The discussion I see here reflects much of the attitudes held, by many people in America, concerning US automakers. There was a great article in the Washington Post a couple of years ago that asserts that, no matter how they may try, American automakers do not get an even break from the American people. I also recall a similar thread in this forum a couple of years ago that expressed considerable disdain toward the autos made in America. Just to look at some of Cyrus' assertions i shall try to make my point:
Not only are they ugly and break down, they screwed their own dealerships left and right!
1. Looks are subjective. Personally, I don't care for the styling for most GM products (I think Cadillac styles are OK), but I find Chrysler products have very attractive styles, though I wouldn't pick their products - - - purely personal.
2. Do they really break down more? JD Power surveys don't reflect that. The last one had (1) Buick, (2) Jaguar, (3) Lexus, (4) Toyota, (5) Mercury (6) Acura, etc. The beloved Honda was rated number ten, and BMW and Mercedes fell at numbers 18 and 19 respectively. To be sure, Consumer Reports finds totally different results, but the rap on them is that their rating is done by amateurs (their subscribers). The magazine allows them to decide what is major and minor, and rates car reliability accordingly. Note that the one major cost item faced by most owners under 100,000 miles is replacement of the timing belt. The catch here is the practice by Honda of calling this a "tuneup item", thus this $850.00 tuneup item escapes scrutiny, and those amateur reviewers always find Honda the most reliable. In essence US cars for the last twenty years have been as reliable as Asian ones, and more reliable than most European ones. Does anyone notice that in Honda ads they never claim to be the most reliable; they just leave it to us to jump to that conclusion.
3. How many dealers will there be if the manuffacturers go under? The paring down of dealers simply reflects the fact that the manufacturers will be producing fewer cars.
Why anyone would every buy an American car again boggles my mind.
This is simply one person's bias against US cars.
The shut down dealerships and ruined those buissness owners lives without a care. Just for that, I'll never, ever buy a GM car as long as I live.
It's more an act of desperation than lack of care.
I was listening to WTOP radio and the interviewed people saying "American car companies need to stop making ugly Junk" and ..."American car companies need to wake up and make reliable cars like Honda or Toyota".
Again, this simply reflects attitudes toward the American car companies.
Why are we bailing these car companies out? Just let them die!
And when we do, all the hundreds of thousands of parts makers, service companies, auto workers and all those in the towns who run stores, restaurants, real estate, local banks, local government services, etc., etc. will also go under. And if you believe that a nation that is already running on debt rather that its manufacture of products, can shift prosperously to even more debt, maybe you should think longer.
The question, then, is "Why do Americans show such disdain for its own auto makers?" To me, the answer lies in what I call the "forty years of the great screw job." Between 1935 and 1975, the US auto companies deliberately made cars of shoddy quality. It was not that they couldn't build reliable products, they chose not to do so. (They would deny it.) Rumor has it that during the depression people stopped buying cars (duh). The auto company leaders supposedly swore that they would never allow this to happen again, so as it goes, those arrogant ba----ds thereafter made the cars to break-down and thus force the people back into the showrooms. (They were the only sources available to the buyers then.) As the story goes, this practice continued until the mid-seventies, when they were ambushed by the Japanese, who decided (correctly) that their chances lay in making cars more reliable. Once the shock wore off, the US companies realized that they had no choice but to improve quality, which, contrary to perception, they knew exactly how to do (it's not rocket science). By the mid-eighties, they had caught up, but the people ignored that as the have continued to do. The US car-makers forgot the "Johnson and Johnson principle", which basically states that, "if a company does something wrong, or otherwise has a problem - - - it must come clean about it." Those companies are required to confess publicly what they did, apologize for it, and make pact to never let it happen again. The US auto-makers have never done this, and thus have never been let off the hook. To this respect, these CEOs are either too arrogant, too stupid, or they've been listening to their lawyers for too long,rather than their PR people. Until they do apologize, don'e expect their fortunes to improve greatly. This is unfortunate. (Microsoft should think about this also. If and when the people get the chance, they'll dump on them in the same way.)
