(30) Working as a contract engineer (4/8).­­­­­

    For Nissan on their Pulsar/Astra electrical system I worked from outside, usually from a nearby office that belonged to my friends, or even from home. In my work I had nearly absolute freedom; meetings with Nissan engineers (usually Greg Hall & Ian Stanley) took place only every few weeks, or whenever I needed. My drawings were accepted almost without a word; a few little changes required were due to changes in Nissan components, or to facilitate future manufacture.

    Mitsubishi was different. They did not accept my Macintosh, nor any drawings produced thereon. They insisted on my using the drawings produced in Japan, and on changing them in pencil for revisions back in Japan.

    At the time Mitsubishi was preparing a car for export to the U. S., there were already a few prototypes undergoing tests, and my initial brief was to make sure the electrical system is without faults, for “you know how the Americans are keen on taking things to courts". The car’s American name was Diamante:

     The one pictured here stands in the second-hand car yard somewhere in America, it is about 18 years old, and still looks quite handsome for its age. I liked driving some of the prototypes, back in 1991. Its every electrical component found itself in my hands at least a hundred times…

    The car had 3-litre petrol EFI engine, four-speed automatic gearbox, and it is a front wheels drive. It had everything a compatible car of that vintage had: air conditioning, bags, theft-prevention measures, eight speakers with an additional volume-booster…

    The time allocated to me for electrical check was fairly short, some three months; I knew what to do, except I didn’t have a suitable method and had to start from the scratch.

    The main problem was with the flow of information in the Mitsubishi company. At my disposal were drawings of the electrical system, produced in Japan for all the subsidiaries around the world. The drawings contained all the components required for the same model in every country where the car was intended to be manufactured. My first job was to reduce the drawings by elimination of the components not required in the intended marked, in my case the U. S. Also I had to add to these drawings components that were not known when the drawing were being made. Marked-up copies of these drawings – some 20 of them - were then made more presentable by a draftsman and sent to Japan for corrections.

    Soon after faxes began to arrive from Japan questioning the changes. The faxes were in Japanese, translated in our office by a translator who was not familiar with the electrical terms in them. My replies were equally inelegantly translated into Japanese by her, and sent back to Japan.

    In that merry-go-round of faxes  the correct method of behaving towards the Japanese colleagues was explained to me: (allegedly) for the Japanese the word “no” in discussions is offensive. The correct method of argument is “your distinguished suggestion is correct, would you be so kind as to consider this or that as well?”. The answer from Japan to our proposal – if it ever came! – was always in the form that “the drawing so-and-so-was changed to such-and-such and we request that you change your design accordingly”. Reply in the form “thank you for your suggestion and returned herewith is the revised drawing” was not known by Mitsubishi in Japan.

    In the meantime the time was slowly running out, local suppliers were clamouring for signed production drawings, and I was wrestling with my job of checking the electrical system.

    As is the way of life in all automotive companies a new manager arrived in the electrical department. His first act was to call meeting of the department (some 6 engineers and about 10 draftsmen) to enquire how often we should call such meetings. He received no reply from us; we were not in need to have meetings, we needed a manager who would understand our work – Steve L. was not that kind of manager. I discovered it within days when I asked him for discussion about some 150 items I compiled to date during my checking of the electrical system. I was told that he is not an electrical expert (he was nothing electrical, that is), but that in a few days he is going to present himself at Mitsubishi in Japan where he could put my questions on the table.

    He went, he came back, and after a couple of days I knocked on the glass window of his office. What I heard was what I was half-expecting: he did not feel competent to discuss such deeply technical details, and what is actually wrong with them? I explained to him, as gingerly as I was able, that about one third of the items may cause short circuit, even fire, if not corrected; another third are cost saving measures, and the last third are simply drafting errors. Since I refused to sign those drawings which contained the short circuit causing items he signed them off himself…

    As an employee I used to suffer deeply from such deliberate acts; as a contractor it was only my cynicism which received a boost – if you want your car to be imperfect, who am I to argue!

    The volume production began and the car export took place with all the faults and unnecessary additional costs. Many years later I read in the press that Mitsubishi worldwide was for many years concealing problems with their cars - what a surprise...

    In the meantime new markets opened for the car, this time in Europe, and, as a result, instead of the initial 3-4 months I remained at Mitsubishi for nearly two years. I was working on models for various European countries, such as Great Britain (r. h. drive plus headlamps adjustments), Swiss (heated front seats), Swedish (daytime headlamps), German (same as Swedish except without daytime headlamps), etc., etc.

    While working on these cars, overseeing testing and revisions, I was perfecting my method of electrical system testing, which proved to be fairly handy in some of my future contracts.