Howdo you defend American cars from Import lovers?

[smokey1]

Originally Posted By: StevieC
Originally Posted By: smokey1
many imports use as much as 60% for parts that are made in U.S. for their vehicles .
Stop spreading lies smokey1.

(J/K)
seen it few months ago on CNBC when the bail outs were about to happen and how the closing of plants would impact the makers of parts . Should of said up to 60% instead . Only stating what I've encountered from the liquid crystal boob tube .

 

[saberz]

Reading just the subject of this thread I was going to answer "we have KITT, the Batmobile, the A-Team van, McGyver's JEEP/Classic Chevy Pickup etc" to defend us against the imports. You don't ever hear about a Japanese/German/(Asian/European) made equivalent to KITT, and if you do I want pictures or it didn't happen!).


The lines of "made in the USA" are very blurred and skewed. Some cars are 30% made in the USA and others are 60%, all part of the "Globalization effort" for all in together all fall together mentality.

 

[Popinski]

Originally Posted By: Anies
Reading just the subject of this thread I was going to answer "we have KITT, the Batmobile, the A-Team van, McGyver's JEEP/Classic Chevy Pickup etc" to defend us against the imports. You don't ever hear about a Japanese/German/(Asian/European) made equivalent to KITT, and if you do I want pictures or it didn't happen!).


The lines of "made in the USA" are very blurred and skewed. Some cars are 30% made in the USA and others are 60%, all part of the "Globalization effort" for all in together all fall together mentality.


Watch out for the New Cobalt replacement; It's American, German, Australian, Korean, British.

 

[65cuda]

I agree with the thuoght that the US companies should be able to defend themselves and I shouldn't have to. My position though has been that I will try to buy the car that I think will give me the most reliability and value for my dollar. I do believe that they buy American is kind of a lie. To buy a US badged car just becaue it is a American brand only helps the investors and the CEO's if it is mostly made outside the US. If I buy a import that is produced here in the US then I believe that I am helping the US worker and giving the import manufactures incintive to build more here. There probably isn't any right answer to the issue.

 

[smokey1]

seen where vehicle sales were up 28% in CHINA . Which surpasses our stimulus . If sales keep up in CHINA , will most likely see many AMERICAN car producers make the leap to CHINA . Due to less environmental restrictions , cheaper metals , lower wages , and no need for health care ( thanks to their gov't ) . So much for being patriotic

. All about the $ .

 

[saberz]

Companies use "patriotic" to stimulate sales or to benefit them. No company is patriotic these days. I can safely say the last time an auto manufacturer was truly patriotic in the US was during WW2.

Companies care more about the bottom line than keeping it in the USA. If they can build a 100% made in the USA vehicle for 15k and build the same car elsewhere for 5k, they will go the 5k route.

 

[Gary Allan]

Our entire industrial sector has been a jobs program from the end of WWII. Daddywarbucks had great opportunities for a planet blown to heck and no competition. The Marshal Plan did as much to keep us from going into depression due to having 1000% industrial capacity and nowhere to send it. Same for ag products.

That was soaked up mostly by the biggest brunt of the Cold War. Our shepherds kept the economy internalized and spent this "wealth surplus" on a federal highway network, fleets and evolutions of bombers, libraries, schools, public water and waste works, and a great space race.

After our wealth surplus was depleted, they needed to hit the "wealth equity" to keep things flowing upward. Now don't get me wrong, lots of people benefited from "the spoils of war", but you just can't keep a one way street for money when the traffic runs light. Our antiquated industrial enterprises had no need to modernize for the ROI in it and there was no reason to compete with them either. Still no ROI. So ..they ended the Fair Trade Laws and methodically allowed more and more access to our markets.

Now some like to get the reshuffling out of the way in short order. Two eras were the principle points of the highest transference of wealth in the shortest period of time from the US to other interests. It's not like you would want a controlled re-entry into commonality of your common folk.

That's what you have now. Let's get it over with and really let them see what they're worth.

Oh ..and don't think the auto companies were "patriotic". They needed patriotism to keep productivity high. They were well paid for the products that they produced. Not that this is a bad thing. We needed as many as we could get ..just don't mistake one motivation for another and endow it with magical properties.

 

[Kruse]

Originally Posted By: Audi Junkie
This makes me proud to be a fellow GM owner..

http://peopleofwalmart.com/?paged=6



Hey. That's not a high speed spoiler. That's a redneck station wagon. I've known a few people who would see no problem having their kids sit on the rear "bench".

 

[javacontour]

I thought it was a redneck bike rack!

Or imagine this, a case of PBR and some guy who says hold my beer and watch this as he tries to hang ten off the surfboard on the back of the car.

 

[Win]

Originally Posted By: brianl703
Originally Posted By: Onmo'Eegusee

That [censored] happens with any brand of car, pretty much.


Yes. Come to the DC area and you'll see it mainly with Hondas, with the occasional Toyota thrown in.


A few weeks ago I saw a new Toyota truck on the side of the road with the far front wheel horizontal to the ground.

I wish I could have stopped to take a picture; the poor guy that owned it was standing by the road with a WTH expression on his face.

I would have thought TMC would have fixed that by now.

 

[Steve S]

Toyota Quality has really gone down hill. They now compete with G.M. and Ford.

 

[JohnBrowning]

You cannot make that claim most of the share holders for GM where either forginers or based out of forgien countries so little money was staying in the USA outside the employee's in this country. Since me and my children will never be able to get a good job working for GM,Ford or Chrysler this is not a true statement about the money staying here. In fact when I worked at GM I worked through a contract house aka a middle man.

Until me and my children and their children can get work that pays well and is not through a contract house I do not care what happens to the domestic auto industry! As far as I am concerned they are not doing anything for me or anyone I know. All the prople I know that used to work for them or for a company that was employed by them have lost their jobs. those that retired have lost a lot of benifits depending on which company we are talking about.

I have a better chance of getting a job with Toyota in Kentucky,Indiana or Texas then I do of ever working directly for GM.

On top of that most of the parts are built outside the company and shipped in completly ready for assembly so even the most American product comeing off of GM's line is more likely Assembled in America not truly American made. Most of the big parts are built in and assembled in Mexico or Canada then shiped by rail or truck to staging companies like Android here in Michigan that pay $9 an hour to their workers to do what the GM Union guys are not willing to do or cannot do cost effectivly ie staging the parts for assembly.

If GM had filed for Bankruptcy about 5 years ago when I was saying that they needed to they would be lean and healthy today. I knew it would not happen though. My entire life GM has been in a constant state of "restructuring" it has always failed because no one will do what needs to be done which is to get rid of 2/3 of the white collar staff and break the back of the Union to get far away from legacy cost's!

I have yet to be wrong on anything about the auto industry if you look at posts of mine on subjects like this from 2003 on ward I said the same thing I am saying now. The current bail out was a Union bail out and nothing more. It will only slow down what should have happened 5 years ago. If we keep trying to prop them and the housing and commercial real state markets up we will only ruin our economy even more and stretch out the suffering.

In fact GM and Ford was built by imagreants it is not any more American then anything else. Chevrolet was a French race car driver that drove for Ransom Olds and he was a very good driver so good that Ransom decided to name a model which latter become a division after this race car driver.GMC was bought out from the original owners I was born less then 2 miles away from the original GMC truck assembly company. My first Apartment was right across the street from this historic but now forgotten site!GM will have to fail completly and totaly and will have to get rid of all it's UAW obligations before it can ever be healthy I gurantee it! All we are doing is destroying our longterm economies health and placing huge tax burdens on those that have not been born yet along with my young 7 and 10 year old kids! We are printing money that we can not back up!

If a comapny employs Americans and if putting food on my table or my neighbors table then that company is in my mind just as American or more so then one that has been here longer. Just because these companies where hear first does not make them an "American Institution" It is the American working man we need to be worried about and if someone is going to pay them and build a product here instead of Canada and Mexico then that is more American then anythign else!

How is a GM product built mostly in Mexico and Canada an American car or truck? Then you have all the products like the old Chevy Celberity that was built entirly in Korea and shipped her on a boat how is that American made? THen you have all the electronics that are outsourced to Delphi who in turn outsources to Mitsubishi that are built in Japan or China. By the time you add up all the stuff that was built outside of the USA or was built in the USA from parts that where made outside the USA their is very little on a so called domestic vehicle that is truly American made!Many of my Toyota's have more Domestic content then many of GM's vechiles!

Fisrt any time you need to defend something that right their tells you that something is wrong!

Then you have the can worms that is the modern Union and how involved they are in politics especialy the Democratic party!!!

This is a huge can of worms and most of it stinks no matter what end of it you start from. Too many special interst groups and too many favors and too many lopsided import laws. The reason we have so many automotive plants from German and Japanese manufactures is because of the huge import tarriff on things like fully assembled pickup trucks for instance. If Toyota wanted to import trucks fully assembled it was something like a 33% or 35% import tarrif. On the other hand if GM wanted to import fully assembled pickup trucks from Mexico or Canada their was no import tarrif at all. So it became something of a situation where it was better to build the vechiles in this country with local work force thenit was to out source and import them from outside. The opposite was true though for Ford,GM and Chrysler so they continued to move work outside of the USA while their competitors continued to build in the USA!

Even the location of the plants is no accident. Michigan has traditional been greedy and every city,township and the state have been taxing the heck out of the auto industry and all their workers for years at insanely high levels. Michigan is I believe the only state left in USA that still has the single business tax. So GM has constantly kept moving plants and work outside of Michigan to get away from all the tax's! Like wise all these forgin manufactures found states inthe South that where happy to have people employed with good jobs. They where smart and said hey we will give you all kinds of tax abatments and land etc..... if you build a plant in our back yard. They understood that by not taxing the heck out of the business that they could grow their tax base on the backs of all the new workers that would have great paying jobs and that would be needing housing closer to where they worked.

Traditionally the south is not pro-Union either many people in the south see them as a cancer that is opportunistic and too greedy. So as long as the companies treat the workforce well they did not have to worry about Unions coming in and making a mess of everything.Also many in the south see them as a socialist quasi communist organization.The more locked into something you are in the form of national Union contracts the less flexible the company can be and that makes it rough for everyone it forces companies into situations that are less then ideal. It also creates an us versus them mentality which always hurts a company.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: JohnBrowning

I have yet to be wrong on anything about the auto industry if you look at posts of mine on subjects like this from 2003 on ward I said the same thing I am saying now.



Quote:
In fact GM and Ford was built by imagreants it is not any more American then anything else.


Oh really?

Quote:
Henry Ford was born July 30, 1863, on a farm next to a rural town west of Detroit, Michigan (this area is now part of Dearborn, Michigan).


Quote:
If a comapny employs Americans and if putting food on my table or my neighbors table then that company is in my mind just as American or more so then one that has been here longer. Just because these companies where hear first does not make them an "American Institution" It is the American working man we need to be worried about and if someone is going to pay them and build a product here instead of Canada and Mexico then that is more American then anythign else! How is a GM product built mostly in Mexico and Canada an American car or truck?


Mexico and Canada (where I live) are part of North America. They are American. They may not be US, but they are AMERICAN and members of NAFTA.

We like having jobs up here too. And given our economies are greatly intertwined, and the auto manufacturing business has been a part of our economy almost as long as it has been a part of yours, I take some offence that remark.

 

[StevieC]

You tell 'em OVERK1LL

 

[Virtuoso]

I don't. It's like trying to convince an Apple fan-boy to buy a Dell. Might as well not waste your breath.

 

[andrewg]

A·mer·i·can (-mr-kn)
ADJECTIVE:

Of or relating to the United States of America or its people, language, or culture.
Of or relating to North or South America, the West Indies, or the Western Hemisphere.
Of or relating to any of the Native American peoples.
Indigenous to North or South America. Used of plants and animals.
NOUN:

A native or inhabitant of America.
A citizen of the United States.
American English.

It's pretty well understood that when one says the term 'American', it is meant to convey a citizen of the U.S.

 

[caprice_2nv]

We've lost a [censored] of jobs here in Canada because of production moving overseas to compete with imports. Doing a lot of my own work on my 1980's GM's, I've found even though my Caprices were built in the U.S, many of the parts were made in Canada by factories not far from where I live. I have family members that have lost jobs making parts for the automakers. It's probably only going to get worse, and I find it hard not to blame people that switched to imports. A few of the imports may be built in Canada or U.S but I would bet that all the parts in them are built in Japan. There is definitely more jobs being lost than gained. Prove me wrong.

 

[John_K]

Quote:
Funny you brought this up. I recently purchased serpentine and accessory belts for my Mitsu - made in USA. Friend of mine recently purchased a set of brake pads for his Crown Vic - made in Mexico. His AC compressor is also made in Korea, and the car is built in Canada.


Exactly. There's this, then there's Chrysler in bed with the Italians, GM rebadging Opels and Holdens. I don't know what "American" means anymore.

John

 

[andrewg]

'American made' does not mean much at all anymore. While buying a traditional American brand name vehicle (or anything else for that matter) does generally help the U.S./Canada worker more than a 'foreign' brand, corporations AND governments are highly global. Globalism is what it's all about....and it stinks.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: andrewg
A·mer·i·can (-mr-kn)
ADJECTIVE:

Of or relating to the United States of America or its people, language, or culture.
Of or relating to North or South America, the West Indies, or the Western Hemisphere.
Of or relating to any of the Native American peoples.
Indigenous to North or South America. Used of plants and animals.
NOUN:

A native or inhabitant of America.
A citizen of the United States.
American English.

It's pretty well understood that when one says the term 'American', it is meant to convey a citizen of the U.S.


Where we are coming from highlighted in bold.

As for your statement: those are often the same people who think Canadians drive snowmobiles year round and live in Igloos.