They like the idea of capabilities, and maximizing them beyond the point of diminished marginal returns.

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There is a lot to that. German engineers design for expectations of German manufacturing, Russian engineers have to design for the realities of Russian manufacturing.

Not all cultures are the same.

Why do very few patents come out of Africa?

Why do Germans make precision machines?

Why do great paintings using pastels and low riders come out of Mexico?

Why is Russian food virtually inedible?

Etc etc.

Not all cultures are the same.

Lay toilet paper down on the shelf and flush as soon as the shit is done, before wiping. It's the best way to deal with those and keep the stink down.

I would say a Schild is the physical sign that stands at the roadside. Zeichen, in turn, may be on the sign or printed directly on the road.

I’m half German. Mom was 100% German.

As a German, you cannot just solve a single problem. You try to solve your immediate problem and any conceivable problems in the future all at the same time.

Your solution may work, until something breaks.

Then you have a beer.

That may be true for last ditch guns built by slave labor from the concentration camps, but think about late war infantry weapons they did mass produce.  MG-42.  MP-44.  Panzerfaust.

Why engineer a machine when you can over-engineer it.

Scat porn is the answer to all things German OP

My mother's father was so German that he looked like a cross between Kaiser Wilhelm and Werner Klemperer on 'Hogans Heros,' and I shit you not.

Smartest man in the room.

He told me that shit.

I raise you the 911 cup holder:

I've met a few people from Germany and they were fine but the couple German engineers definitely over complicated everything they helped work on or designed.

Lots of stuff ended up working but it took way longer, way more money, and was a nightmare to work on.

I think you just described precisely how Germany lost the war. That, and they bit off more than they could chew.

They also tend to hire multiple people to do one guys job. Instead of working together, they do their own thing then figure out how to make those things work together.

Americans love cheap shit.

Germans value quality (or at least perceived)

This has to be the reason that Middle Eastern terrorists usually come from a German school of engineering background…

And then you partake in another.

And another.

Cause they’re smart folks

The old shit shelves are almost a thing of the past except in older houses. I was actually amazed to see one again a few years ago.

As a little kid in Germany one of my earliest memories is an older American woman describing a US toilet and how it was different from a German one. “No poo shelf? A tank not hidden by a wall?” She even drew a picture.

My wife’s Audi SUV has 5 fuse boxes. I can’t wait until the electrical gremlins show up. ??

If you think their engineering is bad, look,at what they have done to philosophy (excl. Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein).

Because they can.

It's called "over engineering" by some. I don't know, I do appreciate some ornate complicated machines.

I look at the US now fielding expensive long logistic train tanks and aircraft and wonder if we're following the German overly complicated stuff in our military.

I suppose it comes down to the brutal lethality of today's weapons. We went from iron sights using Kentucky windage to warheads on foreheads from 12,000 miles away pretty damn fast. Many, me included, see a drone dominated future - land, air, sea, and space. Those things will be a factor faster still.

Naval warfare has always been he who see the other guy first normally wins and America's carrier task groups use of their own airborne aerial radar and controllers in the sky gave them domination in that area. Everyone and their brother now have live view satellites with sensors good enough.

I'm the closest thing to a design engineer in my group of manufacturing process development engineers. So, I usually get tasked with designing prototypes.

I'm also half Germanic (Austrian, but I think that's just a German with an appreciation for art and music).  So, basically I'm an ADD designer with a Catia license, Adderall prescription, and an espresso machine. Dangerous combination.

However, I've been somewhat cured of my love of complexity by also having to build what I designed. Though, in a past job, I also remember hearing back from the machine shop "you want me to do WHAT!? HOW THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO PUT THIS TOGETHER?!?!"

I've since learned to listen to those guys and get their input early.

No its very true on VAG products. At least 3 tools needed just to remove the belly pan. Fuckin hate em

Because they can is the right answer.

Strongest argument supporting that are A. Lange und Söhne watches. Each watch is assembled, disassembled, then reassembled by a watchmaker before leaving the factory. There are hundreds of tiny handmade or hand finished pieces in these things. Even pressing a button is satisfying, like closing the door on a Geländewagen.

My personal favorite, the Datograph.

I try to be even keeled because Germans have made some reliable stuff and Japan sometimes goes so far into simplicity that it becomes a detriment. Toyota likes Jamming the stuff that's most likely to break in the worst possible spots just because it's convenient to them from a design stand point, and then I've got to start ripping a bunch of shit off of my car just to access plugs and coil packs or the wiper fluid tank.

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i love it when a dude who just bought a v8 bmw thinks we should chance all the belts and hoses. Yeah sure, that will be 4. grand. NVM.

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I just bought a 60's era Dual turntable on ebay. Fully mechanical, no electronics. Approaching 60 years old, but they work and they have a following. We'll see Attached File

I know this to be true having worked with Germans in a stateside German shop. A young German told me the exact same thing after showing me how to properly sharpen a drill bit free hand on a grinder.

HK416 and it's magazines are absolute shit.

Your buddy, does he also sell beef jerky?

I don't know where my Tahoe was built designed, but the brakes hardware is retarded. For some reason they made the caliper bolts a different size than the caliper frame bolts. I don't know what each component is called, but I do know that you have to use two different sized sockets, on what is otherwise the same bolts, just to change the brakes.

At it's heart - a seduction of the beauty of the perfect optimized design combined with lack of appreciate of wear patterns and real-world deviation from the ideal as well as optimized total supply chain.   Why use the same bolts, if this bolt has a higher load level then that bolt?  "Specify the correct bolt for every single hole" - sounds great in optimized theory.  And is asinine in the real-world in settings where you can just spec in the strongest needed bolt as the bolt spec for all of them.

As an engineer - I do get it, it's cool.  As one with an oil-field chapter - yea no; we're not doing that.  A hand has to make this shit work with what he has in hand in the middle of the W-Texas desert, Walmart is 3 hours away one-way; the sands blowing, and 20 guys are waiting on his ass.  Practicality and ability to get running again quickly due to commonality of parts, gets real important real quick.

German engineer's motto: "Why use 2 moving parts when you can use 5?"

OMG. .  experiencing this first hand for the second time.

The first one was a project managed by Germans, and holy crap we ended up with alot of unnecessary parts in our design and the qualification program they expected was a masterpiece in complexity and anal retentiveness. I will say the lead engineer for the Germans was a PHD and one who was absolutly brilliant.

The second one is a project managed by Canadians and we interface to a product designed by Germans. We started 3 months late and just blew through our first design review with flying colors. The Germans started 3 months before us and had a cluster fuck of a first design review and are having to re-do it.  Wow, they could complicate a toothpick.

Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing to add, but when there is nothing left to subtract.
Said no German ever

So, what y'all are saying is that if I had a time machine and was interested in gifting a few hundred basic gas operated, magazine fed, select fire rifle to a friend in the 1800s, it's the Germans I should have build them back than?  Man, I don't know.  19th century Germans with select fires sounds like a BAD IDEA.

This is all theoretical of course.

The machining on my 1944 production Spreewerke was pretty crude. But, it functions flawlessly.

I love a whole thread saying what great engineers the Germans are and then almost every post goes on to prove the opposite and the posters do not even realize it.

Good/great engineering is not how complicated you can make something, that is shit engineering. Reducing the design to its simplest form is true engineering.

Lets talk guns and great engineering. Look at a M3A1 grease gun. Its one of the greatest engineering examples of a SMG ever. The design is so minimalist and yet does everything that's asked of it. Need to cock the gun, stick a hole in the bolt for a finger. Need a loading tool, cleaning rod, barrel wrench? easy just make the wire stock do all 3. Need a dust cover, safety when the bolt is open and a safety when the bolt is closed, easy just make the dust cover do all three jobs. Many people don't like how the Grease gun looks but its pure engineering at its best. Look what it replaced, an old overly complicated high dollar, high machine time gun that weighed a ton aka the Thompson.

The Sten is not unlike the grease gun though not a well engineered but look what the Germans did when the copied the Sten. They took a gun that can be made in any muffler shop in Britain  and turned it into the highest priced SMG the Germans ever made during the war. That was not engineering that was stupidity.

I'm not saying all German engineers are dummies, far from it but lauding them from making overly complicated designs and calling it "over engineered" is wrong, its the opposite.

Germans are the original overthinkers.

The majority of them also lack common sense.

What amazes me, is that they claim "German efficiency" and morons actually believe it.

Ehhhh

You have a few things going on.

1 is restrictions. WW2 German innovation and complexity came from lots of resource restrictions.

A lack of fuel drove development of methanol and nitros injection. It pushed synthetic fuels as well as rocket and turbine engine development.

A lack of workers and soldiers drove larger and more protected tanks. People will cite a Tiger/Panther had the materials to make two Panzer 4's and a Panzer 4 was easily a match for Sherman or T-34.

Germany lack equipment, facilities and labor to build 2x numbers of tanks. They lacked the extra 5 men per tank. While a Panzer 4 may get better fuel economy, 2-3 Panzer 4s won't. A P4 may get a 1-1 kill, but the home was a Tiger would get 5-1.

MP40, STG44 and MG42 were stamped because Germany had been specializing in stamping technology in the 30's.

Likewise Americans specialized in Machining (all our guns) and British had a huge lumber industry that gave them aircraft like the Hurricane, Mosquito and Halfax.

A turn off on licensing the Mosquito was the complex laminated wood process and it's also why, despite the strategic material advantage, the Germans gave up on trying to clone it.

For modern Cars, the Germans are typically, technically right.

Wheel bolts are stronger than studs. Plastic Water pumps are more efficient and five link suspension does perform better that McPherson strut. Torx and allen are better that slot and hex.

However, Torx is more expensive, plastic Water pumps will explode at 60k miles, failure to periodically service and replace wheel bolts will lead to them seizing in your hub...etc.

Engine complexity is the result of regulation. Displacement taxes, emission requirements, etc drive complex solutions to keep displacement down. Combine that with strict safety and limited packaging.

This is why they have to build a DOHC 4L V8 with the turbos in the V-valley instead of just dropping a 7L Twin Screw V8 into it.

Labor and automation are other large factors. If stuff makes sense from a production stand point when your slapping it together as assemblies. It also makes "maintenance sense" when you just drop the whole power train or remove the whole front end to get to that gear driven oil pump on the back of the engine.

There isn't a big "DIY" car culture in Europe and plans obsolescence to ensure continued demand as well and up-to-date environmental compliance is a thing.

Brussels doesn't need you driving around in your 1995 SL500. They need to you buy a new one.

All mass produced German tanks in WWII were equipped with gasoline engines.  
This was ironic, since Diesel was invented in Germany and adopted by the Russians.

I've owned two German cars.

While maintaining them I'm constantly reminded of why they LOST TWO WORLD WARS.

I am sure they would cry, of course that has never happened.

The fastest Corvette around the ring (c7 z06 at 80k MSRP) is a full 9 seconds slower than a 718 gt4 rs (at 161k MSRP) and even slower than another dozen Porsches, (though some of those models above do exceed 250k)

Current production Corvette (which are a fair bit over 50k) to current production Porsche (still not anywhere close to 250k) is even worse,

C8 7:29 vs gt4rs at 7:04!!

So I ask you, do Americans cry in to their piss water when the very best Corvette can offer is still 9 seconds slower than Porsches entry level gt car?