There is no doubt that Asian manufacturers can make high quality precision goods. Nikon essentially single handedly buried the German camera industry in the 50' and 60's by doing just that. They bought the idea of precision made parts (rather than hand fitted parts) to the camera industry -- any particular part would work properly with no filling, bending, machining, or adjusting in any other set of parts -- precision parts need only be assembled, not hand fitted.
US manufacturers are about the same as the old German ones -- too many of the people I have met in management are in the sole business of attempting to pinch pennies until they reproduce -- we now no longer make steel because the steel industry never upgraded their production facilities, and persisted in using the most inefficient and man hour intensive methods possible to "save money". Our automotive plants are ancient (and filthy dirty) where brute human muscle is used instead of automated machinery, quality control doesn't extend to MAKING good parts, etc. However, theie is, for all intents and purposes, no bottom in the swamp of Asian cheap goods, and there is always someone who will put the appropriate sticker on shoddy or simply incorrect goods and sell them to you as genuine. This is a traditional business practice in the East, not a new phenomenon, and if you want quality, YOU have to make sure it's actually there! Cheap oil, greedy businesses, and penny pinching/pound foolish consumers have brought us to where we are. I suspect the high and rising cost of oil will force some adjustments, fairly rapidly. It's going to be too expensive to ship even cheap shoddy junk from China to the US to compete with US manufactured goods. Peter _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com For new parts see official list sponsor: http://www.buymbparts.com/ For used parts email [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
