14th Sep 2008, 10:44

The point made by comment 10:29 has been made repeatedly on this site.

American industry brings profits to America. Japanese industry funnels profits OUT of the country.

13,000,000 people are directly or indirectly employed by and get their living from the American auto industry. Every time a Honda or Toyota is purchased, it takes money away from our fellow citizens. Even if imports were more reliable (and no substantiated data indicates that they are) I would still refuse to buy one.

16th Sep 2008, 10:57

The number of U.S. citizens employed by Japanese car companies in the U.S. is absolutely a drop in the ocean compared to the number that are directly or indirectly employed by domestic makers.

As for executives salaries, I seriously doubt that CEO's of Japanese companies live like average middle class folks either. ALL CEO's of most companies make obscene salaries, whether in the U.S. or abroad.

I did consulting work for a relatively small company some years back, and the CEO asked if I wanted his pilot to pick me up in his helicopter. Helicopters are hardly a rare thing for most companies doing work over a broad area. No one is naive enough to think that ANY worker makes even a tiny fraction of what any company head makes, regardless of the country.

The point domestic owners try to make is that the U.S. auto industry employs over 13,000,000 people, and to wish for the demise of domestic car companies is little different than wishing for some catastrophic disease to wipe out a huge number of our citizens. It will have effects that ripple through the entire economy as well as destroying the lives of those workers.

Our economy, like our ecology, is inter-dependent on many things. There is simply no way that I could bring myself to wish for the destruction of the lives of a large percentage of the people of Japan, and I find it a little scary that there are, apparently, American citizens who would actually wish such a catastrophe on our OWN people because a myth propagated by ad hype.

16th Sep 2008, 21:57

10:44 Well, as an American, owning imports has put money IN to my pockets, because they in fact are more reliable, and the evidence surely does exist, whether or not you believe it.

Since I wised up, many years ago and stopped buying junk from the Big 3, my repair bill, covering FOUR imports over 17 years, has been exactly $90. ONE starter put in my former Tacoma at nearly 100,000 miles. If I have to put a starter in a Toyota every 100,000 miles for the 3 or 400,000 I know I'll get out of it, that's just fine with me. Beats having a head gasket or transmission go out on a Chevy or Ford at 70,000 miles, if that. I don't buy that garbage any more, and never will.

17th Sep 2008, 09:23

Granted the small specific Tacoma may be a reliable vehicle in your case, but many owning small import Japanese sedans have had engine sludging woes, transmission failures, airbag issues, braking which is relative to them to the individuals who have bought them. Own a few new import sedans and the larger Tundra lately, and then share some broader ownership comments.

17th Sep 2008, 14:41

And I was paying $30.00 at the Honda dealership for oil changes every 3000 miles. Guess I should buy a Toyota instead or drive 3000 miles a year to get my $90.00 value. And if I could have gotten 70,000 miles on just one Honda transmission, I would be in heaven on my last mistake. I'll take the 100,000 mile warranty and have.

17th Sep 2008, 22:58

There is not now, and never has been, any truly reliable data, such as frequency of repair records, that indicate imports are any more reliable than domestics, past or present.

In addition, anyone who has not so much as sat in a domestic in SEVENTEEN YEARS is hardly qualified as an "expert" on the reliability of domestics.

I have never replaced an engine or transmission in ANY domestic vehicle. As for repairs (other than brakes and other routine maintenance) my Dodge cost me a whopping $8 in repairs in 240,000+ miles (one heater hose). None of our Fords has ever cost us over $40 in repairs in 100,000+ miles, and my family's Buick LeSabre cost exactly ZERO in repairs in 277,000 miles.

Using the same reasoning as the commenter who has not sat in a domestic in 17 years uses, I can just as easily staunchly maintain that imports are crap (which, in my opinion they ARE).

18th Sep 2008, 07:40

There are those here that make it sound like the economy of the entire United States is based on U.S. automakers. What the Big 3 do or don't do is a tiny blip on the radar in the grand scheme of things, so no one is going to convince me into buying junk from them ever again.

It's a matter of their philosophies. Ford, Chevy, and Dodge, in their earliest days, made good vehicles. As time progressed, they made billions of dollars, and with no foreign competition. Then, the fact is, they got greedy. They started cutting corners as much as possible to pocket more money on each car sold, and still charged the same prices.

Think about domestic cars made in the 70's, 80's, and 90's. The 80's were the low point. Domestic vehicles were absolute disposable junk. A decade or two before that, foreign automakers like Toyota and Honda saw this, set out to make well-crafted, rock solid vehicles that offered American auto consumers a much better car, and that's exactly what they accomplished.

Park ANY domestic vehicle from the 80's, or a decade on either side of that next to ANY Toyota or Honda. The huge difference in build quality is obvious, and should embarrass the Big 3, and did. So people starter buying them, and those foreign companies grew to the stature that they continue to build today.

Only now, after making decades of pitiful junk, when threatened by foreign companies, do the Big 3 just BEGIN to give some thought to long-term reliability in an automobile.

You domestic owners out there buying new cars have Toyota and Honda to thank for the fact that they aren't as terrible as they used to be. If not for them raising the bar, you'd still be driving crap like mid 80's Cavaliers and so forth. At least with the Camry and Accord setting the standard for the last decade and a half, there's at least a chance that the Big 3 will recognize how a car is supposed to be designed and built, and maybe even start trying things the right way. They have yet to make anything that's close, but at least they're improving.

18th Sep 2008, 10:19

The longest lasting vehicle of any kind that we ever owned was built in 1975. It went over 300,000 miles with virtually NO repairs. It was a Ford.

The biggest nightmare we ever encountered was an '89 Civic. It started having major problems at 40,000 miles and was sold to a junk dealer with just under 100,000 miles on it with a blown engine.

Our Japanese-built Mazda managed only 85,000 before numerous problems forced us to trade it (for a Ford).

Our Toyota Celica was very reliable for 100,000 miles, but was more expensive to service and repair, and was traded 100,000 miles (for a Mustang GT) because we didn't find it any better built or reliable than our domestics, and it was basically pretty boring.

In almost half a century of driving all sorts of cars, nothing has ever given me any indication that any import is better than any domestic, past or present.