Date: Wed, 10 Jul 1996 10:41:58 +1200
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From: william.warburton/OU=tritec@dsw.govt.nz
Subject: Re: VW Customer Relations on Westfalias in US
Hi,
> Man, I wish we could get a VW rep on this list, but I expect they'll
> say they've already done enough research & know what us loyal VWers
> want even more than we do.....
They don't care what us "loyal VWers " want. We're a minority. If you
run a big car company you don't make money by catering to minorities
(not unless you have some sort of mega-flexible production line that
lets you retool for small production runs and a design operation that
can feed it efficiently, at any rate).
The very fact that we care about our cars makes us unusual. Unusual
means outside the mainstream means expensive & difficult.
If you find that Consumer Reports/Which? style publications tell you
what you want to hear then you are in the mainstream and can buy cheap,
otherwise you are on your own (or, at best, with the rest of your
minority). This is reality, and it bites. We can complain but being
realistic we are not a big enough factor to influence policy that is
geared to the mass market. This is true for cars, washing machines,
stereos, furniture, cameras, whatever.
When it comes down to it you can follow the flow, have an easy life
and buy a Honda (or a Vauxhall or a Fiat or whatever, depends where
you are) or you can decide to do things differently. But you need to
be clear that being different will cost you: time, money, hassle,
whatever. If you want owning a VW to be easy and cheap, move to
Germany.
Cheers,
W.
.......................................................................
Item Subject: WINMAIL.DAT
Could not convert Microsoft Mail Message Data item to text.
Will attempt to 'shar' item as file '004m9ut' at end of msg.
# This is a shell archive. Remove anything before this line,
# then unpack it by saving it in a file and typing "sh file".
#
# Wrapped by openmail at cfwcs002 on Wed Jul 10 10:42:11 1996
#
# This archive contains:
# 004m9ut
#
echo Compiling unpacker for non-ascii files
pwd=`pwd`; cd /tmp
cat >unpack$$.c <<'EOF'
#include <stdio.h>
#define htoi(c) (c<='9' ? c-'0' : c-'A'+10)
main() {
register int c, c2;
while ((c=getchar())!=EOF) {
if (c=='\n') continue;
c2 = getchar();
putchar((htoi(c)<<4) + htoi(c2));
}
}
EOF
cc -o unpack$$ unpack$$.c
rm unpack$$.c
cd $pwd
echo x - 004m9ut '[non-ascii]'
/tmp/unpack$$ >004m9ut <<'@EOF'
789F3E22000001100004000200000001000100
@EOF
chmod 660 004m9ut
rm /tmp/unpack$$
exit 0
