29th Oct 2007, 16:04

10:26 Exactly. Toyota's sold cars for years, and at a higher sticker price than the Big 3, yet outsells them in the car market.

Common sense should be enough for anybody to figure out why. They make a better product.

GM and Ford cars are cheaper, that's a fact. If they were also BETTER, they would with no doubt outsell Toyota cars, but they don't. People are willing to pay more for a car that is built better and will last longer.

And their trucks are just as good. The U.S. truck market will be a tough nut to crack, only because people have been in the habit of buying trucks from the Big 3 for decades, whether they were good or bad, but just as Americans got tired of buying junk cars from the big 3, the same will likely happen with the truck market in years to come.

3rd Nov 2007, 21:12

10:26.

Your argument is articulately stated, but that is about all it has going for it. Much of it is just your opinion, and what few facts you present are incorrect.

You assert (sarcastically I might add) “If you can recall back in the 80's, the difference between Japanese and American Cars was embarrassingly huge... the engineering, quality, and reliability of Japanese cars was literally YEARS ahead of the American cars of that time period”. That is just not true. I recall the 1980's quite well, as well as before then, except I was paying attention during that time. You seem not to have been. It was the American vehicles, particularly from GM, that were technologically years ahead of Toyota.

While Toyota was still using carburetors and vacuum lines on many of their models into 1990's, GM had utilized fuel injection since the 70's and was making major advances in electronic vehicle controls throughout the 1980's. GM was the first automaker to feature an integrated Body and Engine Computer Module in a worldwide production car. GM capitalized heavily from the multitude of engineering expertise they had from their ownership of Hughes Electronics, makers of cutting-edge communications and spy satellites.

But GM were not just orders of magnitude ahead of Toyota in the 80's only in the area of engine controls, but also in the area anti-lock braking, traction control, and vehicle stability control systems. In 1984, GM introduced the world’s first electrically driven, fuel-saving, integral power brake system for cars and light trucks; in 1989, Cadillac won Technology Innovation of the Year for its traction control system, to name just a few examples. This was after inventing the catalytic converter, and being the first automaker to offer airbags in the 70's.

What kinds of innovations were coming out of Toyota at that time? Can you name one major innovation of the Japanese auto manufacturers in the 1980's, or a specific aspect of how Japanese vehicles were more advanced? You made the blanket statement that there was supposedly an “embarrassingly huge” technological difference between the American and Japanese vehicles, so I would think you should surely be able to give some examples...

Of course, I can hear the usual retorts from the Toyota crowd coming already. So many people seem biased on the notion of Toyota's being supposedly so advanced, on the fact that they use overhead camshafts, while some American vehicles use/used pushrods. Yet, the overhead cam was invented decades before the pushrod engine, so that argument is moot. Regarding the utility of the pushrod engine, Al Unser Jr. won the Indianapolis 500 with a pushrod engine in 1994, while everyone else were utilizing overhead cams.

Referring back to the 80's, in 1986, Cadillac's new Seville platform with engine advanced engine/transmission control system design achieved an astonishing (for the time) close to 30 MPG on a large vehicle, with a pushrod V8. The current 400+ HP Corvette achieves almost 30 MPG on a pushrod engine, and is the only performance car in its class not to incur a gas guzzler tax. As far as the rest of the GM lineup is concerned, GM has more vehicle models than any other manufacturer that achieve in excess of 30 MPG, including V6 models.

As far as American vehicles being reliable is concerned, there are plenty of examples of happy owners on this site who have achieved high trouble free mileage with the domestics. The Toyota crowd simply chooses to just not admit it. I cannot waste my time trying to convince people who simply refuse to listen to facts, and would rather buy trouble prone vehicles to the detriment of their country's economy, than admit they are wrong. That is so sad.

You mention the Isuzu lawsuit against Consumer Reports as supposed proof that Consumer Reports is not biased. That lawsuit was over a report that the Isuzu Trooper was prone to rollover. I remember the initial report and subsequent lawsuit very well, as I watched both very closely as the events were unfolding. Believe it or not, I had a subscription to Consumer Reports at that time (as you can imagine, I have not any more). Your bringing the lawsuit up does absolutely nothing to prove that Consumer Reports is not biased, as the Trooper's determined propensity to rollover was a qualitative test result, wherein the Trooper was driven hard into a corner, and the wheel lifted. There was nothing subjective about it. The wheel either lifted, or it did not.

Where the bias takes place at Consumer Reports is in their “predicted” reliability, and how they word things in their articles. They will write an article about an American vehicle, and say something to the effect like, "the vehicle is good, but not up to the standards of the best from Japan." Yet, will they ever write an article saying a foreign vehicle is not up to the standards of the best from America?

By Consumer Reports' own admission now, Toyota quality has dramatically slipped, and several models from Ford are more reliable. I would have course to argue that there are a lot more models from a lot more brands than they are mentioning. But Toyota quality has been slipping for a long time. Consumer Reports either chose just to not report it, or they could not see beyond their own bias to recognize it was going on. In either case, the public was duped. Now the problem is the people that were duped (the Toyota fans) just do not want to admit it.

Now, as far as really being duped is concerned, you say we should all “embrace” free trade. What aspect of it do you want me to embrace, that Europe rebates their value added tax on goods produced to be exported to the United States, but imposes the tax on all imports coming in? I'd say that is somewhat of an unfair, or un-FREE trade practice, wouldn't you?

How about Asian countries undervaluing their currency so as to bring down the American economy by giving their exports a huge advantage in the market, at the cost of intentionally causing inflation for their own populations? China, whom you obviously cannot wait to have send their cars to the U.S., is notorious for this. By the way, I doubt we are going to see much (if any) innovation coming out of China, contrary to your expectations, but I would expect dramatically under-valued prices, designed to continue to bring about the destruction of our auto industry.

Of course, countries engaging in these tactics would be the first to complain if the U.S. ever did anything such as this to (God forbid) look out for IT'S own interests, as would the “freetraders,” who do not want to take an objective look at anything that is actually going on, because they might have to admit their whole way of thinking is interminably flawed.

Goods produced in the U.S. have legacy costs built into them such as pension, health insurance, etc. Now, whether those costs are too high and need to be looked at, is a whole other argument. But, the legacy expenses are all benefits which lead to a higher standard of living for American workers than most of our competitors, many of whom (now thanks to the dogma of “free trade"), are third world countries.

Would you like us all to start assuming third world standards of living in order to be competitive, or would it just be easier to actually implement policies that enable us to look out for our interests, maintain our standard of living, AND be competitive? Other countries do it, why not us?

There is a lot more at play than just how one product stacks up against another, which determines whether it will survive in the so-called “free” market. “Free-traders” just throw that out as an excuse, to try and explain why the country is falling apart since implementing their policies. We tried it your way and went from trade surpluses, being the most self sufficient nation in history with the best-paid workers on Earth, to now having a 59 billion dollar trade deficit, and millions of people losing their jobs every year as companies move out of the country to take advantage of third world wages, to be able to send their products back tax free to the same people they put out of a job, thanks to “free traders” paving the way.

The politics/policies you are preaching have been a dismal failure, and will be the downfall of our country in short order if we continue with them. Therefore, I most certainly will not “embrace them.”