Bosch Car Service Specialists 鈥?The Blog
We looked for masking lines round door handles and lamp fixtures, where those areas were taped over in a repair. We looked for overspray under door edges and in hard to reach spots. Good as that was, the Elcometer company revolutionized the industry when they offered us an electronic meter that measured the thickness of the paint in a matter of seconds, by simply touching the gauge to the side of the car. These gauges burst on the scene about 1994. Within two years of release it seemed like every body shop manager, and every appraiser worth his salt had one. They are ubiquitous today. The paint gauge is a tool any used car professional should own - especially those of us who work with high value cars. A walk round the car with a gauge will tell us things that simple visual inspection simply won鈥檛 reveal. The right rear corner shows 14.4 thousandths of paint, while the quarter panel two feet away has just 6 thousandths.
Perhaps I can illustrate this with an anecdote. One of the final obstacles on Baboons Pass was a turn over a smooth, wet rock, at an angle of probably 30掳. From the driver鈥檚 seat, I had to get my front wheels into the rock before applying power. Too much speed to early and the wheels would hit the base of the rock with such a knock and bounce, that traction and momentum would be instantly lost. Now, as the front wheels lifted, I applied firm accelerator, But almost nothing happened. That V6 diesel is no slouch, but at this time it barely ticked over. I pushed my right foot as far as it would go, but still nothing鈥?the Discovery creeping ever so slowly up and over. Video footage from the outside later revealed what was happening. The wheels were spinning, ever so slowly. The traction control limited the power seemingly knowing that any more power would result in slip, and probably a slide backwards. I mounted the obstacle with consummate ease, and my crew all clapped, thinking, completely wrongly, that my superior driving skills had done such a good job.
In the mid 1990鈥檚, Land Rover made about 100,000 vehicles a year. The days of the SUV as a popular town car are over and that鈥檚 all LR makes. It has a new smaller model in the pipeline but whatever happens, much lower manufacturing numbers will be the order of the day for the marque. Unions are trying to keep the number of workers that LR had previously, but this is nonsense. LR will have to scale back in a large way and that will mean workers being laid off in quantity. The UK (-27%) remained the largest market for Land Rover, widening the gap on the second placed US (-40%) from 1,000 to 7,000. Russia increased a hefty 67% to leapfrog into third over Italy (-15%). China climbed from 8th to 5th with a 69% increase. Expect all these figures to drop in 2009 as the changes in the market place really take hold. PS. Figures have been updated.
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