We make a good living but there is no way I’d spend that kind of money either ($25K).

I’ll be content to keep on driving what we’ve got and fixing them if they break. 150K+ on each.

When it does come to time to buy something else – when we HAVE to – we’ll buy something used and well cared for and not likely anything domestic b/c used car ownership requires some resemblance of quality to be worthwhile and Detroit isn’t in that business yet from what I see in my friends’ and family’s cars.

Drive a VW to 200K and deal with a list of small things myself at low cost or buy a domestic at 100K miles and face blown engines and dead transmissions. Easy choices…

FWIW we are very seldom Wal-mart shoppers. We’d like to 100% domestic buyers but the products just arent’t there anymore. When they were available (when I was a kid) the gadgets were often a generation or more behind the imports. I was a kid of the 1980s.

I think we Americans are just too distracted by our relatively comfortable lifestyle. Maybe a little worried that we might be weird if we take our specialty too seriously (thinking about our ideas and designs a little 24/7).

We make a good living but there is no way I’d spend that kind of money either ($25K).

I’ll be content to keep on driving what we’ve got and fixing them if they break. 150K+ on each.

When it does come to time to buy something else – when we HAVE to – we’ll buy something used and well cared for and not likely anything domestic b/c used car ownership requires some resemblance of quality to be worthwhile and Detroit isn’t in that business yet from what I see in my friends’ and family’s cars.

Drive a VW to 200K and deal with a list of small things myself at low cost or buy a domestic at 100K miles and face blown engines and dead transmissions. Easy choices…

It wasn’t considered to be a good fit at that time. Maybe now would be a better time for it.

The equivalent Airbus model is years behind the Dreamliner because it was rejected

if Harley Davidson had a vision, they would pour money into improving diversity, technology and fit and finish,

Harley, if nothing else, targets their market with perfect accuracy. A “Nipped out” Harley would bomb in the marketplace. The buyers want the stone knives and bearskins technology just as it is.

Ford and Gm had a vision, they wouldn`t have bought the hybrid technology from toyota and honda, but developed it independently.

Ford’s development of Hybrid technology is NOT Toyota’s. You can research that right here on this site.

Army Refuelling Tankers aren`t Domestics anyomore and are replaced by Airbus variations.

Not yet: Boeing is challenging the award of the contract to Airbus.

America still has great engineering and R&D, but corporate America doesn’t want to manufacture here. It is interested in cheap labor so those on the top can make extra profit for themselves. This is especially true in consumer grade products. Where America still has a strong presence is in “cost no object” products. Scientific equipment, medical equipment, top notch audio (think Mark Levinson, you know the stuff that Lexus buys). In these arenas America holds her own. Jurisb, your tone makes it sound like America has nothing left to offer the world. Such a pessimistic attitude is patently unfair. Yes, most of America’s manufacturing wounds are self inflicted, but the course can be changed. To do that, corporate policy must change first. It will be necessary to put long term goals ahead of short term prosperity; basically a complete change of the corporate mentality that has caused this crisis to begin with. Not easy, but critical.

I would love to read an editorial on your insights gleaned from the auction market…which vehicles from various manufacturers hold up best in the real world.

M1EK: Several of y’all completely missed the point on the pension/healthcare issue: Honda’s better pie means they charge more money for the car and get it. If Ford made an equally good pie, they’d be able to charge that higher price; leave less cash on the hood; and make a profit (and THEN we could cry about how their profit was smaller than Honda’s because of their higher costs).

Taking your analogy further, Ford must pay the health care costs and pensions of the RETIRED bakers, and its current bakers were laboring under work rules that put Ford at a competitive disadvantage. The new contract should help, but under the old contract, Ford had less money for the ingredients because it had to put more money into other costs that Honda did not have.

M1EK: To blame those higher costs when you’re not even interested in making an attractive car for small car buyers is absurd. To be fair, Ford hates small car owners less than do GM and Chrysler.

You’re right that the domestics have been less than enthusiastic about small cars than the imported nameplates. But the cost handicap did a lot to dull their enthusiasm.

Of course, the proper route would have been for the union and the company to work on reducing this cost handicap while the market was booming. Instead, both union and management waited until now, and it may be too late.

You brought up an interesting point about immigrant assimilation and manufacturing. I have to ask, do the UAW controlled plants still perform this function for our society?

As a Texan, I can tell you that illegal immigrants are not being assimilated very well, because they do not mix much with the rest of us as much as the legal ones do. IMO, we really need to vastly increase legal immigrants, and slow to a trickle the illegal ones. Unfortunately, the PC types twist any attempt to reduce illegal immigration into a racist jihad while the press willingly helps.

IMO, the labor laws in Michigan and many other states will prevent Detroit from rising from it’s own ashes. We will likely see the rise of another American car company, but it will be in a right to work state.

I don’t have any agenda to have a market exclusively supplied by domestic vendors. Walmart is the most efficient retail distribution organization in the world, and that facilitates a mixed, diverse products market. There is benefit to them bringing that capability to market. But there too is cost. Consumers can exercise more power regarding the mix of benefit and cost we enjoy and incur.

Domestic manufacturers have no vision, they have no abilities to sacrifice short term profits for the sake of company`s future.

This is the kind of declaration that draws fire to you here. The absolute dismissal of capability among US automakers is misinformed and simplistic. GM and Ford are clearly sacrificing short-term financial performance to create a viable future for themselves while climbing out of a deep hole. GM could simply license Toyota’s DSD format and try to boost market share as a frame-maker, in the way that Boeing and Airbus integrate engines from GE, RR, etc. into their jets. But instead they are funding several alternative propulsion technologies in an effort to create an engineering-based future. GM pioneered metal hydroforming in large scale auto manufacturing. They developed via Delphi the innovative magneto-rheological active suspension dampers that Ferrari has seen fit to adopt. Just a few examples. BMW uses some GM automatic transmissions. The Corvette is admired worldwide as an engineering platform and for its manufacturing jointly enabling profitable production of stellar vehicle performance at the world’s most accessible price. It’s just that these abilities are not uniformly applied to the Detroit 3’s overall businesses. That’s a management inadequacy that is correctable, not intractable.

What took so long for Nissan to crank out Gt-R? Now you see the waiting was worth it, when you see GT-R beating crap out Veyron at Nurburgring.

By the way, a GT-R outperforming a Veyron is less of a feat than you imply. Like almost everything else automotive developed under German supervision, the Veyron is an overweight pig, with cost-no-object engineering largely applied to overcoming its 4200 lbs. of unimaginative mass, along with managing the air load imposed by its velocity objectives. Nice car. I’ve seen two on the road here in Los Angeles and admired its maneuverability at speed through canyons, from behind. But honestly for a over a million bucks a copy, I’d be a lot more impressed if Bugatti had fielded a structurally strong 240mph performance car weighing 1800 lbs. Nothing over *TWO TONS* riding on four automotive tires impresses me. GT-R is a gold star for Nissan. It also happens to come halfway through the product cycle for its competitors. I fully expect Nissan, Toyota, GM, et al to be able to engineer such a car if they want to. Eventually the Koreans, Chinese and Indians will too. There are no real engineering secrets in that world — only choices, the tyranny of economics, imagination and will.

Lexus LF-A is so far an exercise. When (if) it gets to market, we’ll see what it represents. GM’s ZR-1 is coming too. None will be without their adherents and fans.

You’re right though. Toyota has the advantage of a huge accumulated cash horde. Microsoft has that advantage too in its world, yet that treasury doesn’t prevent even small companies from innovating underfoot, outrunning and outmaneuvering Microsoft in specific sectors within software, entertainment, and tech-enabled media. American consumers retain the ability and choice to effectively curb Toyota’s treasury advantage by steering their dollars in the direction of the Detroit 3. Certainly, management of those companies then have to make good on the gesture if such a consciousness materialized. It may not.

Nevertheless, if Detroit rouses its energies to mount a comeback, it will be propelled much more by imagination than money. American manufacturers have to stop building imitation Toyotas and Audis. To reclaim their market, the Detroit 3 must build dramatic, engaging, future-oriented vehicles in the confident, optimistic American idiom, that sheath practical advanced technology and accessible value. While they’re marshaling those products, the near term challenge is building a bridge to that future via the best of existing products and marketing — along with an interested, engaged, committed consumer population.

Phil

We, the individuals who comprise the United States, have the power and ability to improve this situation right now, but we lack the will. Or perhaps in the aggregate not enough people care. Patriotic purchasing is a blunt instrument that has both beneficial and ill effects. It is a source of stalwart revenue for the Detroit 3, but it’s a one-legged stool even for the consumer because patriotic buying does not blend in enough market pressure to stimulate the right behaviors by manufacturers. On the other hand, individuals who peer over a damaged auto manufacturing landscape from the ivory tower of laissez-fair market capitalism are ignoring social factors that are in their self-interest to influence or moderate through actions that might seem irrational to adherents of that market-driven mindset.

Whether we like to admit it or not, as individuals our purchasing power and the discrete decisions we make on how to use it shapes the world we live in. Today, Americans in many areas of life are forfeiting the power granted them to sculpt their world through the social and commercial leverage of their buying power.

Forget about automobiles for a moment. Wal-Mart got to be, depending on criterion of measurement, one of the largest corporations on the planet despite some bitter opposition to the consequences of its narrowly-defined efficiency. Yet in towns all over America that were sharply divided over the desirability of hosting Wal-Mart in their locale, the portion of a local population that resisted the chain’s expansion in an effort to preserve the character of their community could usually be found shopping in the new Wal-Mart that was built after overcoming legal obstacles to its construction.

We saw this movie before in consumer driven markets, notably in televisions. By the mid-1960s, our domestic TV manufacturers had become complacent. They dominated the channels of distribution, settled on a fading aesthetic for their packaging, stagnated technical design, and had become accustomed to inbred innovations that helped them jockey each other for market share. The basic design of Sony’s Trinitron picture tube was an American invention, but RCA, Westinghouse, Sylvania, GE, Muntz and others didn’t see the need to adopt it, so the idea went to Sony, clever and insightful enough to adopt it for further development and commercialization.

For about a decade, Sony TVs really were better than what the domestics were offering, and some of the Americans were quickly winnowed out of the market. Domestic response to Sony’s challenge came late and only incrementally. But by the late 1970s, RCA for one began bringing TVs to market that had more natural color and more visual film-like depth than Sony’s more cartoon-vivid Trinitron. But to no avail. By then, for too much of the market, a Sony Trinitron was cooler. It had the brand cachet to easily overcome any flickering recognition that a former champ had fielded something superior. RCA was sold twice; its design and manufacturing facilities in the US folded, and it’s now just a vacant brand unrelated to its past.

Consumers had the option to help them claw back, but not enough cared. I recall at the time hearing people admit that an RCA TV had the best picture, only to then hear, “…but I’d buy the Sony…” And so they did.

Also at the time, many Americans, especially elites on the coasts, commonly responded, “Who cares whether we make TVs?” Yet display technology became a wealth driver on its own but by then we had forfeited our ability to play. When we lost the manufacturing, we also lost much of the vaunted R&D. Sure, our video processing expertise resides inside Chinese, Korean and Japanese displays, but the social bridge manufacturing provides is mostly absent in that sector, in the US.

At a pure economic level, the logic for comparative advantage is sound, and if Americans are no longer in the carmaking business, we’ll nevertheless move on and prosper as we escalate the strata of economic maturity. And make no mistake, a “domestic” industry comprised of nothing more than transplants is not the same as the United States still being significantly in the business of making cars. Transplants are an echo of a forfeited industry, with truncated social, jobs, vendor, financial and management leverage compared to equivalent domestically-owned counterparts.

However, the world has other operators than sterile economics. The human factors of politics and social well-being, community, cohesion and aggregate spirit underpinning nation rather than state cloud the clean logic of economics. Manufacturing is an instrument for assimilation in an immigrant nation. It is a pillar of middle-class sustenance. Blithely accepting the loss of manufacturing truncates social cohesion and accelerates bifurcation of our society between haves and have-nots. In short, we should care enough to chart out an individual response that is somewhere between patriotic buying and free-market ignorance of social factors.

That middle path is to buy competitive Detroit 3 vehicles whenever and wherever possible, beginning now. Now, and irrespective of what’s perceived as cool, or sliver qualitative differences. We can be supportive of companies striving for Herculean change by buying their most competitive vehicles. We can be punitive of bad effort by hastening demise of poor product through shunning it. And we could be a lot noisier about communicating what we want from these vendors.

Since 1980 when I bought my first *new* car after years on the used market, I’ve purchased 17 cars for myself and spouse. 3 were imports, 1 was a transplant and 13 were Detroit iron. All have been completely reliable except for the first (which was British and which even then never left me stranded) and most have been driven into six digits on the odo at departure from my garage. The majority were purchased at prices close to the national average new vehicle purchase price for the era they were procured. My first American new car was purchased in 1983, so for 25 years and counting, I’ve demonstrated in the real world that an American interested in underpinning his country’s manufacturing economy could buy competitive products that performed reliably, were durable, and entertained while doing so.

Yes, many will say they don’t have the time to be a more engaged consumer. They have other priorities. We don’t owe companies anything special — they owe us the best products and business practices. Many will say, “…screw ‘em; those bastards sold me / failed to fix my (Cimarron) (Pinto) (Chevette) (Celebrity) (Escort) (Focus) (Tempo) (Taurus)….they deserve to die!”

That’s sentiment, not rationale. We, collectively as consumers of automotive products, are as guilty of apathy and nearsightedness as the executives and unions we point the finger to. The United States has never been a craft culture. Craft is a subculture in the US, not mainstream. We have been a volume culture in manufacturing, going back to the Conestoga Wagon, gunmaking and the cotton gin. Our products have been audacious yet attainable, for the most part. Pricing has been artificial, not cost-based. Of course products have to work. They have to deliver sustained value. Still, the executives we decry for boneheaded insulation from real markets or for nickel-and-diming desirability out of otherwise appealing concepts are no more guilty of losing sight of the big picture than are consumers who resist the idea of their purchasing power having social leverage. Companies must field competitive products, but we as citizens and consumers have responsibility to field a competitive culture on the world stage. THAT is a ceaseless project.

Whether it’s public schools starved for funding, too few police on the streets of Los Angeles, high-fat foods, stupid corn ethanol subsidies, or a crumbling domestically-owned carmaking business, the blame that’s easily identified elsewhere does not absolve individuals of their neglect to wield their purchasing power for greater good. The failure in the executive suites of Michigan, at Tesla, at Countrywide, Sears and Bear Stearns, et al, reflects the concomitant failure of individuals in our consumer culture to think holistically about life and the effects of personal conduct.

Chevrolet has a hit on its hands in the HHR. Add in (reviled here) Cobalt sales and it’s clear that the platform works for a substantial number of people. Further, it can be argued that America loves the Cobalt, just more so in the form of an HHR. An HHR or HHR SS would easily meet the needs of most buyers in the small ute market. Americans can simply elect to buy more of them and fewer small utes from Toyota, Honda, Suzuki, Hyundai, etc. This is just one example of many.

Americans will buy somewhere between 14.5 – 15.5mm new cars this year. That’s a lot of potential leverage. If Americans really want a domestic automaking business in our socio-economic mix, we can ensure it stays, beginning right now. In a country with a rich history of vociferous minorities driving broad scope pervasive change, the only conclusion to be drawn is that not enough people care about this issue to get involved. We collectively think product is king, that our choice reflects upon us, that social status is bought, that our need for affinity compels bias. Meanwhile, I’ve been proving it’s possible to get reliability and satisfaction in automotive purchasing while doing my best to shape the world I live in with the tools of influence I have at hand.

Phil

I would love to see some real numbers behind this assertion. In my area, it is the first generation immigrants who are the most American product-patriotic. As the euphoria wanes in the subsequent generations, other factors determine buying.

So, if you have real, serious numbers to support that, please show them.

We will, too.

Because as mentioned above, Chrysler is KAPUT, and I use the German word advisedly. They helped to cause Chrysler’s demise.

Interestingly enough, Chrysler execs lied and pulled the rug from under American Motors workers by closing the big (and very old) Kenosha and Milwaukee plants almost immediately after buying up AMC/Jeep in 1987. After making empty promises about keeping the plant open.

Also, DaimlerChrysler yanked the rug from under their “partner” Mitsubishi a few years back, without thinking through the idea that perhaps just perhaps, if they held a safety net for Mitsubishi “this time”, Mitsu might be there for THEM to hold out a safety net “next time.”

So it’s kind of like kizmet or karma to have Daimler do pretty much the same thing to Chrysler that they did to Mitsubishi – get rid of it as fast as possible and write it off as a bad job (after ruining it) – and it’s also interesting to see how Chrysler is now going to be treated by it’s next buyer in much the same way that Chrysler treated AMC when Chrysler bought it.

Sometimes the hammer gets melted down and becomes the nail, doesn’t it?

Next editorial (please): Juri SB on what comprises a really good car interior.

I don’t know if you borrowed that, or made it up yourself, but it’s brilliant.

Nice to see your thoughts arranged in paragraphs, jurisb! No offense, but I find most of your comments a little difficult to read without paragraph breaks.

Steven,
I am a big fan of yours, but I have a few bones to pick with this one. Firstly, if Japanese universal health care is such an important cost factor, why don’t more companies move operations to Japan? Maybe because Japan isn’t so cheap to do business in. Which is why GM is moving engineering functions to places like Korea and China, not Japan.

Secondly, saying that Honda derives advantage from having MITI on its side is kind of ironic, since it was MITI that tried to prevent Honda from entering the auto business in the first place. This sounds like the Hillary campaign claiming they are ‘helping’ Obama and the Democratic party by staying in the race to vet their rival. With friends like these…

Finally, to claim that the US does nothing to promote or protect core industries is to turn a blind eye to this government’s coddling of the Energy, Drilling, Farming, Defense and Health Sciences industries.

Maybe your point is that the US does little to protect the US auto industry. Have you seen the tax on imported pickups? All the money poured into ‘research’ that goes direclty to domestics’ bottom lines?

Sorry, but the uneven playing field excuse is just that: an excuse.

Amen. That’s why the SUV boom of the 90’s was such a huge distraction for Detroit. They made profits on trucks and left the small car market to the imports. And it wasn’t just management – GM suffered wildcat plant strikes in the mid 90’s when they tried to make certain plants more productive.

The labor agreement just signed is a great step – but it’s about 8 years late…

Part of Detroit's problem now is that, for valid reasons or not, many consumers have crossed domestic brands off their shopping list. If people are not even willing to look, the 2.8 are dead in the water. Reading many of the comments posted here make it clear that quite a few buyers have closed minds to even considering a test drive with anything "domestic". No doubt some are tempted to respond with stories about how poor an experience they had in the past. And they may very well might have. But the tone is such that you would think that only Detroit could possibly commit such blunders.

Lets be honest here. There are many foreign nameplates that have worse reliability, some MUCH worse. Just look at the entire Mercedes Benz line. (remember we are talking reliability here, not quality of materials, fit and finish). MB now produces some of the most unreliable cars made today. If you really cross shop makes, you will find some very good cars with domestic names. Yes,there are still some turkeys, but to dismiss, say, GM across the board make no sense. Buying a car to be "patriotic" is foolish if the car itself is a POS because blindly buying something that is junk prevents the market from forcing improvements. Japanese competition has been the best thing that has happened to Detroit even if that meant some serious short term suffering.

However, if nobody is willing to look, the suffering becomes long term or fatal. In our household, we look at all vehicles in a given segment and buy the one that we feel is overall the best, even if it costs a bit more. The end result is that in the last six vehicles purchased, two were Ford products, one was GM, one was Toyota, one was Infiniti, and one was BMW. The latest was a new Cadillac CTS which for us beat out the G35. I wonder how many people who purchased a G35 even bothered to look at the CTS. Not many, I am willing to bet. The 2.8 have produced some very good models to entice people to "flock back" to. Very few Toyota owners will bother to try.

Part of the Big 2.x’s problem is bombastic management culture like we see here — hyping the next Moonshot! project that grabs attention in the management suite and gets another empty-suit corporate politician promoted. Meanwhile, it’s career limbo to tend to the non-glamourous, long-neglected important task of improving the myriad of design, engineering and manufacturing processes that make for satisfying cars rolling out the door.

I’d rather see them focus less on the next overhyped ‘Revolutionize the industry!’ dog and pony show we’ve seen way too many times before — the “Push the Japs back into the sea” Pinto and Vega, the X-Cars, J-Cars, 1981 Escort, K-Cars, Roger Smith’s robotics revolution, 1994 Neon and the rest. I’m starting to feel like Charlie Brown trusting Lucy to hold the football this time.

Hey, Big 2.x, focus on building a car with the engineering, quality, driveability, attention to detail, reliability and durability of a Honda Civic. It shouldn’t be that hard with the depth of talent in your organizations. You might actually turn a profit because you could sell it at Civic prices instead of heavily-discounted Focus/Cavalier prices.

When you’ve proven you can accomplish this, without constant whining about UAW/health care/pensions/exchange rates/sunspots, and not before, work your way up to more ambitious tasks. Show us you can get the details right first. It may not be mega-profitable in the short term, but most worthwhile endeavors require an eye for the long view. You cannot viably continue to run a manufacturing industry with multi-year product development cycles when you are tunnel-visioning about next quarter’s earnings.

For decades you’ve abused the trust of millions of Americans who consequently left you to drive imports. But you might be surprised how many would flock back to the home team if you gave them a good reason embodied in a product rather than jingoistic TV commercials.

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/brock-yates-grosse-point-blank/

“Go back 40 years, when I scribbled a story that put me on the Motor City hit list: “The Grosse Pointe Myopians.” The sub-title pretty much outlined the premise: “Accustomed to silver-lined visions, the auto elite refused to see any gray clouds.”

“Detroit can fire scattershot numbers to justify practically anything, including slumping sales. However two vivid facts remain after all the ledgers have been shuffled; the domestic automobile industry is not growing as rapidly as expected and imports are making shocking inroads into the American market.”

“Remember now, those words were written close to a half-century ago. Nothing, not a damn thing, has changed. Sales continue to slump as the Europeans take more of the upscale market and the Japanese and Koreans (and soon, the Chinese) chisel away at the center and bottom of the market.“