainly look down on us working class "Ratings," and although they make out they listen to opinions of the "men on the ground," when push comes to shove they follow up on what they think is best. It really is a large part of the Navy this divide in Class, and one of the biggest reasons we have fallen behind most other nations now.

[davidwort 0]

Actually, I didn't think it was a very well put together program, there's some interesting points in there but it seemed to jump from one fairly irrelevant BBC archive program/news clip to another (perhaps a result of the BBC finally having to do a bit of belt tightening itself) Sadly, the result was a bit poor, not daring to touch on the (possibly dodgy legal side) final owners of the Rover Group and missing so much detail at times it seemed very dumbed down, more play-school than panarama.

VW/Audi, BMW and Mercedes have made plenty of mistakes themselves, and then look at the rest of the european car industry, anyone would think only the British are capable of mis-management.

The one thing I do agree with is the attitude towards engineering in this country, at all social levels, but that is changing, there's thousands of 'graduates' sitting in minimum wage office jobs that would have benefitted greatly from 3 years of training and apprenticeship instead of racking up university fees, and school leavers are starting to cotton-on to this, perhaps there's hope yet!

[craigowl 0]

I thought this program was excellent - probably because many of the ideas conveyed were identical to the ones I had formed watching our and other car industries since about 1965 when I was 20.

My next door neighbour is a retired electrician who grew up in Govan (at school with Sir Alex) and started in the shipyards. He agrees that the class war and smug complacency played a huge part in the decline of our industries. The shipyard owners would not invest in new technology - they were still using early 1900s technologies and everyone was involved in frequent demarcation disputes, e.g. arguing about the 3 trades who would install the porthole whilst the Germans had got one man to do the job and were rapidly pinching our customers, as were nations in the far east.

 

I gave up on British cars in 1972 when we bought a 2nd-generation Opel (early ones were primitive). The quality of the Manta and the Ascona was excellent in comparison to British cars we could afford, and stalled Vauxhalls slump for a good few years. My school pal, who qualified as an engineer, firstly worked at MOD Birtley then went into teaching. Strangely, the only new car he ever bought was an Allegro in 1974! I think he was blinded by the hype that emerged in the British press at the time. Didn't it win some car of the year award? About 5 or 6 years later, his wife put her foot through the rusted floor (permanent water leak into glove box)and the thing became a modern sculpture beside his garage as a clematis grew around it, up it, through it, emerging from a rust hole in the top of one of the front wheel arches. He got a tenner from a guy who took it away for scrap. "Oh how we laughed." His last four cars have been a used Cavalier and three Toyotas. 'Nuff said.

[Wullie 1]

I lived close to the old Rootes factory in Linwood and the workforce spent more time smuggling parts out of the place than they did working. A wander round the perimeter fence would usually provide the spare you were looking for.

The "them and us" attitude didn't help and strikes were a weekly occurrence. A few friends who left other jobs for the "Big wages" left again when they realised they were getting less money due to the continual strikes, most of which were over petty matters but would result in most of the factory walking out in "sympathy". As a result production and quality were non existent. Not really surprising that it closed.

[Jim 2]

I know Top Gear is largely irrelevant these days when it comes to more serious matters but the segment they did a few years ago about cars built under communism was interesting, as they refer to the state of the British car industry of the time - especially the part about people being on strike, and the quality of the workmanship. Quite an eye opener for someone who didn't live through that era and didn't realise how we really just shot ourselves in the foot with our attitude as a country.

[Kevin Bacon 5]

British Leyland were an embarrassment and their cars were just utter shee ite. My family owned a fair few of them. The day we bought an Audi 80 SC back in 1984 was a complete revelation!

[bmwcompact 10]

I though like davidwort that this programme wasnt put together very well. Ive been a regular visitor to Germany for the last 20yrs, so there is no mystery to me in the success of the German economy and motor industry. If you didnt see it, watch 'Make me a German' with Justin Rowlatt and family shown last night on the BBC. It showed in an hour what I would struggle to explain about German lifestyle, attitudes, outlooks, values etc. If you see and digest the programmes message you will understand how different Germans and Brits are, and why they are more successful. Behaviour in the workplace which is condoned/accepted/tolerated here and which is totally against the interests of the company's future profitability and success would not be allowed in Germany. Its not just the management that would stop it, colleague/workmates would also not accept it: behaviour that harms the company harms everyone in the company.

[craigowl 0]

I haven't plucked up the courage to tell my wife she should be doing over 4 hours of housework a day!

Yes, the class system (them/us) has riven the UK's industries for so long. Seeing how others like the Germans were forging(!) ahead because of their different philosophy in the workplace could have saved so many industries here. Too late now.

[bmwcompact 10]

Though you may have said it in jest, I think you have just demonstrated one of the differences between Brits and Germans. 4 hours cooking and cleaning is what they do on average not what they are required to do. They do it because they want to do it, they do it cos it shows their concern for their family, cos they think preparing real food is better than microwaving a ready meal. Its the same with child care, they see it as important that they raise their kids and instill their values rather than placing the kids with a childminder and going back to work asap. And because they as individuals see these as important, the whole of society supports this.

[Tempest 0]

I think it is safe to say that based on my years of having grown up in Germany (80s and early 90s, when a single parent salary could still sustain a whole family, thus allowing one parent, usually the mother, to stay at home and look after the household and kids; but that has changed since the intro of the Euro with German salaries effectively halved), and still speaking to and visiting quite a few of my carmates that things have changed a LOT in Germany, and they do not necessarily match the cliche-driven documentaries that the BBC seem to be firing at us as of recent (for whatever reason, politically motivated? What is the deeper reason behind these documentaries?).

 

Child care centres (Kitas in German, stands for Kindertagesstätten) are expensive, they suffer the same problems we have with day care centres, families have to calculate whether it is cheaper to send your kid to a Kita and let mum work or not, but the biggest problem is there aren't enough of them. Germany's family minister does want to encourage mums to get jobs (as even in conservative Germany things are changing in that women are demanding more rights, and one of them is the right to a job, something that was almost unheard of when I grew up there) but acknowledges there are problems with integrating worklife with child support. Germany in effect is behind us and the times in general in this respect. Now it could be said that in the days when a family did not need to send both parents out to work (because salaries were sufficient AND materialstic demands were not as high as they are today!) things were better, there were fewer people needing to go onto the job market, leaving a better choice of jobs for those that did work thus offering more job satisfaction and so forth. You can maybe start to see why Germans were more motivated to do their jobs ...

 

Today, however, I know enough Germans that are just trotting to work everyday like we do in GB, not enjoying their jobs, but doing the work because they simply need the money.

 

Times are changing, and a lot of the current situation we see in Germany through the BBC stem from times gone by, that do not necessarily exist like that any more even in Germany, and certainly not in the UK, because we have increasingly become more materialistic and earn less money. This trend, as always, starts in the US, and gradually works its way eastwards, first through to the UK (no language, well almost no :lol:, barrier), before it transfers to the Netherlands quiet easily (hardly a language barrier in the NL, everyone speaks English), then give or take 10 years before it hits Germany. I have seen this happen so many times.

 

In a nutshell, another biased take on Germans to probably hit Brits with a stick with. Question remains: Why? Cameron? If him, maybe he should become like Merkel, and feel the hate from a desperate German nation, who although they have elections looming on the horizon, will have no alternative but to reelect Merkel!

 

Tempest

[craigowl 0]

Though you may have said it in jest, I think you have just demonstrated one of the differences between Brits and Germans. 4 hours cooking and cleaning is what they do on average not what they are required to do. They do it because they want to do it, they do it cos it shows their concern for their family, cos they think preparing real food is better than microwaving a ready meal. Its the same with child care, they see it as important that they raise their kids and instill their values rather than placing the kids with a childminder and going back to work asap. And because they as individuals see these as important, the whole of society supports this.

 

Sure - I got that message from the documentary.

My wife is an Irish/English farmer's daughter and is a gem. She is a free spirit and I and our 3 adult children would not swap her for a teutonic automaton even if she looked like Heidi Klum - nor would scores of people who know her. I admire many things German - but only so far!

 

Her parents on the farm had German POWs working for them. They said they had never experienced such forgiving friendliness and were given Christmas presents and included in the family festivities.

We still get a Christmas card here from Karl in his 80s. He was captured as a 16-year old horseman at the end of the war.

Willi (from the U-boat pens) never went back to Germany, taught my wife - as a child - to play tennis and attended our wedding. As my mother in law said - "they were only boys - how could you not treat them as such".

Oops! - I mentioned the war.

Edited August 7, 2013 by craigowl

[craigowl 0]

I think it is safe to say that based on my years of having grown up in Germany (80s and early 90s, when a single parent salary could still sustain a whole family, thus allowing one parent, usually the mother, to stay at home and look after the household and kids; but that has changed since the intro of the Euro with German salaries effectively halved), and still speaking to and visiting quite a few of my carmates that things have changed a LOT in Germany, and they do not necessarily match the cliche-driven documentaries that the BBC seem to be firing at us as of recent (for whatever reason, politically motivated? What is the deeper reason behind these documentaries?).

 

Child care centres (Kitas in German, stands for Kindertagesstätten) are expensive, they suffer the same problems we have with day care centres, families have to calculate whether it is cheaper to send your kid to a Kita and let mum work or not, but the biggest problem is there aren't enough of them. Germany's family minister does want to encourage mums to get jobs (as even in conservative Germany things are changing in that women are demanding more rights, and one of them is the right to a job, something that was almost unheard of when I grew up there) but acknowledges there are problems with integrating worklife with child support. Germany in effect is behind us and the times in general in this respect. Now it could be said that in the days when a family did not need to send both parents out to work (because salaries were sufficient AND materialstic demands were not as high as they are today!) things were better, there were fewer people needing to go onto the job market, leaving a better choice of jobs for those that did work thus offering more job satisfaction and so forth. You can maybe start to see why Germans were more motivated to do their jobs ...

 

Today, however, I know enough Germans that are just trotting to work everyday like we do in GB, not enjoying their jobs, but doing the work because they simply need the money.

 

Times are changing, and a lot of the current situation we see in Germany through the BBC stem from times gone by, that do not necessarily exist like that any more even in Germany, and certainly not in the UK, because we have increasingly become more materialistic and earn less money. This trend, as always, starts in the US, and gradually works its way eastwards, first through to the UK (no language, well almost no :lol:, barrier), before it transfers to the Netherlands quiet easily (hardly a language barrier in the NL, everyone speaks English), then give or take 10 years before it hits Germany. I have seen this happen so many times.

 

In a nutshell, another biased take on Germans to probably hit Brits with a stick with. Question remains: Why? Cameron? If him, maybe he should become like Merkel, and feel the hate from a desperate German nation, who although they have elections looming on the horizon, will have no alternative but to reelect Merkel!

 

Tempest

 

Yes - interesting documentary, but I felt some one-sidedness too. Are there no slovenly Germans? Maybe they can blame the Turks or some other nationality for that trait?

[Tempest 0]

Reading the recent press in Germany, things to bear in mind when you get inundated in pro-German documentaries is that:

 

1. Siemens, traditionally largest employer for electrical engineers has been having trouble since 2008 (started with massive corruption affairs, new CEO had to sort it out, who in turn just literally 3 days ago was sacked and replaced by an very conservative new CEO, who industry analysts already state will not be up to the job to modernise Siemens to place it firmly on the global stage, and given Siemens can no longer survive on the German market alone, this does not bode well).

 

2. The German car industry can no longer survive on the German market, as a matter of fact the market has shrunk last year by 6%, as German are no longer or can no longer afford to buy new cars.

 

3. German press recently reporting (this is a first!) that the British economy is picking up quite dramatically, suggesting it is doing better than Germany even!

 

Tempest