So I don’t sound like some ass making stuff up, here’s a little hint at the complexity of the motor vehicle, just for those people who have no idea. I’m going to start with something simple, the engine.
\n
\nSeems like an engine should be the most complex bit, doesn’t it? the engine in most modern cars is the least complicated portion, and hasn’t changed- in principle- since Gottleib Daimler. Here are the parts that make up that engine:<\/p>\n
1: Engine block. This is usually cast iron
\n2: Cylinder head. Some are cast iron, some aluminum.
\n3: Crankshaft. Cast or forged steel. <\/p>\n
Not bad, so far. Except that those parts are machined at a level that most people cannot comprehend, and they are manufactured, for the most part, on machinery purpose built to a specific item (say, the 1.6 liter four cylinder) and cannot be re-adapted to other processes. Shit, the equipment used to check the quality of the casting, the forgings, the machining, is in the millions of dollars for a single engine style, and each engine has it’s own complete set, and each factory manufacturing that part has it’s own set, and they all have to be calibrated against each other! building a “Master” (a theoretical “perfect” specimen against which the tooling can be tested) is not only incredibly difficult and expensive but it must be RE done every so often because of the normal wear and tear that occurs in use. <\/p>\n
OK, let’s proceed:
\n5:Lower bearing journals. (five)
\n6:Crankshaft bearings. (five pairs)
\n7:Lower bearing journal bolts(ten)
\n8:Pistons(four)
\n9:connecting rods(four)
\n10: Connecting rod lowers (four)
\n11 Connecting rod lower bearings (four)
\n12 Connecting rod upper bearings (four)
\n13 Wrist pins(four)
\n14 Wrist pin keepers (8)
\nStill seems pretty simple, don’t it? Well,it does until you understand that pistons aren’t round. In fact, pisons have a slightly oval (or in some, an ovid or egg-like) shape. This is for a lot of reasons I won’t go into here, except to say that it takes an incredibly complex machine just to MAKE a piston, and those machines are usually designed to make only ONE size and type- you can’t take a machine made to make Ford pistons and convert it (easily) to make Chevy pistons, it’s just not in the cards. Piston manufacture is it’s own damned engineering discipline, futhuchrisakes. Let’s move on.
\n15 piston rings- compression (8)
\n16 piston rings- oil (4, three parts each)
\n17 connecting rod bearing bolts (8)<\/p>\n
Still doesn’t seem bad, does it? Wait, I’m barely getting started.<\/p>\n
18: Crankshaft gear
\n19 Camshaft gear
\n20 Timing chain\/belt
\n21 camshaft
\n22 camshaft bearings (5, assuming SOHC)
\n23 Cam followers\/lifters (8)
\n24 intake valves(4)
\n25 exhaust valves (4)
\n26 rocker arms (8)
\nSure, this is a lot of parts, but I’ve barely begun
\n27 intake valve springs (4)
\n28 exhaust valve springs (4)
\n29 intake valve spring seats (4)
\n30 intake valve spring keepers(4)
\n31 exhaust valve spring seats (4)
\n32 exhaust valve spring keepers (4)
\n33 spark plugs(4)
\n34 fuel injectors(4)
\n35 intake manifold
\n36 exhaust manifold
\n37 fuel runner
\n38 throttle body
\n39 MAP sensor
\n40 MAF sensor
\n41 EGR valve
\n42 EGR riser
\n43 valve cover
\n44 head gasket
\n45 valve cover gasket
\n46 torque-to-yield head bolts
\n47 oil pan gasket
\n48 oil pan
\n49 crankshaft front main seal
\n50 crankshaft rear main seal<\/p>\n
None of this takes into consideration the dozens of sensors, the hundreds of fasteners, the distributor and controls, the cooling system, the lubrication system, etc. <\/p>\n
Each of these components is developed, tested, gauged, checked, and manufactured at different facilities. Each of those facilities has whole banks of test equipment, some of which belongs to the manufacturer, some of which belongs to the individual company. <\/p>\n
Each part is vital to the whole. And the time from engineering of an engine component by component, to the outsourcing of the individual components, to the manufacture of special testing equipment for those components, to the asseembly of the finished part ready to be put into a motor vehicle, is a lot shorter than you might expect- but it takes an ARMY of engineers, purchasing agents, manufacturing specialists, and the co-operation of internal and external resources by another team of planners. And that’s just the engine.<\/p>\n
The point is, if gm “closes” or undergoes bankruptcy, a huge resource-a resouirce required to do the job at hand- is discarded. The pieces that hold the process together- billions of dollars, millions of components, thousands of people- those pieces are lost, and cannot be retrieved. <\/p>\n
To illustrate this, there are a couple of classic examples.<\/p>\n
The first was designed by that genius of the motor vehicle, Raymond Loewy. He designed the Studebaker Avanti. <\/p>\n
The engineering difficulties were, for the most part,utterly insurmountable. Impossioble or not, they were dealt withj successfully by my namesake, a man with engineering genius equal to none (thanks, uncle gene) and though he was given a bucket of bad parts to work with, he managed, against all odds, to scrape together a car. <\/p>\n
They made a bunch of them, actually, From 62 to 66 they made several thousand of them. And then they died. <\/p>\n
The process of manufacturing a vehicle is difficult enough, but here’s the thing: America wants something new every year. And you can’t go on just giving them more of the same. And Avanti died. It has been resurrected every couple of years since then, it seems, but at the end of the day, it’s dead.<\/p>\n
The exact same can be said for the DeLorean. John tried to make a car predominantly out of pieces of other cars, and he succeeded… for a while. <\/p>\n
It’s a daunting task to build a car, let alone a car company. And the complexity involved in putting together the pieces of multiple cars and trucks, making them all work even moderately well together, getting the right products to the dealers in a reasonable time, and- and heres’s the tough part- Doing it AGAIN the next year, is astounding. <\/p>\n
If Ford, or GM, or Chrysler dies, or goes into receivership, it may be that someone smart will take a bite of the more profitable bits, say the truck division- and keep it alive by force of will, for a while- but it will be dead, and it won’t be able to be revived. And there are layers and layers and layers of businesses that will be affected. <\/p>\n
Sure, well run small businesses can and do recover from losing a large client, it happens all the time- but in the automotive industry that recovery is invariably at the loss of a lot of jobs and a lot of manufacturing capability. This is not conjectire, this is not a guess. I see this with my own eyes every single day, and i know wherof i speak. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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