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Automotive News & Views Buying American Cars What Does It Mean?
7263 messages, Last post on May 27, 2009 at 4:31 AM
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
With parts coming from everywhere, does "Buying American" have much meaning anymore? Is quality and price the bottom line?
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Replying to: pmomtv (Sep 26, 2008 9:28 am) Actually, it is an EX 4 door 5-speed manual with Bridgestones, and because I got $4000 off, I thought the deal would compensate for its lack of driving dynamics. My '93 Accord EX 4 door 5-speed manual was much more fun to drive. Was it a mistake? Definitely. Do I have buyers remorse? Certainly.
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Replying to: grbeck (Sep 26, 2008 9:00 am) Yeah, the great ideal of a forced submission to globalization, stigmatizing or even banning national and/or cultural pride and identity, an EU with an appetite for power wildly exceeding the original claimed intentions, ridiculous forced shame and guilt that enables low birthrates and unsustainable immigration levels - things are just awesome! Road to destruction before 1945, road to destruction after 1945 - no progress. " But such feelings are, in the long run, hardly productive." Neither is a submission to said powers, as today and tomorrow will prove for Europe...when the next war comes there. "Being jaded and skeptical generally comes from having too many things handed to a person" I don't know...the inheritance elite I see in society are generally pretty content and upbeat. But those seeing the true dumbed down dim future of the western world in light of globalization do not lack the right to be cynical. I'd also hardly pin it on "young" people, as the apple seldom falls far from the tree, and it is not the young who have created the irresponsible policies.
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Replying to: lilengineerboy (Sep 26, 2008 9:27 am) If you are comparing an '03 Accord to an '03 Taurus, I am right there with you, but I think with the Fusion the gap shrank alot. The Fusion and the Malibu are the best of the new domestics, and they still lag the Accord in interior fit-and-finish, including the dasbhoards. And my original post dealt with more than dashboard - or even interior - fit-and-finish. It dealt with the entire car, and, taken as a whole the Accord is still one of the gold standards for its class. lilengineerboy: Eh reliability is arguable. It's measurable, and according reliable sources like Consumer Reports and truedelta.com, the Accord still beats the Fusion and Malibu for reliability. lilengineerboy: Even handling, where the 3 year old Fusion was within 4 tenths of a second of the brand new just introduced boat from Honda, or where it beat it in skidpad lateral grip implies that its not the case. The Fusion has a very nice chassis and suspension tuning, but I've not seen an indication that, overall, it's better than the Accord in this area. And please note that the automotive history is littered with vehicles that were great on the skidpad and so-so in the real world (although, in all fairness, I wouldn't put the Fusion in the category). lilengineerboy: Hmmm an oversized "personal luxury coupe" makes me think T-bird and Monte Carlo, but if people like 'em, its fine with me. No Monte Carlo built in the 1990s or since the turn of this century could ever match the Accord coupe for refinement, performance and reliability. And, unlike the Monte Carlo, the Accord coupe BOOSTS the parent company's reputation. The Thunderbird? The Turbo Coupes and Super Coupes of the 1980s and 1990s were nice cars with very handsome styling. But they were aimed at a more upscale market segment than the Accord coupe. lilengineerboy: Don't confuse "fleet sales" with "rental car fleets." Businesses buy them because they are inexpensive to buy and maintain, and they are reliable to support the needs of a business. For the first half of the 2008 model year, the Fusion sold a total of 32.1 percent of its production to fleet customers. Of the 24,379 vehicles that went to fleets, 13,335 - or slightly more than half - went to rental car companies. In the Chevy camp, a total of 33 percent of Malibu production went to fleet customers. Of the 21,974 vehicles that went to fleet customers, 17,187, or well over half, went to rental car companies. Of total Accord production, a whopping 2.5 percent went to fleet customers. Yes, corporate customers and governments buying fleet vehicles will look at the factors you cited, although many of them - especially governments - are operating under "buy American" edicts. And that doesn't include transplant vehicles, so the playing field isn't entirely level. But rental car companies are looking for the deal, and nothing more. A few sales to rental car companies aren't a bad thing (it gets the product before potential customers), but done on a large scale, it's nothing more than a way to dump vehicles that retail customers don't want.
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Replying to: lilengineerboy (Sep 26, 2008 9:47 am) So now I understand where you got the idea that Accords are heavily discounted. Virtually ANY mid-sized car with a manual transmission will be heavily discounted (that is why GM, for example, doesn't even offer them). Most people shopping in this segment don't want a manual transmission. The fact that you got a $4,000 discount on a manual-equipped Accord is hardly a proof that Honda needs to offer whopping incentives to move all Accords.
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Replying to: fintail (Sep 26, 2008 10:08 am) Globalization started in Europe, so I don't know how it was forced to "submit" to something it basically invented. The United States is basically an offshoot of Europe. And low birth rates are the result of rising standards of living. In agricultural societies, children are an asset. They can almost immediately be put to work to help feed the family. In advanced industrial societies, children are a burden until the age of at least 18. They must be fed, clothed and educated while making little or no contribution to the family income. Also, as people get wealthier, they consider marrying later and not even marrying at all. Europe was the first region to transition from an agrarian society to an industrial one, so it stands to reason that it's birth rate would drop faster and farther than anywhere else on earth. That has to with the natural outcome of industrialization, not U.S. policy. As for immigration - that is driven by, one, the refusal of many Europeans to do what they consider to be "menial" labor, and two, open borders to countries that were once part of their colonial empires. The U.S. had nothing to do with those two factors. fintail: I don't know...the inheritance elite I see in society are generally pretty content and upbeat." The truly wealthy in the U.S. have, by and large, earned it. The "inheritance elite" in the U.S. have been diminishing since the early 1980s. Look at the Kennedys, for example - the latest generation really isn't all that wealthy anymore, and they really aren't all that influential. The two exceptions - Maria Shriver and Caroline Kennedy Schlossburg - are super-wealthy because the first married an ambitious immigrant, and the second had a mother who remarried for money, made sure that she got a big chunk of it when the rich Greek husband died, invested it wisely, and passed it on to her daughter when she died. And when her brother and his wife died without children, she probably got a share of that estate, too. So only one is really part of the "inheritance elite."
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Replying to: grbeck (Sep 26, 2008 10:12 am) I haven't seen a statistically significant difference. If statistical significance for you is a single vehicle, thats fine. No Monte Carlo built in the 1990s or since the turn of this century could ever match the Accord coupe for refinement, performance and reliability. And, unlike the Monte Carlo, the Accord coupe BOOSTS the parent company's reputation. Fair enough, I just think a heavy vehicle with difficult ingress/egress is a silly thing. I still remember climbing in and out of my grandpa's Grand Prix and Ventura and thinking that had to be the dumbest thing ever. For the first half of the 2008 model year, the Fusion sold a total of 32.1 percent of its production to fleet customers. Of the 24,379 vehicles that went to fleets, 13,335 - or slightly more than half - went to rental car companies. Actually I am kind of curious where you got those stats, since Ford doesn't differentiate fleet customers in any given report.
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Replying to: grbeck (Sep 26, 2008 10:16 am) So now I understand where you got the idea that Accords are heavily discounted. Virtually ANY mid-sized car with a manual transmission will be heavily discounted (that is why GM, for example, doesn't even offer them). Most people shopping in this segment don't want a manual transmission. The fact that you got a $4,000 discount on a manual-equipped Accord is hardly a proof that Honda needs to offer whopping incentives to move all Accords. Actually, they were all the same price. They had a whole row of 2007 4 cyl Honda Accord EX 4 drs, a bunch of autos and 2 sticks, all the same discount. |
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Replying to: circlew (Sep 26, 2008 9:37 am) |
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Replying to: grbeck (Sep 26, 2008 10:28 am) It takes money to make money. I don't mean the "elite" as in American royalty such as the Kennedy (or Bush) clan, but in more of a self-titled definition. Those types aren't people I see in my daily life, but I do see many born into well-to-do situations that are anything but cynical, because they have little to worry about when it comes to a roof or an income. It's like they say, those who claim money doesn't buy happiness have never had money.
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Replying to: lilengineerboy (Sep 26, 2008 10:57 am) They come from fleetcentral.com. The statistics are the subject of threads on several automotive sites that must remain nameless, as per this site's policy. Fleetcentral.com features a chart listing a model's total sales, its total fleet sales, and how many fleet sales were to government and corporate customers, and how many went to rental car companies. It's worth noting that while Ford typically has the highest fleet sales as a percentage of total sales, its percentage of sales to rental car companies is the lowest among the domestics. |
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