Where are the GM workers now?

We catch up with two of the former GM Moraine Assembly Plant workers featured in the HBO short film "The Last Truck." Where are they now?

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• truck
• plant
• GM
• Moraine

[vaguy78]

@seahorse1945 Ummm no. BMW and Mercedes don't make rear wheel drive cars because they are easier to fix. They make rear wheel drive cars because of the superior handling characteristics. And in case you haven't noticed, all Lincoln cars lately except the Town Car are FWD.

[seahorse1945]

UAW Pensions are the single biggest killer of the US auto industry as we know it --The Japanese companies don't pay pensions

[seahorse1945]

If the same car were a rear wheel drive, you would have a relatively easy repair Without removing the whole drive-train (the same reason Mercedes,BMW, Lincoln, and All pickup trucks Don't have frontwheeldrive - it isn't as durable and as a result of the inaccessibilty of the front of the engine(belts etc) it costs alot more to make basic repairs. You think about it : remove the radiator and ac condenser or remove the entire engine and trans-axle just to replace seals. Try it in your garage.

[seahorse1945]

When a good running & tight 2001Mercury w/ a 4 cylinder engine has 160 k miles on it and the dealer wants $2300 .00 USD to replace the oil seals on front of the engine (plus the water pump) your talking a damn near unrepairable vehicle. Why, you may ask.Because they will have to take the engine/fwd trans-axle out together in order to do a job they will warranty. So, is FWD better? No, it just costs more for You to repair &at the same time Cheaper For the Auto Manufacturer to build

[seahorse1945]

(cont'd) or had a manual transmission. The durable older cars and pickups that were built to be tough and get good fuel economy were easily ( and cheaply)rebuilt for continued service. Today, the fwd econo box mentality of the USA auto industry has concentrated on safety and MPG, not durability. Today, if you want MPG and durability, buy a diesel pickup and keep it 10 years, or buy a VW, BMW,etc - the rest of the vehicle designs out their are too expensive for what you can get out of them .

[seahorse1945]

The "balance" in sensible car building in America seems way out of wack to me. The only vehicles America car makers built in the past 40 plus years that could hold up to the test of time were the more highly engineered w/ tried and true engine-transmission-rear differential "packaged" vehicles ( exception-GM's FWD v8 Cadillacs) . The ones that had engines that didn't have to work at 85% of their capacity to get the vehicle moving, and 2 speed or 3 speed heavy duty automatic transmissions

[MrOphachew]

The UAW bitched and griped themselves out of jobs. The U

AW is simply a parasite trying to suck what last bit of life they can out of their dying host.

[ntstick06]

@circusboy90210 I agree with you i do not think they are over paid at all

[circusboy90210]

@MrSupertwo would rather have a Cadillac than a Mercedes any day of the week, however prefer the Lincoln town car to even that. have driven almost every luxury car known to man. the Mercedes just looks and feels clunky and there are diminishing returns for the amount of cost involved.

[circusboy90210]

@ntstick06 workers producing a new vehicle are not over payed even if they were payed $300 per hour . the amount of productivity the automotive plant dwarf the employees cost. the average hours per car is about 23 human hours robotics cost really do not enter into the equation.