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May 10, 2006 22:15:02 GMT
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I'd agree with both points here to some degree. Admittedly there are ways in which modern car companies have settled into trends and are designing cars similar to one another, not identical by any means but there are ways in which certain norms have developed and what doesn't fit in is washed away. But if you follow a sort of pluralist approach then you could say that's only because those norms are bought by buyers and what doesn't fit in doesn't sell. Admittedly to see any industry in pluralist terms of "what the public demands, the public gets" is extremely naive, but looking at any industry in Marxist terms is similarly skewed, although with something like the car industry in the West you do have to be cynical in my opinion, as what new car a person buys is not determined purely by what car they want, but by the money they can spend, the deals and offers given to them by dealers, the way that certain cars are marketed, which has a great effect on the way people percieve the cars, thus a certain aspect of car design might become norm for other reason than because those aspects necesarrily sell better than rival aspects, and that's even before you take cost constraints and legal/safety implications.
But anyway, my point is that all this is not a new thing. In 50s America, there was a phase of big tailfins and lots of chrome, which would mean that to someone who isn't interested in such cars, they could all look more or less the same. Similarly, to someone who isn't interested, the Standard 8 might be confusable with the Hillman Minx or Moskvitch 403 of the same era, despite the fact that to someone who knows such cars they have quite distinct characteristics. Similarly, to use one slightly random example, to me violins all look largely the same, I have no particular interest them, thus I don't really see, or even particularly hear, the differences between them unless they're pointed out to me. Similarly I reckon, if modern cars aren't really your thing, and when you look at them you're thinking that you'd much rather be looking at something retro, you're far less likely to notice the finer points of each individual modern car. So to me cars 'all looking the same these days' isn't really a new thing, and is pretty subjective, just as a retro car fan might think all modern hatches are anonymous jellymoulds, someone who appreciates modern cars but isn't really interested in anything older than the Sierra Cosworth or Lotus Cortina might think that fifties cars are all pretty dull to look at, it's just down to how you look at them.
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"He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy!"
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May 10, 2006 22:36:50 GMT
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apparantly gm put the china matiz doors on there car and it fitted perfectly. also the vw boss said the kgb brake into their computers every so often. theres a big website somewhere.
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May 10, 2006 23:01:21 GMT
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The KGB? Surely it wouldn't be the KGB nowadays, I thought they had been disbanded and incorporated into the GAI, the Russian National Police after the end of the Cold War, which was the reason that many former KGB thugs ended up joining the Russian Mafia and similar organisations where they could do pretty much the same job (without a state salary, and they'd have to supply their own Volga,) but could otherwise carry on bullying the public, while some of the more articulate and politically savvy KGB men went into the new capitalist state, either staying on in the GAI or going on to become government minsters like Vladmir Putin. Or was this during the latter days of the Soviet system, in which case I can see why government employed agents would be hacking into West German companies' data.
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"He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy!"
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Stolen blue prints.....DarrenW
@darrenw
Club Retro Rides Member 74
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There's also a Chinese copy (or VERY similar shape) of the current Rolls Royce isn't there? The "Red Flag" model
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vanpeebles
Part of things
I am eastbound in pursuit of a white Lamborghini, this is not a recording.
Posts: 980
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the landwind isnt a copy. it was an isuzu, then the vauxhall. GM has a stake in the company that owns the landwind
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dp
Posted a lot
DP Race Tech
Posts: 1,044
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datsuncherry in da house: But what is interesting is how many Chinese car manufacturers are producing cars today in huge volumesWhat's more frightening is a bunch of car manufacturer moving production to China, mostly because there are some serious import restrictions by the Chinese goverment on cars to make it interesting for the car companies to move there since it's one of the biggest growing market in the world right now. Both Volvo & Porsche has recently started production of "China ONLY" cars to feed the market, Volvo makes the S80 sedan since that's what the Chinese buyer wants and Porsche is soon starting production of the Cayene to satisfy the Chinese market, how long will it take before they get the production lines up and running at a pace when they are able to get quality up to "Euro" standards and start to "export" cars to Europe & US , guess if they will lower the prize of the cars to compensate for the lower labour costs in China? I guess we'll be seeing more & more cars and motorcycles coming our way from China, right now we in the moped biz are beeing flooded by Chinese "JUNK" that's sold over the Internet for peanuts but when the buyer get a problem or need parts there's almost NO support from the web sites and they tell customers to contact a "Moped or MC dealer near you and they'll help you out", we can't get parts and everybody get upsett..... Another China copy story. I have a friend a Ericsson that told me, 7 days after the release of the Sony-Ericsson Walkman W800i phone a perfect copy of the phone could be bought in Shanghai for $99.-, the phone was 99% the same as the real stuff, only difference was all the spelling errors in the manual..... DP says: China made can be good & cheap, but sadly most are not.....
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Its all pretty scary to me, and these bikes (and cars) sound like a false economy to me, and sound/seem more disposable than modern standards.
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it doesn't matter if it's a Morris Marina or a Toyota Celica - it's what you do with it that counts
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China worries me on a lot of levels. Virtually every toy or item of clothing my kids have is made there, and it's not like we really have the choice to buy something a little more expensive made elsewhere. Manufacturers will shift their production there for anything as soon as they can, as China's lower wages, material costs and lesser environmental/health and safety standards mean greater profits.
Read something interesting once about how car models are made there, the fantastic detail on new ones is all thanks to the Chinese. Not sure if we'd be happy to live how they do though, and it makes me think about buying them.
They're using up huge amounts of resources, hence rise in price of steel etc. Heard something last night about some of China facing huge water shortages as the big cities/manufacturing areas get priority.
Argument is why should this growth be restricted and let them have lesser quality of life than us? Is it reasonable for us to live our comfortable lives and they do not?
Apologies for what may be unfounded supposition above.
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May 11, 2006 10:25:38 GMT
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The new Red Flag limo - ostentatious? Nah.
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May 11, 2006 11:57:55 GMT
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China worries me on a lot of levels. Virtually every toy or item of clothing my kids have is made there, and it's not like we really have the choice to buy something a little more expensive made elsewhere. Manufacturers will shift their production there for anything as soon as they can, as China's lower wages, material costs and lesser environmental/health and safety standards mean greater profits. Read something interesting once about how car models are made there, the fantastic detail on new ones is all thanks to the Chinese. Not sure if we'd be happy to live how they do though, and it makes me think about buying them. They're using up huge amounts of resources, hence rise in price of steel etc. Heard something last night about some of China facing huge water shortages as the big cities/manufacturing areas get priority. Argument is why should this growth be restricted and let them have lesser quality of life than us? Is it reasonable for us to live our comfortable lives and they do not? Apologies for what may be unfounded supposition above. This: is gliding slightly off topic but my probs are how the UK is doing itself in, Admittedly I'm no expert but the way i see it, its our high taxes that are crippling us, Fuel, income and VAT taxes spring to mind, i'm not sure this money is spent properly either. It seems too the UK has become complacent like the tortoise and the hare! Like said already consumers now often choose by price. Luxuries are less, cost of living is more, result - manufacturing moved abroad to compete, and for many products, quality is lost.
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it doesn't matter if it's a Morris Marina or a Toyota Celica - it's what you do with it that counts
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May 11, 2006 23:02:57 GMT
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China worries me on a lot of levels. Virtually every toy or item of clothing my kids have is made there, and it's not like we really have the choice to buy something a little more expensive made elsewhere. Manufacturers will shift their production there for anything as soon as they can, as China's lower wages, material costs and lesser environmental/health and safety standards mean greater profits. Read something interesting once about how car models are made there, the fantastic detail on new ones is all thanks to the Chinese. Not sure if we'd be happy to live how they do though, and it makes me think about buying them. They're using up huge amounts of resources, hence rise in price of steel etc. Heard something last night about some of China facing huge water shortages as the big cities/manufacturing areas get priority. Argument is why should this growth be restricted and let them have lesser quality of life than us? Is it reasonable for us to live our comfortable lives and they do not? Apologies for what may be unfounded supposition above. See I reckon you've touched on one of the big problems with international capitalism (and the Chinese state are despite their protestations a good example of state-capitalism, not of communism.) For the people in board rooms around the world who decide such things, it is an entirely reasonable idea that the underpaid, overworked, systematically oppressed people of China and other third world states build their products on the cheap, because if that happens then profit margins increase, the men at the top of the big companies (but not by any means the people nearer the bottom who carry on as normal) get richer and richer, and if the consumer's lucky they might even get a slight price decrease. Basically this is an international version of the capitalism you see in modern Britain, wherein in order that a few people can be fantastically wealthy, millions of others must sweat their ar*es off day in, day out, just to pay the bills, every day deluding themselves that it's OK because they're really quite well off and respectable, they live in the suburbs and are well spoken after all, not like an inner city prole, and in any case they just know that one day their luck will change, and through continuing to be a subservient lemming, doing as they're told and not rocking the boat, their luck will change, they'll come into money, and they too will be rich and free and able to oppress everyone else who obviously is inferior to them now, when of course very few people ever do such great social mobility, it's just that those who do are paraded as an example of hard working entrepaneurs so that the rest of us will get deeper into the trap trying to follow them. Now, putting that into the international scale again, it is necessary for big international firms to thrive that somewhere there's an army of workers being oppressed, (and lets get the right definition of "oppressed" down, I'm not talking about blatant slavery or Oliver Twist style workhouses here, oppression can go from relatively subtle forms of deliberate inequality right up to the monstrous, obvious stuff, so if I'm overstating things then that word isn't how I'm doing it.) and on the international scale that means that the big bosses need never meet the people they're conning out of money for a second (and again, by the very nature of capitalism, they are being conned, as are all of us who have nothing to sell but our labour, whether you consider yourself middle class or not, regardless of whether you went to university or not, and regardless of whether you speak the Queen's English or speak largely in working class regional slang and colloquialsim like, well, me! At the heart of capitalism in surplus value, i.e. the workers' pay is less than the value of the work that they do, in order that the bosses then make profit. It is necessary, and to some it is even desireable, but it is nonetheless by its nature an inequality.) For an international firm, who's aim is naturally to spend as little as possible to earn as much profit as possible, including on paying the workers, it then stands to reason that there is no reason to built their products in Britain, America or Japan for example, if it costs far more to build the same products in China, Vietnam or Bulgaria. Thus, with more and more big companies looking to compete on an ever more international scale, and the ideas of nationalism, patriotism and supporting local workers outdated and expensive concepts to many big businesses, the decision to use the workers of China, who will work long hours, accept small wages, demand little in the way of pensions, good working conditions, etc, and aren't part of a union because their government wouldn't allow it, is an absolute no brainer compared to the decision to build in Western Europe, where the workers will never in a million years accept the same degree of oppression their Chinese counterparts will. Never on any occasion does any kind of moral standpoint come into it, the big bosses might well think deep down that the conditions in their Chinese factories are terrible, and know that they would never wish those conditions on anyone dear to them, but business is business after all, and it's either that or lose profit. This is the inescapable problem with capitalism in my opinion. While there are capitalists who will take a moral stand, and willfully avoid the cheapest route if it means taking money away from workers who need it much more than they do, there are many millions more who will not do this, as morality is an expensive business, and will often only be done if profit can somehow be regained from it, e.g. the public relations and marketing benefits more than recouperate the losses, such as in the case of certain US car companies who willfully faked 'evidence' and hired experts to claim that it was reckless and irresponsible to fit seatbelts to cars in the 1960s, because they felt that it would be more cost efficient to settle out of court in cases where deaths were found to be caused by the lack of seatbelts, and evidently the adding of seatbelts would not have generated enough good spin to make up for it. All this is just my opinion of course, feel free to disagree anyone who wants to, but I just felt like Spottedlaurel touched on an interesting subject, and felt the need to express one of my own personal dislikes of our capitalist society and its place in a mainly capitalist world, that all manner of oppression and bloody-minded exploitation must take place in order that the privelaged few may be rich, and in the case of international capitalism, it's not just the bosses who benefit, because we consumers of the west grow relatively decedent from the exploitation of our fellow human beings, workers in other countries, through the cheapness of the products they produce owing to their outrageously cheap labour, thus while we're being exploited ourselves, our own desire to have material goods causes us ourselves to become oppressors to people we should be sympathising with, thus the process goes on and gets ever worse.
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"He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy!"
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May 11, 2006 23:19:14 GMT
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Hey, the other side of the coin is that massive wealth is being generated in china and folk are being lifted out of poverty at a rate faster than ever seen before anywhere in the world - ever. You can be sure that there are an awful lot of people in china at all levels of income who are very pleased about the capitalist western economies as they are bringing work, money and prosperity into China at unheard-of levels. Is it 'exploitation of fellow human beings'? I'm not sure.
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1972 Fiat 130 1985 Talbot Alpine 1974 Lancia Beta Saloon 1975 + 1986 Mazda 929 Koop + Wagon 1982 Fiat Argenta 2.0 iniezione elettronica 1977 Toyota Carina TA14 BEST CAR EVER!!!!!!!! 1979 Datsun B310 Sunny 4-dr 1984 Audi 200 Quattro Turbo 1983 Honda Accord 1.6 DX GONE1989 Alfa 75 2.0 TS Mr T says: TREAT YO MOTHER RIGHT!
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Stolen blue prints.....DarrenW
@darrenw
Club Retro Rides Member 74
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May 11, 2006 23:46:15 GMT
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The new Red Flag limo - ostentatious? Nah. That's the one, yeah! ;D
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......and due to the astonishing rate of development and progress in China (and to a certain extent India) there has become a huge serge in demand in petrol, the way things are going the stuff is likely to be obsolete well within our lifetimes......
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Bio-ethanol for the win - considerably higher octane rating ;D
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Hey, the other side of the coin is that massive wealth is being generated in china and folk are being lifted out of poverty at a rate faster than ever seen before anywhere in the world - ever. You can be sure that there are an awful lot of people in china at all levels of income who are very pleased about the capitalist western economies as they are bringing work, money and prosperity into China at unheard-of levels. Is it 'exploitation of fellow human beings'? I'm not sure. It's an interesting point, I supose the question is whether everyone really is benefitting from China's new wealth, and by how much. What I mean is, are the people lower down the social chain really that much better off working for big Westerm firms? Other than that, as in any capitalist country, the rate at which their wealth grows brings further opportunity for inequality, because China despite appearances does have a middle class, plus a 'communist' party ruling class, and I have a feeling that the wealth there will be distributed in the same way as it was here during the industrial revolution, or during the former Soviet States transition to capitalism: The country gains enormous material wealth, but most of it remains in the hands of a powerful minority, with whatever's left gradually trickling down and benefitting the people in the lower ranks, first the middle classes, then the workers. What this means is that there is some increase in wealth over time for the working classes, but there's still no equality, becuase despite the increased prosperity being dependant on the effort of the workers as much as it is dependant on the factories and machinery they work on, the people with control over these machines take a vast slice of the profit, grow wealthy and comfortable, while the workers recieve the rewards for their efforts at a much slower and lesser rate, with every little step towards a comfortable existance for the working classes pointed to as a sign that everything's equal and we're all bourgeious and comfortable, (a sort of "look, the workers can drive cars now, and they have televisions, so what are they complaining about?!" scenario, along with the assumption that under a non-capitalist way of life, the workers wouldn't be able to own any material goods, which may have been largely true of Soviet Russia, but it infuriates me that the mere mention of a more equalitarian system brings with it comments like "well if we weren't capitalist you wouldn't be able to own a car, or have a TV, or anything! Is that what you want?", which is a ridiculous, seriously flawed argument often put accross by people in order that they don't have to bother thinking about other ways of life I reckon, brand all ideaologies except your own as totalitarian autocracies where everyone's poor and oppressed and you have an excuse to keep your head buried in the sand and believe the false concsiouness that we're all free and equal.) when in fact the relative rift between the workers and the bosses is ever increasing, and even if the workers are now better off than they were as totalitarian-ruled peasants in the case of China, they're still being ripped off, and their wealth effectively capped in order to provide cheap material goods to the West. I suppose the important question, as mentioned above, is just how well off have the Chinese working classes become, and does capitalism benefit them enough to justify the ways that it also exploits and oppresses them.
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"He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy!"
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Stolen blue prints.....BenzBoy
@benzboy
Club Retro Rides Member 7
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May 12, 2006 10:16:13 GMT
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......and due to the astonishing rate of development and progress in China (and to a certain extent India) there has become a huge serge in demand in petrol, the way things are going the stuff is likely to be obsolete well within our lifetimes...... Good point, and I think the world is pretty concerned about oil supplies drying up sooner than expected. As autohausdolby said - time to look towards bio-ethanol in the not-too-distant future I reckon.
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May 12, 2006 10:35:23 GMT
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Interesting stuff. I'm aware of the hypocrisy of living my relatively comfortable Western life while trying to consider this sort of thing. Life's just one big dilemma hey?
What gets me is the ludicrous over-legislation in this country, which I have to deal with in work every day, yet we willingly and knowingly accept and buy things from places where this doesn't happen.
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May 12, 2006 10:51:12 GMT
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That is an interesting one, isn't it? I've noticed it too, we as a country seem obsessed with legislation these days, banning everything that could potentially harm us, yet when people in the thirld world have to work terrible hours, in harmful, unpleasant conditions for pitiful wages we're strangely apathetic towards it, I wonder if there's an element of "couldn't happen to me" about it, that because we'll never have to experience those conditions ourselves and neither will our friends and family it's alright to forget about such things, yet as soon as someone we catch wind of workplace injusticies in Britain (other than the fundamental ones that are necessary to the workings of capitalism, but through years of biased argument, false consciousness and misinformation we've grown to accept those as the way of things and even grown to like them, e.g. you might be slaving away to pay of the mortgage while the people at the top have two or three houses and more material wealth than they could ever use, but it's OK, because one day you'll be the boss, and then you'll be the one with all the riches, so that makes it alright.) we're up in arms about them. Funny little inconsistency that, isn't it?
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"He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy!"
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