The myth of 'Made in Germany'

B

Busterboo

Lifer
To my list of crap German products -

  • a Porsche 911 - the only car I've ever had with a chocolate engine
    a Leica - the only camera with a flaw in the lens
    a Krieghoff - the only shotgun with engraving that rusted

please add Hermes - the only courier I know slower than 2nd class Royal Mail.
 
Busterboo said:
To my list of crap German products -

  • a Porsche 911 - the only car I've ever had with a chocolate engine
    a Leica - the only camera with a flaw in the lens
    a Krieghoff - the only shotgun with engraving that rusted

please add Hermes - the only courier I know slower than 2nd class Royal Mail.
Click to expand...
Reminds me of a joke.
Chap went to the doc and says “I think I’ve got Hermes”.
“Don’t you mean Herpes?”
“No, I’m a carrier “
 
enuff_zed said:
please add Hermes - the only courier I know slower than 2nd class Royal Mail.
Click to expand...
They must be bad (think they're calling themselves Evri now?). I got a Christmas card in the post today. So late wasn't sure whether it was for next Christmas or the one just gone. :D
 
Ordered some relays, my heart sank when the sender told me i's being sent via Hermes.
Last time they claimed delivered and it wasn't.
 
Hermes were supposed to deliver my new battery from Tayna and claimed I wasn't in when they called, but I had made a point of being at home.

When I called them they offered to try again but I could see the same thing happening again so I went to the local depot to collect it!

But to be fair I've had no problems with more recent deliveries from Evri - yet.

Anyway on the subject of cars I seem to have had fewer issues with my Spartanburg built E86s than with my German built 3 Series'.
 
Evri are abysmal - I waited in all day (benefit of working from home) for a package which was time critical... Surprise, surprise never turned up.

Went onto Evri's site and it said it was left in a "safe place" with a photo of someone else's front door step, needless to say it wasn't mine. Couldn't get through to their customer services, only their "chat bot" which kept saying it was delivered and asking if I was happy (hint their chatbot didn't seem to understand swearing) so an email was sent and copied to their chief execs office asking why they'd photographed someone else's doorstep, when our front door has an illuminated door number and I'd put the rubbish bins out that morning which both have reflective doors numbers on the which are 150mm high.

Ended up printing out the picture of the doorstep and walking round the road looking for the same doorstep/brick paving combo - found something similar and knocked to see if they'd taken the parcel in - they hadn't but said that they've been finding stuff left in their recycling bins so they'd purchased a box to put them in which was weighted down with a couple of bricks - we opened it up and there were more than a few parcels in there for others too (we dropped the others off to our neighbours who were equally hacked off.

Three days later get an email from their manager saying that they'd checked the couriers GPS and he was definitely in the area when the photo was taken and that I should knock on my neighbours' doors as they didn't know where it had been left.

I've sent two parcels back by Evri and they've lost both of them (totalling £300 and lost goodwill).

If I see that a company uses Evri, I'll buy elsewhere, life's too short to spend doing their job for them
 
Following on from buzyg comment of random entries…. nothing to do with ‘made in Germany’ at all… I sometimes wish that the forum had a simple ‘like’ button, just to add support/gratitude/solidarity to posts rather than having to write my drivel. Think of the satisfaction of seeing lots of ticks/likes/emoji-of-choice against a post instead of having to read through responses. Not wishing to detract from some wonderful responses, just adding to the satisfaction. Oh, and while I’m on it, how do I see the date of posting when using the browser on my phone (don’t own a pic/laptop) ? That annoys me too. A
 
In fairness, our local 'Evri parcel missing' delivery courier is great, and Dodgy Parcel Deliveries seem to take on the wooden spoon batton, with a regular game of tag or easter egg hunt. A similar tactic to Jasonn's has been known, but making use of a particularly overgrown shrub in the village, but their most 'impressive' recent hiding spot was over 7 miles and two villages away, later informing me that the item was left in a safe space, and the best delivery avoidance scheme was to slowly drive past my door and announce that 'sorry I wasn't' in via email, but unbeknown to them I had watched this game from my office window, unfortunately/fortunately, it's a dead end.. and confrontation shortly ensued.
 
Luckily, the E85 was not made in Germany. Perhaps that is why the bodywork is so good :wink:

I like Germans, German cars and beautiful Germany but they have done a tremendous job of fooling the world into believing that German stuff is well made.
My Phaeton has a number of basic design errors, especially due to galvanic corrosion where they placed aluminium and steel in direct contact.
My son's 911 (996) is nice to look at but has the the chocolate engine that the OP refers to.
My wife has an Evoque. The major items known to go wrong are the German made door locks and steering rack.
 
Preview: The myth of 'Made in Germany'
My 2 cents about the German quality oxymoron
The list of E89 problems (and others) is a list of components not made by BWW but mostly by Bosch et al. This seems typical of German cars. They do not specify and have good quality control on the components like pumps, and especially plastic and elastomer parts and seals.
The German business model provides a 4 year warranty and treats the first purchaser well. After that owners become service dept. patrons for the dealers.
The Japanese are the opposite with things like shocks and even brakes and mufflers lasting more than 100,000 miles and basic cooling, and electronics components, lasting indefinitely.
The build quality is not the issue. They are all well built by robots, they almost snap together. It is the purchased component failures that should have been life tested, that the second owner is left to sort.
BWWs are well designed, well built, and very stiff and strong and safe. The components in them, not so much.
There is more to this issue but I won't belabor the point.
2 Corvettes 2 Porsches,2 Alfas, 2 BMWs
 
Problem sometimes is design and material specification.

For about the 5th time had the plastic trim off under the wipers.
Of about 8 fixing points it's down to 3. The plastic so thin and brittle it's weaker than the mounting pins so plastic gives first. More material around fixing it would wouldn't break. Tail lights poor design and wrong materials so leak, why design so water drains over them..
Had some interior trim out, piece broke for the sake of a little more plastic..
 
Couldn’t believe what weak design the Zenon auto-levelling control rod was that sits on the lower front suspension arm.

Not surprised this is a common MOT fail, If I ever drove mine in the dark I’d have realised there was an issue before the bloody mot :headbang:
 
zxy said:
[...]
The list of E89 problems (and others) is a list of components not made by BWW but mostly by Bosch et al.
Click to expand...
I agree.
Another example: the E89 tail lights were produced in Tolmezzo, Italy. It's a nice village in the northeast mountains:
https://www-zroadster-com.translate.goog/forum/threads/dynamische-blinker.115396/page-18?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp#post-3279274


zxy said:
[...]
The German business model provides a 4 year warranty...
Click to expand...
That is not correct for German buyers:
A seller(!) must assume a guarantee for a maximum of 2 years. However, the buyer must already prove after 6 months that the fault / error arose at the time of purchase.

In business relations this may differ, as AFAIK BMW will charge the supplier for each part, that had to be replaced on warranty.

Said this, it's a calculation model of the suppliers:
Sell a bunch of 100.00 weak built parts and accept a re-charge quote of let's say 5% in the following 5 years. That is much cheaper for the supplier instead of delivering a better quality.

Jmy2ct
Rob
 
Reason why quality control went out of the window.
Bang out products, offer reasonable 2 year warranty, or say 3 for cars and wait to see if the there are any complaints and cheaper to fix as they go along.
I remember one of our club members worked for JLR.
Evokes were having gearbox problems. He said they are dealing on a 1 to 1 complaint basis, but JLR knew the ZF boxes all had a fault. Would cost millions to replace, but most boxes probably ok.
 
Well at least we wont need to include BMW in this list for much longer. BMW have already outsourced production of many models to the 'Great wall Motor Company' in China.
Mostly SUV I think but the rest will follow as the world manufacturing power base continues to shift eastwards..

Lets just jhope they don't use Evri to deliver them heh heh
 
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