Some brewer in some hipster place in Denver once told me the Brits drank some ales at room temperature. I have had several beers in London, never came across it myself. But, maybe that's a thing.

And "Ice Cold" is not the norm outside of places trying to find an angle to sell cheap beer. But, that's a lot of places.

A desire for effectiveness doesn't make it complicated, and complicated doesn't make it effective.

A cultural love of sophistication and a need to demonstrate one's ability to engineer a complicated device is what makes it complicated.

Mike

My avatar approves.

True—but they gave my dad the most awesome, bitchinest West German precision tools—most of which I still have & some are used for reloading.

The "warm beer" thing is a myth.  It's not that they drink warm beer; it's just not refrigerated.  They have beer cellars that keep the beer naturally at a temperature in the thirties or forties (Fahrenheit) and therefore it doesn't need refrigeration.  No, it's not "ice cold," it's more like "fridge cold", but that's a far cry from "warm."

I worked closely with Germans and Swiss Germans for many years.  Great guys.  There are upsides and downsides to the perfection mentality.
Much of what is designed is designed to live in a German style ecosystem, in which the only people maintaining the system or product will be highly competent, consistently trained, and properly equipped.  When all that is in place, you can build great things, and have them stay great for extended periods.  Outside of that ecosystem, results vary wildly.

One of the amusing things we had going when working together was their discontent for me getting into lots of "Do it by your own" projects on my house and vehicles.  Some of them would give small things a try, but for the most part, they liked to have the "meister" working on their cars and houses.  One had a kid that was in the midst of a multi year training/apprenticeship program to become a house painter, which was a common way to get into a trade as people prefer to pay a highly skilled person to do excellent work, and plan for that when deciding to have work done.  When he found out that most of our house painters start out by painting customers houses while a guy yells at them some, he was horrified.

I would like to see that. Closest thing I’ve heard of to something like that is the Cartier Crash wristwatch.

Yes, and I was impressed with the BMW e30 chassis car I got to do some work on too.

Mercedes, heck no, it was as if rube goldberg and lovecraft got together and had a child. And they were first cousins.

Seems it's either amazing, or "nuke it from orbit."

Well, this hipster dude in Denver was serving warm ass beer. Easily in the 70 degree Fahrenheit range. Tried to convince me it was a traditional style.  Again, though, have downed my shares of pints in London. Never saw it there. Just telling the story.

This thread is the first where I've heard anyone suggest Germans did anything similar.

Lol.  I shot with some Marines using the issue HK 416 “Maritime” stainless mags and none of them worked reliably because they were steel.  After one deployment they all had bent and deformed feed lips. I had to point that out to them on closer examination.

It eez not broken, zerefore more features are necessarily vequired.

Excellent observation. It's very hard for them to understand that when they export that equipment to a third-world country like - let's face it, the US - the equipment will be subjected to a level of mishandling, mis-installation, neglect, incompetent operation, and abuse that would be unthinkable inside their ecosystem.,

So....what are your thoughts on Texans?

So only partially German adjacent, but the guys at the Glock HQ outside of Vienna definitely felt that way about Smyrna, GA facility.

The German beer is so superior, it isn't funny.

German beer tastes very good, so it doesn't matter if it's very cold or not.

Then there’s the cup holder in my W212 Mercedes. It’s just a plastic insert, because “if you wouldn’t put a steering wheel on a coffee table, why would you put a drink holder in your car?”

They don't drink warm beer in Germany; they just don't drink it close to freezing, more like 4 to 7 °C (41 - 45 °F).

In other words, hire russian engineers?