[Poochie]

Originally Posted by afwares

This is where we disagree, and this is why you accused me of xenophobia.

You're assuming:

The robots are all the same + The parts are all the same + The people all receive the same training = Cars will be exactly the same and anyone who thinks otherwise must be a xenophobe.

The problem is that the parts are not the same. The driveline will be the same of course, as the engine and transmission will likely be shipped in from Germany or Austria or wherever those are produced. But for everything else, an entirely new supplier network will be established and cultivated from the region surrounding the new plant.

Thousands of ancillary parts, from brackets to hoses to harnesses to switches will all be sourced from new companies. Items that used to come from long-standing partners in Croatia or Hungary or wherever will now be sourced from new providers in Ecuador or Venezuela or wherever. They will be specified to be exactly the same, of course, and in a perfect world a batch of 10,000 side-view-mirror motor switches would have the same 6-sigma quality whether they came from Ecuador or Hungary. But it's not a perfect world, and as governments and socioeconomic systems and labor laws and worker attitudes are different from country to country it's very difficult to eliminate variation, whether it's variation in worker dedication or variation in the failure rate of a window switch. It's entirely possible that an M2 made in Mexico ends up BETTER than one made in Germany, but where you believe it's asinine to think they would be different other people believe that differences are guaranteed and it's only a question of whether the differences are negligible - i.e. a difference in the color of a bracket in the trunk that you'll never even notice - vs. differences that are critical to the reliability of the car - i.e. a difference in the chemical composition of hoses that fail prematurely at low temperature.

First of all, I didn't accuse you of anything; I don't know you well enough to make that judgment.

However, the stuff you were spewing about AOC, 'America losing to ____,' our president is God's gift to mankind and other slew of stuff I don't care about, pretty much made it obvious where your head was at.. If the shoe fits..

To digress from that, that's a very interesting argument on how parts vary from one region to the other. I would say that nowadays that isn't clean cut as you would assume.

American cars use to be regarded as garbage and be the joke of the global market but within the last few years, the quality and dependability have increased substantially.

Same with products from the Asian markets; quality of parts and even labor have exponentially improved where "Made in China" no longer have same negative connotation that it once did. Did you look at the back of your beloved iPhone lately to see where it was assembled..

I trust BMW's quality control and their name that they'll make the proper decisions to insure their vehicles don't deteriorate, regardless of where it is assembled. The same way when I purchase something simple as batteries and chose a brand like Duracell or Energizer; I know it's a quality product regardless of where or who they chose to produce it because I put my trust in that manufacture.

Here's a Hollywood example trust in a brand name: