Photos here.

It takes only 20.6 hours to make a Hyundai in Montgomery, Alabama but it takes a whooping 30.2 hours to build a car in Ulsan!

The joys of a non-unionized workforce (Ulsan has one of the most militant labor unions on planet Earth, whereas Montgomery has… none).

I got the cheque eight weeks after I applied for the grant. The Feds have stated the programme will stop in April of 2009. However, in a minority government, this might not be easy to do. Another friend also recently collected on the grant. The PST exemption was taken care of by the dealer.

So negative!

“For instance, Hyundai Accent came second to Honda Fit in quality of subcompacts according to JD Powers 2008.”

That’s why I have a Honda Fit. The residual after a four year lease is 55% of the sales price. You will probably do better if is kept in a garage and driven on salt free Vancouver roads, too, like mine is!

As for Korean cars for the North American market, cars such as the Opel Aguila or Corsa would be much better and more to our tastes.

On another topic, our Canadian Retard Auto Workers are now responding to the impending closure of their pick up truck plan by blockading it. I am sure this will encourage GM to bring in new products to Oshawa for production.

I don’t know. Detroit has had a lot of stories like that where promising products are not developed properly and more undeserving products (i.e. SUVs and Hummers) were given greater attention. My gut tells me that Neon’s margins were just too low, not matter how practical it may have been for a particular consumer segment. It’s hard to make a small car in America and make money off it when you were distracted by the fat margins that SUVs were giving you in the early 2000’s.

My thesis regarding Kim Woo Choong is similar to that of Allan Nevins regarding Rockefeller. The mentality and business practices of Kim W Choong is representative of most Korean chaebol chieftains of his generation. Like Rockefeller, Kim W Choong engaged in unethical and illegal business practices…but this should not overshadow his contributions to Korean industrialization.

The Rockefellers, unlike Kim, have maintained highly profitable business interests. The names of many robber barons live on in established business and respected cultural entities like Morgan-Stanley, the Hearst Corporation, Carnegie-Mellon Hall, the Guggenheim Museum, and Duke University. Kim Woo-choong’s crowning achievement was getting his alma mater Yonsei to name its new college of business building Daewoo Hall.

Half of the Neon’s success was great marketing, and the other half was delivering the product that I wanted. I had a 96 and I recommended it to a friend, who bought a 2000 model, the first year they changed the body style. It broke constantly, it wasn’t as easy to drive, and you couldn’t see out of the back. That particular one could have been a lemon, but I noticed there were far fewer of the newer ones on the road.

My point is, there are plenty of different ways and plenty of time for GM to muck this up before it hits the US market.

And for GM in particular, I also don’t understand why they couldn’t take something like the Vibe and make it a worthy compact car competitor. It already gets good gas mileage and its not a big hulking SUV.

“The Neon was offered in multiple versions and configurations over its production life, which ended on September 23, 2005…. The Dodge Neon was replaced in the spring of 2006 with the 2007 Dodge Caliber, which is based on the shared Chrysler/Mitsubishi Motors GS platform.”

From “en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_Neon”