Yes they do, but the trend is disturbing, is it not? From 45% market share to what, 20%, 18%? And if you exclude all the GM cars that have ever broken, GM cars have a perfect repair record!
I completely agree and I have run my dealerships by the millionaire next door principles. Those principles are one of the main reasons I did not buy the toyota store a couple years ago. With all of the blue sky the only way it made economic sense was if the market continued at 17 million units or toyota market share in the US grew to 20-25%. Neither case apeared likely at the time, so I did not do it. Now it appears I may have the opportunity to pick it up at about 1/3 the price tag. It never makes sense to pay workers for not doing anything and that was one of the UAW demands that threw the whole union movement in reverse. When it comes to wages for work done I am a big believer in the theory of relativity, if the lowest paid person working for me gets a cost-of-living raise, it is only a matter of time before the next lowest paid worker requires the same raise so they are keeping up. Now as a nation we are finding out that can work in reverse also. Wages always need to be able to reward the risk invovled. As you point out the semi-skilled woker cannot make the same wages as someone who is skiled/trained or has made a large investment whether that be monetary, education, or skill-building. However there will always be a segment of society that is either unmotivated for traing and/or education or does not have the opportunity, that is where the UAW etc played such an important role in building the Us middle class. A man could go to work for GM or Ford and make enough $ to support a family, own a home and send kids to college. That economic segment of society is being exported fast, and the result is a vast wasteland in america of folks who can no longer support a family and have given up. This puts more economic stress on the rest of us, because of the increased need for a social/economic safety net. As California is finding out it is too expensive to handle over the long term.
The trend is not good but will reverse or at least stabilize with the new GM. Already the $ for new product development has been increased. Your comment about the repairs is very well thought out, congratulations.
The reason GM has lost market share was that while the Japanese were building the cars Americans wanted and investing heavily in quality control, GM was building inferior cars, and telling us it was "unpatriotic" to buy foreign cars. My reply to that was: GM is the unpatriotic one, for choosing to cut corners and build inferior cars. The point is that when GM was making money, paying obscene salaries to management, and paying dividends, responsible behavior would have been to invest for the future obligations they were contracting. They neglected to do this. The issue is not foreign competition: The issue is that GM failed to meet its obligations when it was supposed to, instead assuming that it would always have enough income to meet its obligations. This is a pyramid scheme GM perpetrated on itself. Throughout the U.S. economy, the executives of big business are overpaid. Obscenely overpaid. I do not single out GM. But the subject of this thread is GM. In other threads I have lambasted business in general for over-paying its executives. You cannot blame the consumer for this, when U.S. manufacturers choose to sacrifice quality for profit margin. And GM contributes mightily to the imbalance of trade by refusing to put electric cars on the road. We produce electricity from domestic sources. We get much of our oil from countries that hate us. I've been doing as much of my driving electric as I can. For two years I've been driving gas only when I have to go farther than about 35 miles. Now I drive gas only when I have to go farther than about 60 miles. In large part because Americans are addicted to gasoline. And in large part because GM killed electric cars. Or tried to. And succeeded in pushing EVs into the fringe of backyard conversion shops. GM could have done 5 or 10 years ago what Tesla will be doing in 3 or 4 years: Build a sporty sedan that the upper middle class can afford, and after that a mid-size family sedan that working familes can afford. But GM could have built it in quantities that, by today, it would at least equal the number of Priuses on the road, and set the stage for most commuter cars to be electric in 5 years from now, tremendously reducing our need for imported oil. Instead GM has fought every step in the path to electrification, because for GM, imported oil means profit, while domestic electricity is the competition. GM is the problem. Not true. In Japan, the national health care system is paid for by taxes that everyone pays. Including Toyota. Toyota receives no special benefit from this, because all workers, in all companies, and everyone not working gets health care. I and many others would love to see a national health care system here in the U.S. We are the only industrialized country in the world without national health care.
In the 1960's and into the 1970's, a person could go to work at the local corner gas station pumping gas, changing flats, and washing cars. He could make enough money to pay the rent and drive a car. Not the best or newest car, but transportation. After a few years, or if the wife went to work, say, waiting tables, they could get a better house, probably buy a new car (not a Cadillac, but a new Chevy) and probably have a used ski boat or other recreational vehicle. All this on what amounted to entry-level or minimum-wage jobs. Today, two people on minimum wage (or working typical entry level jobs) cannot pay rent, food and transportation. For one it's a joke. Even entry level out of college jobs only equate to what people out of high school were making (buying-power wise) in the 1960's. I have friends who have kids who graduated from high school and still live in their basement. They have basically no incentive to even try to move out - economically they can't. Even working your way up to, say, assistant manager at the local Taco Bell will barely pay the bills on a studio apartment (and you better hope Mom and Dad give you a hand-me-down car to get around in). We have not only exported away the middle class, we have priced it out of existance.
Wall street has found a way to profit in the short-term from the demise of the American middle class. Now the house of cards built on cheap imported goods and cheap and plentiful credit is collapsing. in the span of 40 years the US economy has evoloved rapidly from an economy based on manufacturing and hard-work to an economy based on government, ponzi schemes(legal and illegal) and speculation. We have been told for two generations that we would become a high tech and service economy, we just weren't told the "service" part of it would entail the US servicing our creditors, the Chinese and Japanese, who are creating all the wealth.
Note that GM has exported a mountain of jobs. GM, who wants us to be "patriotic" by buying American cars, sends jobs overseas and imports cars into the U.S., adding to the imbalance of trade, and incidentally, leaving a lot of Americans without jobs, and therefore without the money to buy GM's cars.
In a landmark series about the Depression on PBS, I remember hearing that Ford not only had to lay off people due to loss of demand, but in, I believe it was, 1934 they only operated a few months and shut the plant down entirely. That year Henry Ford limited his income to "only" a million dollars (about $16M in today's money).
GM has outsourced some jobs, no doubt about it. However with the current restructuring and plant closings GM is increasing the percentage of vehicle they make in the US from 67% to 70%. GM reveals plan to build new small car at idled assembly plant in U.S. - [GM restructuring] - MotorAuthority - Car news, reviews, spy shots GM also has the highest US part content of any manufacturer. "Yet the gap in domestic content between Detroit Three and foreign-owned carmakers becomes much larger. That is because the Detroit Three import only a few models for sale in the U.S. market. Foreign automakers, however, import a much larger share of the vehicles they sell in the U.S. market. According to the sales-weighted measure, the domestic content of the entire fleet sold in model year 2006 by the Detroit Three in the U.S. was 74.5%, compared with 42.3% for Asian-owned carmakers and 7.8% for Germanowned carmakers. Domestic content varied little among Chrysler, Ford, and GM. Among the Japanese-owned carmakers with the largest sales numbers, domestic content for the entire fleet sold in the U.S. in 2006 was 59% for Honda and around one-half for Toyota and Nissan." Whose part is it?-Measuring domestic content of vehicles | North America > United States from AllBusiness.com I don't get those that say because GM outsourced car X (The Aveo is a favorite whipping boy) and Ford outsourced car Y (Fusion comes up a lot) that they are no better than Toyota or Honda. The percentages speak for themselves. Not only do profit from domestic companies stay in the US they employee much larger numbers of US employees and use a larger percentage of US sourced parts. Now I can understand if someone might want to buy a Ohio built Accord instead of a Mexican built Fusion but to say the two companies equally contribute to the US economy is nonsense.
I never asserted that GM has a lower U.S. content than Toyota. I said that GM wants me to be "patriotic" by buying their cars, while they are being "un-patriotic" by sending jobs overseas. If an American company puts one American worker out of business and employs a worker overseas instead, for no other reason than to increase its profit, then that company has no right to tell me I'm "unpatriotic" for buying a foreign product. But my bigger complaint is that I want to buy American but the American companies (including, but not limited to GM) refuse to produce quality products. I am forced to choose between buying crap made in America, or quality products made in Japan. I have nothing against Japan. But I would prefer to support workers here in my country. And I happily pay extra for American workmanship, when the quality is comparable. I have contempt for GM because GM has shown indifference toward its American workers and its American customers, putting them out of work and selling us garbage. Now its chickens have come home to roost. The nation would be better off if GM closed up shop and other, more patriotic companies bought the physical plant and employed the workers making quality products.
We have been over this already. You are basing your opinion on a bad product you purchased 20 years ago instead of current industry data. Data from JD Powers for example that show Ford products have fewer problems over 4 years than Toyota products. Your assertion that American products are crap is out of date.
How do they account for the severity of the problem? "Hypothetical" case: Toyota 1. Paint scratches easily 2. Dash rattles 3. Tonneau cover's spring breaks Ford 1. Cruise control ignites vehicle Draw your own conclusion.
JD Powers does not account for severity of the problem. Neither does Consumer Reports. Both simply count problems. The only place I know to get information on specific problems is Identifix. They collect data from the technicians at dealerships. MSN Autos uses them for reliability data. An example: http://autos.msn.com/research/vip/Reliability.aspx?year=2006&make=Toyota&model=Tundra&trimid=-1 As you can see the Tundra had "significant" problems with their engines from 2000 to 2003. I like that Identifix tells you the part that failed and how much it costs to fix.
I used to be very pro buy American. Until one day I was looking at the domestic content in their cars. I decided there was no reason for me to buy American cars if the US auto companies did not feel the need to buy American parts. Many of their US cars/trucks have close to 50% imported content.
quality aside, i want a high mileage, high tech, roomy passenger car. so lets make a list *Prius *Fusion Hybrid (took a test drive, its very nice and the one i drove was just about the same price i paid for my Pri) *Civic hybrid ok, they are all hybrids, but the mileage differences are a bit pathetic. the Fusion, ok, i can see it. its a bigger car, bigger tires, etc. all taking mileage hits. all trade offs and its a nice car. but significantly lower in tech options. now maybe there are other options but that would be more money the Civic... well smaller, slower, worse gas mileage. has nothing going for it other than it does better than a regular car, but since regular cars were never in the running, that aint saying much. to be honest with ya, a lot of people whined about the hatchback, rear view, weird body (i never thought it was weird, just different) but it really makes the Prius stand alone. so now, i have dissed all other japanese companies along with the american ones. but there is reason why the Prius accounts for more than half of all hybrid sales for all time. sure they have history. forget that then... competition was pretty much non-existent. lets look at last year. ok, ya... Pri's still outsold all other hybrids COMBINED.... the Pri is simply a different class of car. now the 2010 takes it to another level. only thing i question is the price. one guy paid $37K out the door. other than that, you can throw stones if you want, fact is, the Pri lives in a glass house that is so far, unbreakable
