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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: cooterbfd (Oct 17, 2008 12:24 pm) Remember, the Escalade is still a Tahoe underneath. The Enclave is the newer concept that represents were folks are going to go in the near term. The future dealers will need to market the cars differently to the public. The show room needs to accent the cars at the higher end. It cant be just an office with a desk with a truck parked next to it. I believe Caddy is going to blend in the edges going forward. One can always hope! Regards, OW |
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Replying to: circlew (Oct 15, 2008 3:47 am) Personally, I think GM should cut the fat big time.
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Replying to: iwant12 (Oct 21, 2008 4:29 pm) I will buy a Honda next. I will stay far away from the doom and gloom. Had too many problems in the past. So I know it will only get worse. Regards, OW
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Replying to: circlew (Oct 21, 2008 4:32 pm) Surely you mean Acura. There's something about those Honda SUVs that don't look right. 
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Replying to: circlew (Oct 21, 2008 4:32 pm) I will in time give the General or Ford (most likely the general) another chance. Really like the HHR SS, just wish it was made NORTH of the border and had a real console (and the damned A-pillars weren't as fat as they are). Perhaps a Malibu or the Camaro. I tell you, though, one more lemon, and I'll change my mind real quick. Have a good one. |
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Replying to: iwant12 (Oct 21, 2008 4:29 pm) You already took one, or a few, for the team when you bought some GM lemons. You did your part, but GM did NOT do its part. They kept churning out the same gas-guzzling junk year after year -- no innovation, no plan for the future. They also used our "representatives" in Congress to stifle any legislative demand for improved fuel economy. CAFE standards stagnated for 22 years. And, of course, they showed us all how patriotic THEY are by moving their factories to foreign countries. In other words, GM (and the other two) engaged in stupid, corrupt, un-american business practices, and now they're finding out that when you screw everyone while times are good, no one cares about you when times turn bad. Boo hoo.
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| ...through good times and bad! I still enjoy my hyper-reliable 1988 Buick Park Avenue and 1989 Cadillac Brougham as much as our newer 2005 Buick LaCrosse and 2007 Cadillac DTS Performance. I will buy domestic cars as long as there still are domestic cars! | |
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I don't know how much they pay Consumers Reports, but as a past owner, I can tell you that THE JAPANESE MAKE LEMONS ALL DAY LONG. My next cars will only be domestic. I'm not sending a dime to those lying cheating bastards. While I don't think Japanese cars are the shangri-la that some of the ohmmmm...honda...ohmmmmmm....toyota...ohmmmmm huggers might lead you to believe, I also don't think they're as bad as you're making them out to be. There's a guy in the office here who says that it's a shame the domestics can't build a car today as good as the 1994 Toyota Camry. His reasoning? His '94 Camry has something like 200,000 miles on it, so naturally they must all be that good, eh? I sort of shut him down the other day when I told him that by that logic, I wish they'd build a car today that's as good as a 1986 Monte Carlo (had one, had 192K miles on it and still running strong when it got t-boned) or a 1979 Newport (had one of those too, ~250K miles on it when the water pump failed, and I didn't feel like putting any money into it and wanted something newer). Well, I'd like to think that the auto industry has progressed beyond a car that was slapped together half-heartedly just as Chrysler was on the verge of death! Sure, Japanese cars have problems. They're not perfect. And the Toyota 3.0 sludge problem and the Honda 5-speed automatic, when mated to a V-6 engine, are two of the better-known problems. As for personal experience, I have an uncle with an '03 Corolla and my Mom & stepdad have a '99 Altima. The Altima crapped its transmission around 35,000 miles. At the time I was thinking, what a piece of crap. But the car has over 250,000 on it now, so tranny #2 has held up fine, and I don't think the car has needed anything other than routine maintenance type stuff. As for my uncle's Corolla, I think it has about 150-160,000 miles on it by now. The catalytic converter started to go bad around 100,000 miles, and the water pump went out back in the summer of '07. Other than that though, it's been mainly just routine maintenance type stuff. As for me, I'd like to buy another domestic car, as I haven't had one yet that would turn me off to domestics forever. With the exception of my 2000 Intrepid, all of my cars have been used. Sometimes VERY used, so if they turned out to be a piece of junk, I'd blame the previous owner(s) or just old age, rather than the original manufacturer. 9 years ago, when I bought that Intrepid, I wouldn't have even looked at a comparable Japanese car. The main reason though, was that the Accord, Altima, and Camry were too small for my tastes. Plus, the Altima was ugly and the Camry was just dull. I liked the style of the Accord, but it was still too small, and seemed a bit pricey. While none of these cars really competed directly with the Intrepid, at that time, the Japanese just didn't have anything nearly Intrepid-sized, unless you looked to perhaps a Lexus LS or Infiniti Q-ship, and they were way out of its price class. Well, there was the Avalon and Maxima, but again, they were pricier, too. These days though, the Accord/Altima/Camry are big enough for my needs, and I'd be happy with an Accord or Altima. I don't like the Camry's styling, but I'd have faith in it being a reliable car. I'd still have faith in something like a Malibu/Aura, Ford Fusion, or even a Chrysler Sebring/Avenger being reliable as well. After all, my Intrepid has gone 142,000 miles and has been pretty good. But it just seems like Ford didn't put much effort into the base-level Fusion, and I don't know what sort of chemicals Chrysler was mixing and then inhaling when they came up with the current Sebring/Avenger. The Malibu/Aura do seem like a good effort for this class of car. My only real beef with them is that they seem a bit tighter inside than an Altima/Accord/Camry.
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Replying to: andre1969 (Oct 22, 2008 6:57 am) If i try next time out to buy a domestic it would really have to be a domestic. I'm not interested in the concept of saving American car companies if they are going to build in Mexico or Korea. This isn't to say that those two countries can't build cars - they just don't employ Americans. I'll take an American built Japanese make over that every time. Actually next time out I'd think about a year or two old American car. Avoid the biggest depreciation hit and still come out OK with the right selection.
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