Where does the difference come from?

Just finished reading Car Guys vs. Bean Counters: The Battle for the Soul of American Business, the new book by Bob Lutz (held senior leadership positions at GM, Ford, Chrysler, and BMW over the course of a forty-seven-year career). In short, the book is about what happened to America’s competitiveness in the car business.

The book is an interesting read, and for me one of the most interesting parts deals with the so called NUMMI—New United Motorcar Manufacturing Company—joint venture between GM and Toyota (born in 1984). Here’s Bob:

“The first jointly produced vehicle was essentially a Toyota Corolla with Chevrolet Clone dubbed Prizm. The Corrola sold well, as always, while the Prizm had a hard time; it overlapped GM’s own Cavalier, offering roughly the same size and performance.

And here I offer a curiosity I have observed several times at various stages of my career: The NUMMI-Corrola performed with the usual bravura in the Consumer Reports rankings, based on voluntary assessments by owners. The Chevrolet Prizm ranked way lower. Yet the cars were engineered identically, had the same features and specifications, and were built in the same plant, on the same final assembly line, by the same workers. Where did the “quality and reliability” difference come from?” (Emphasis mine.)

Bob offered no answer to this dilemma. But luckily, I recall reading something years ago by Marty Neumeier in the Brand Gap, which just might point us in the right direction. Here’s Marty:

“…in a society that’s information-rich and time poor, people value feeling more than information.”

My 2¢: In life, overcoming skepticism is much more about emotion than it is about reality.