11th May 2015, 18:16
We had 8 Pontiac 6000 LE 3.1 V6 front wheel drive sedans as company vehicles. They were exceptional in all respects. Also made Car and Driver's 10 best on 3 occasions. I had 2 of them. My favorite was my black sedan with wire wheel covers luggage rack with rear spoiler. Great cars that should have continued. Only routine maintenance. Keep in mind these were not personal vehicles, so there's no bias or remorse justifying a bad purchase after the fact.
11th May 2015, 21:09
A Ford would be an import to those that reside in England. Or France etc. If I pay 6 grand to ship my domestic over there for a couple fun holiday weeks, it's still a domestic to USA. Being built elsewhere doesn't define the endless import-domestic debate. If anyone still thinks that a Toyota with final assembly in the USA is a domestic, then they are sorely mistaken. I have owned German, British, Korean and Japanese brands. Never seemed to ever have a problem with the nomenclature. Next thing we will hear is a Jag is a domestic Ford. Or a VW Beetle is a Mexico brand. Most know. Even if you dwell on international presence, they are what they are.
12th May 2015, 16:02
The comments in regards to the "domestic-ness" of a vehicle is not necessarily a cut and dry debate. The term "Import" means that a product was made somewhere else and then shipped here... and "Imported", meaning it was taken to a port of call and unloaded, or "Imported" - as the name denotes.
So what if we're talking about something that was designed, tested, built, marketed and then sold all within the country of origin? The product in question is not an import. It is a domestically-produced good having never been taken across the sea, never having been offloaded or "imported", and having been produced using domestically produced parts from domestically producers, it is in fact very much a "domestic" product.
Oh - and those Pontiacs? Yeah... I remember those. Good for maybe 100,000 miles before the cheap PVC plastic intakes warped or cracked. I rented a few on business trips and the interiors were like molten plastic just poured over it. Awful cars. There's a reason Pontiac as a brand no longer exists.
12th May 2015, 19:08
If it's made here it's still not necessarily a domestic. Over and Over. So you can drive a German BMW, German VW or Japanese brand nameplate (say a Tacoma). None of these are domestics. They are foreign brand cars. Back to the point... if I drive a brand new BMW model made here, it's an American car, correct? Tell Germany that at their corporate headquarters. I own a rental property in another country. I hire a management firm there and pay a percentage to look after my place. The property is there, the workers are as well... but I get the rental money and the proceeds if sold. It's called ownership. They get a small percentage for taking care of it. But I own it. An analogy, but maybe this will finally work. Doubt it, but worth a shot.
13th May 2015, 00:06
Um, the Pontiac 6000 model on topic didn't use the 3800 series 2 with the plastic intake. The biggest V6 in that model was the 3.1.
One of the reasons Pontiac don't exist today could be they stopped making their own engines, just like every other GM division. Back when they all did, IMO Pontiac built the best. You said it yourself on a previous comment about the "Iron Duke".
13th May 2015, 19:27
But at the end of the day... does it matter? So what that some of the profits goes to another country or another corporate office? What do you think they use in their offices when it comes to sending emails? PCs. What OS or brands of computers do you think are in the offices? Probably American brand computers with American brand software company products loaded up. So guess what happens if we for some ridiculous reason decided to go 1930s style and block imports or throw up tariffs or otherwise stop global trade? They wouldn't buy those American computers.... would they? If not, what happens to our economy?
And therein lies the reason why any such argument that oh - we simply can't buy anything foreign - will never hold up because such an assertion is completely counter to even the most basic of economics.
And the Pontiac? I rented my fair share of the things. About the only redeeming factors to me were that they were pretty fast and got surprisingly decent fuel economy. The rest of the car was awful. I and many others are really, really glad GM now builds some pretty good stuff, and NOT cars like those old Pontiacs...
14th May 2015, 10:13
See disadvantages 2 and 3.
You may be forced to relocate at some point to another state at lower salary and benefits over foreign pressure. Or be downsized. Your age may work against you, even with a higher education. And it does matter to the majority of the population affected.
In order to operate, we have opened up plants in Europe to further reduce costs. As a result, there's one shift where there were once three in America. Start multiplying this loss towards lost industry and compare to the gain of a plant in a few states.
14th May 2015, 15:30
Please re-read some of the previous comments. The Camry is majority-constructed of American-made parts. Follow the money trail. Who benefits from that? American workers. If the argument here is only with regard to some profits going to the corporate office and the CEOs, well the American CEO is about as far removed from the everyday American factory line worker as a Japanese CEO from Japanese factory line workers. Next?
14th May 2015, 19:22
At the end of the day this is simply too complex of an issue to simply proclaim "buying American" would solve it all. For example what we're seeing right now with the shifting of some US-based plants to Mexico and elsewhere is the result of US currency value and fluctuation. Right now the value of the US dollar makes manufacturing here more expensive.
As far as having to change jobs, move or otherwise live in a world of economic disruption, if this is something some haven't experienced yet... then welcome to the club. That's the economic reality that we live in. This is no longer the economy where one graduated from high school or college, and walked into an office or plant and stayed there for 40 years to retire with a golden watch. Changing jobs and careers is par for the course. I've had 9 different jobs thus far and I'm only in my mid-30s. Do I complain? No, because in reality being flexible is what is truly needed to remain competitive in this market.
There wasn't a response to the comments regarding American software in foreign auto manufacturer's corporate offices. Interesting. That is basically the gist of the situation. It's called trade and we've been trading since the start of mankind.
But even so, imagine for a moment that people in other countries were trying to make the same assertion - that they should "only" ever buy products or cars from whatever country that happened to be. Let's be more specific: China. GM makes more money and sells more cars in China than in the US and has done for some time. Just like Toyota in the US, the bulk of the cars they sell in China are made in China with Chinese parts. So what do you think would happen if suddenly everyone threw up their arms and proclaimed that they weren't buying any more American cars? GM would probably either go out of business or at the very least suffer enormous financial losses, and when any corporation suffers from financial woes, that often results in cost-cutting... often in the form of layoffs... and that goes all the way down the line, from the corporate office administrator, to the factory line worker, to the parts maker, and even the lunch wagon pulling up in the factory parking lot.
So you see, there isn't a case for a strictly domestic economy, because as such a domestic economy cannot function without international trade. There isn't and never had been a country - even in ancient times - that was able to function as a purely domestic economy. Trade between countries has and will always be a common, basic fixture of the way money is made.
11th May 2015, 16:43
I don't think the apple pie comment was necessarily out of line. A good comparison would be Ford of Europe. Ford began making cars there starting in 1914. So they've been there for over 100 years. They make totally different cars than what are sold here, though some - like the Fiesta and Focus - have now made it here. I visited the UK a few years ago. Ford to them is as British as they come. They weren't really called American cars per say, but rather an American brand with an almost entirely independent UK arm.
The same is happening with Toyota, where they've already been making cars here for over 30 years, and many models are NA models only.