That's the bottom line for me.

I dont care why Toyota is building in my back yard. Im glad they are and thats all I need to know about that.

What I do wonder is Why our American makers keep going overseas to compete Here. And how fair is that, and is there a problem with the system.

 

The thing that would make me the happiest would be to see Toyota, Honda and Nissan closing plants down and GM and Ford building new ones. That is the way it SHOULD be!

 

What's wrong with Toyota, they've got it all wrong!..they're supposed to be closing plants and eliminating jobs..
They must not have gotten the Modern "Company Growth" memo...
They had better get with the program...

 

That would be nice. But it can only happen when GM & Ford strart building car & trucks that everyone wants to buy. They need an image makeover to change the public's perception that *** brand cars are better. If/when that happens, you might see more domestic plants opening.

 

What do you mean, "Everyone wants to buy?"

GM outsells Toyota and Toyota makes big bank while GM loses money.

What would that tell us about GM's cost?

 

GM needs more "got to have it" cars. They need to build an "Accord/Camry" that people percive to be the best sedan to buy. People need to be able to say "That Chevy ______ is the best car out there. It's better than Accord or Camry." Either that or they will continue to loose ground to the *** brands.

 

As it stands now you could take the badgs off any Impala and replace it with a Honda emblem and no one would ever know the difference (edit: except for that 303hp V8 version ). Couple that with the quality of an Impala and its no secret that Chevy has been making a good foriegn car for a few years.

Which has nothing to do with the playing field being level or not.

But while we're temporarily off topic, I think we need to go back to making American cars. Cars that foriegn companies haven't ever made. Cars that are distinctively American and built to last 300K miles like the competition. But not just a warmed over appliance like an Accord, Camary, or Taurus.

And aparently they are headed that way both in the near future (G8 within a year) and at the end of the decade (or soon after).

But if Toyonda is still importing cheaply built parts for free, assembling them here, and assuring the rest of us that we are all on equal terms, then no amount of automotive passion will surmount making MORE cars and LESS profit.

 

GM/Ford's biggest problem from percived quality has been interiors. They have paled in quality for yrs. For the common car buyer, interior is probably the most important item for a car. When you are driving a car day in , day out, you're touching cheap plastics. If an interior "feels" nice it is percived as high quality. *** brand interiors (for the most part) have that "feel". My Z does not. But I bought my car for the power, not the "feel".

 

Did you even read what he wrote?

 

I was thinking of another post. Brain fart.

 

Saturn Aura..has bested the japan nameplates in quality.
The malibu also will be above quality next year.
Caddy has some of the sharpest interiors comming down the pipe.
the new Chevy Silverado is much better in person than the toyotas that I have seen.

Toyota has money to burn and a warchest to fight anything GM comes up with in a marketing campaign. The "this is our country" Well have you seen the Toyota "were american as you slogans" They beat GM at every corner of how to perceive they have better cars and trucks. GM has to do the same marketing as toyota head to head. show the public in commercials. that GM has a better product. The other thing is they need to do what Ford did with the Fusion. That has got some talk and deffinatly worth the spot on TV.
Its comming about about perceived quality. But trying to undo over 20 years of bad press does not happen overnight.
So to say they have to do this or that.
They are doing it.