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Thread Owner
You may think you have a tough job, and you probably do, but if you make a living building and selling automobiles, chances are you’re really busting your hump. This is a horrible business, a predator-filled savanna, and you—Mr. Lease Manager at the Kia store in Portland, Maine, or you, Mr. Swing-Shift Foreman in Windsor, Ontario—are a small, vulnerable marsupial. Everybody’s worried, no one more than the boss.
For example: Would someone please check on the well-being of Audi’s former head of research and development, Wolfgang Dürheimer, who was coldly dismissed by the VW Groupboard last week after less than a year? The job was “too much” for him, said Audi Chief Executive Rupert Stadler. Oof. That’ll look nice on the résumé.
Among the many injustices in the car business is styling. A company can build an automobile with great performance, efficiency, value, safety, and back it up with pitch-perfect messaging, only to have whole enterprise come up short because of one awkward swage line, one not-quite-there proportion, or—famously, notoriously, in the recent case of Mazda a weird, zany grille. You know, the one that smokes crack.
Read more http://www.marketwatch.com/story/mazda6-more-than-just-a-finally-pretty-face-2013-06-29
