An ascMcLaren forum for 84-86 Capri and 87-90 Mustang based cars modified by Automotive Speciality Corporation, a Division of American Sunroof Corporation. (no affiliation)
I have to disagree wih most of you. I had been a diehard buy American, buy Ford person since I was 16 and got my first car (a Ford), to my first Mustang( a 65). I have been through a succession of Detroit prodcts since then. If I didn't rebuild it myself (and I've done a bunch of made USA cars over the years) I had problems.
My last big 3 car and my last straw was a new 2006 Eddie Bauer Explorer. In the shop no less than 7 times the first year, 3 rear rebuilds, and nothinhg but stonewalling from the dealership and Ford on what to do to make it right. I finally bit he bullit and bought a new Nissan Pathfinder in 2007. Not one problem with it since I picked it up. AND evey time I go to the dealer for a service, they are pleasant and helpful.
The bottom line here is that companies (US or foreign) have to put the customer first, build a quality product, reasonably priced, and stand behind it when things go wrong.
If a company does that I am going to buy their product, I don't care where it's made. If a USA company can't do this they will not stay in business anyway.
I am not going o support a company that wraps itself in the flag and says buy me if it is not a good product, and has value.
Sorry, off my soapbox now.
If I call someone over for an estimate on a repair or an upgrade on something at my home, and he/she drives up in a foreign badged vehicle, they have ZERO chance of getting my business.
And the guy with the Explorer rear end problem and bought a Nissan and is so proud: My F150 had a rearend problem. They had to replace the entire rearend to solve it. The rearend was made in JAPAN!
'Ya, I knew that - but did not wanna start WW3 over it.
I never said that Japanese or Germasn or Sweedish or Korean cars were BAD. Some of them are very good. Personally, I lioke the Volvo S80s alot! Also the Saab convertible and the Hyundai Azera Limited is really styled nice. If I had to drive foreign, it would be 1 of those.
But, I'll stick with the "Big 3" - until one of "us" is no more. (Them or me).
Nobody in my immediate family, or extended family, as far as I know, drives foreign badged vehicles.
I think that I am the sole Ford driver. The remainder are Chrysler or GM
~ but those are the ones in their 50s & 60s. I am sure the next generation are in the foreign cars.
Sandy passed away in 2012. He will be forever missed.
1990 Final Car prior to the 12 Silver Anny Editions
1990 Silver Pearl Anny Edition
1986 Coupe Full Pkg #109 of 114.
This sentence, is equal to a bottom of the ninth, 3 & 2 count, bases loaded grand slam on a 3 & 2 pitch:
"Our government has no interest in leveling the playing field."
That there lines the coffin, tosses in some roses and closes the lid on Ford, Chrysler & GM.
Then again...... the government does not get involved in private entreprise, as does the Japanese government!
Not China, where Buicks reign, but in Japan the government puts every possible obsticle in the way of a Japanese citizen wanting to purchase an American car. I had a listing of it all...and damn, I cannot find it.
I recall the parking space one, and the inspection one but there were others, too. In the showroom, the American car had to be in the shadows, while the Japanese one got center stage. If the buyer took the American out for a test drive, he FIRST had to drive the Japanese equilvent model.
I RECALL THE OTHER !!! If the buyer needed financing, they would only assist he/she at the dealer level to obtain financing IF it was on a Japanese car. If on an American car, the buyer had to seek financing on the outside, at his / her own means. (Bank / Loan compamny)
Our cars are treated like the 5th grader who came to school with the mumps !!!
Sandy passed away in 2012. He will be forever missed.
1990 Final Car prior to the 12 Silver Anny Editions
1990 Silver Pearl Anny Edition
1986 Coupe Full Pkg #109 of 114.
If I call someone over for an estimate on a repair or an upgrade on something at my home, and he/she drives up in a foreign badged vehicle, they have ZERO chance of getting my business.
So, you'd rather he drive a Mexican-built Ford Fusion than a Kentucky-built Toyota Camry?? I avoid buying anything built in a slave-wage country simply to make Wall Street happy--or pay huge legacy costs.
The biggest importer of cars is the Big Three. Why do you think they always fight against import restrictions, limiting "Cash for Clunkers", etc.??
It's a double edged sword.
The Mexican built Ford will put profit in an American Corp.
The Kentucky built Camry will give Americans jobs, while
making Toyota stronger. It's a draw.
The cash for clunkers was a bonanza for the Japanese brands:
Read here:
The U.S. Car Allowance Rebate System (a.k.a. 'cash-for-clunkers') program was a short-term boon for automakers participating in our market. Sales went up, inventory went down and nearly 700,000 vehicles that would likely have otherwise ended up on used car lots were destroyed. And since the U.S. is essentially a free market where automakers around the globe are allowed to participate, Japanese and European automakers benefited from the program as well. In fact, Japanese automakers fared even better than their U.S. competitors, as Toyota, Honda and Nissan are said to have surpassed their market share with the program. A reported 319,000 of the 677,000 vehicles sold via cash-for-clunkers were from Japanese companies. But while the U.S. C4C program took place in a free market where everybody is able to participate, critics are complaining that the new Japanese program is anything but equal opportunity.
Japan is considered by many to be the world's most insular auto market, and its $3.7 billion government clunker program makes U.S. autos ineligible for government assistance. According to The Detroit News, the program, which the Japanese government is using to spur sales (which are down 17 percent versus 2008 levels), provides cash rebates of up to $2,830 for customers who turn in vehicles 13 years or older. Car buyers who don't turn in a vehicle can still get over $1,100 toward the purchase of a new vehicle. An estimated 87 percent of all Japanese vehicles are eligible for the program, while zero vehicles from General Motors, Ford and Chrysler will be eligible.
Sandy passed away in 2012. He will be forever missed.
1990 Final Car prior to the 12 Silver Anny Editions
1990 Silver Pearl Anny Edition
1986 Coupe Full Pkg #109 of 114.
Sandy wrote:It's a double edged sword.
The Mexican built Ford will put profit in an American Corp.
The Kentucky built Camry will give Americans jobs, while
making Toyota stronger. It's a draw.
The cash for clunkers was a bonanza for the Japanese brands:
Read here:
So, it's okay to make profits on slave wages in Mexico? I don't agree.
At least Toyota in KY must abide by OSHA, Wage laws, EPA, etc--AND put food on lots of American tables, not into some corporation that pays its CEO hundreds of millions.
Ford of Mexico may as well be a sweat shop or an 1850's cotton plantation.
I will throw my two cents out there again. I am far from proud of saying I had to buy a Nissan to get a good car. If the guy who said I was proud had bothered to read my post he would have seen that I have tried and tried to get a good big 3 car. I had to go to a Nissan to get there. I would have loved to say that a Chysler of even a (God forbid!) GM car did it. But all I need is a car with value and reliability, and I don't care where it comes from, though I do, and have given Ford the benefit of the doubt more than once.
If Ford or GM just do a better job, guess what we will come to them and buy their cars.
I think most people in this country, me included would prefer to buy USA,
so give me a reason to do it! Just a little one! Please!!!!
This is a great discussion, and all the comments simply show how many sides to this situation there are, and thus how complex it truly is.
There's Macro and Micro economic impacts, personal perception and preferences, nationalism and consumer driven decision making, the differences between US and foreign government involvement in markets and competition, just to name a few. Wow!
Personally, I think shelbyscarab and midman put it best. As much as any one of us can give specific individual examples of a poor quality Japanese branded car or part and a reliable domestic branded vehicle; the consensus across millions of vehicles purchased throughout the 80's, 90's, and 00's is that the Japanese built better cars. And it all goes back to W. Edwards Deming, whose statistical process control methods for quality manufacturing were embraced in Japan in the 50's while being laughed at in the US until more recently. As shelbyscarab said, US consumers have long memories of the poor quality cars Detroit produced in the 70's - 90's while Hondas and Toyotas got better and better. Maybe this stumble by Toyota will cause them to look at domestic brands again, but the domestics will need to be customer focused like never before.
In the 80's & 90's the domestics were crying about not being able to compete, so our gov't imposed import quantity restrictions. Did it help? No, because the problem was a quality one and the US consumer wouldn't stand for it. The salt in the 'quality wound' is that the Japanese then put factories in the US to circumvent the import restrictions and built high quality cars using US labor while the domestics still churned out crap; and in the process proved that it wasn't the US worker that was the problem but rather the philosophy of the domestic brands' management.
And this is the true coffin that the domestics made for themselves. We can say our gov't should imitate the Japanese in regard to trade restrictions, but that didn't work before and that's not Capitalism. Besides, those restrictions in the Japanese market aren't what killed Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Plymouth, etc. in the US market. Have the quality issues of the domestics truly changed? Initial Quality reports would say yes, but the bankruptcies and bailouts raise other questions.
If the Big 3 can't cut it, then that's their own fault. Keep the gov't OUT. I'm sure we've all heard of the old East German Trabant. Or the Yugo. Those were the extremes of gov't intervention in an auto industry. I'm not going to buy a domestic branded vehicle just because it's a domestic branded vehicle, but I may consider a domestically manufactured vehicle for the economic impact. What do I care about where the profit dollar goes. I'll just buy stock in the Japanese companies and have it returned to the US through dividends. That's what's makes this a global economy.
1986 ASC vert - #86-0001
1986 ASC vert - 3.8SC v6
1986 ASC vert - Silver/Black/Gray
1985 ASC vert - Black/Tan/Tan
1985 GPIV - The Official Pace Car
1985 ASC coupe - modified
1985 ASC coupe - roller
1983 Crimson Cat V6
1966 Cobra replica
There is one single root cause: poor management more devoted to quarterly reports than consumers. Japanese and German companies are owned by LONG term institutional investors, not day traders and churn shops.
I would add to that styling and performance are issues poorly addressed by the Big Three.
Where's an American-made M3? The CTS-V? Hardly. They're nice--in a straight line, with cheap interiors.
Japanese cars in the 70s were rust buckets, but they ran. No valve jobs at 50k (Chevy) or rod knocks (Ford) at 90k. Change the oil and a Honda will run 200k. That matters to a guy earning a living and not swapping for new cars every three years.
The UK is a window on our future in many ways. In the results of permissive social programs gone mad and an auto industry saved only by throwing out their British leadership and letting people with a better long view take the reigns.
