Tsunami to Hit Germany: Five Auto Companies Admit to Illegal Cartel

Townhall.com ^ | July 24, 2017 | Mike Shedlock

[Kaslin]

[Fresh Wind]

Industry developed standards are a bad thing?

Yes, only governments should develop standards. They do such a great job of it. /s

[Kaslin]

Good one, LOL

Actually they are called "Büstenhalter"

[Kaslin]

Could be, I just don’t recall. I’ve been gone permanently from Germany 38 years.

[Kaslin]

It’s a Swabian folks song we learned in school

[Moltke]

Funny that, I’ve been *back* in Germany for 38 years...permanently? who knows...

Have a great day!

[Kaslin]

I still have relatives there, 2 brothers, some cousins, a couple of nephews and several nieces. My parents, aunts and uncles are of course all gone.

I do have a great memory from my youth and early adult hood that I treasure, but would not want to go back because so much has changed.

I was a little over 25 when my husband was transferred back to the states after having been stationed there since December 1961. We left Frankfurt, Germany on September 25, 1966 and arrived at Fort Dix 9/25/1966. After we went through the immigration procedure I received my Green Card

[VTenigma]

I used to have that T-shirt. Most comments of any shirt I’ve owned. I’m glad my Jetta is pre-ban. 52 mpg 630 miles on a tank.

[bankwalker]

what year was the ban?

[VTenigma]

I believe 2011 and beyond model years are affected. I just call it pre-ban as a joke like “pre-ban AR 15”.

[Prov1322]

What a HUGE relief that Bugatti was not named! Now I can get back to counting the change from the penny jars that I need to get to that $3MM...hopefully before #450 Chiron is completed!

[Deplorable American1776]

I'm sorry but I just bought the last 5 Chiron (#446, #447, #448, #449 and #450), I didn't know what color I wanted..😀

[Yo-Yo]

And deciding the speed of sunroof opening is just way outside the scope for any open standard board.

And it hurts the consumer how, exactly?

[Prov1322]

I'm sorry but I just bought the last 5 Chiron (#446, #447, #448, #449 and #450), I didn't know what color I wanted..😀

Good news! Just found out that they are making 500 Chiron (they made 450 Veyron) so I may have all that change counted by then...or not.

[discostu]

When competing companies are making secret deals to not actually compete with each other consumers are losing out on technological advances. There’s a long list of things they agreed should basically work the same for all cars, that’s a lot of stagnation.

[Vigilanteman]

Not long ago, I got a job from a big law firm checking e-mail translations from certain well-known Japanese car companies. Much of what you stated can be confirmed.

[Paladin2]

Gee, who sells an AWD, manual transmission, turbocharged (for altitude compensated performance) engine, box on wheels in the US?

[Yo-Yo]

There’s a long list of things they agreed should basically work the same for all cars, that’s a lot of stagnation.

In the immortal words of Sherman T. Potter;

Germans agreeing on the speed of retraction of a sun roof does not stagnate innovation at GM, Toyota, Hundai, or Fiat.

[discostu]

Oh look, an animated gif, gee how to argue with that. Oh yeah, with FACTS. It didn’t end with the sunroofs, that’s just an example I picked because it clearly shows they weren’t doing the normal, perfectly acceptable, standards design. They were working on feature matching, which included stalling engine design for performance and efficiency.

Any horse hockey here is coming exclusively from you. The deliberately and illegally engaged in anti-competitive collusion. Sorry that seems to be too complicated for you to understand, but that’s your problem. And Sherman T Potter would get it, and he’d think you’re a pointlessly insulting waste. They were wrong, you are wrong, we are done.

[BobL]

“I thought the nozzles were different on diesel and gas pumps making it impossible to fuel up with the wrong fuel.”

They are different...diesel nozzles are slightly larger than gas. So you can’t stick a diesel nozzle into a gas filler neck, which is why you don’t read about San Francisco cat ladies wrecking their engines.

But the other way doesn’t work to protect the unaware person...you CAN stick a gas nozzle into a diesel car, since it’s smaller. The idea probably being that if you’re smart enough to own a diesel, you should be smart enough to know what to fill the tank with.