I am writing a story for my local car club magazine, and I would really
like to get some feedback/ideas on my topic from fellow sufferers. The
subject of the article is "Lucas Electrics".
As everyone knows, Lucas has had a reputation among owners of Brit cars
for 30 or more years (i.e. at least all the time I have been a British
car owner). Lucas is said to be renowned for their lack of quality,
which leads to stranded drivers, and many, many jokes (e.g. Lucas is the
prince of darkness, the British drink warm beer because Lucas provides
the refrigeration, Lucas didn't invent the short circuit, but they
patented it, etc).
I want to take a close look at Lucas quality.
The questions that I could use ideas/suggestions on are:
1. is the Lucas reputation justified or not?
2. if it is justified, why does a second rate company continue being
second rate for year after year? Is it really as simple as "because
they can"?
3. Why wasn't Lucas driven out of the auto-electrics business years ago?
Is it as simple as "there will always be a market for goods built down
to a cost"? Why are their products so poor?
Lucas war stories are most welcome, too.
Peter
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