'The Supremacy of Japanese Cars Has Been 40-Plus Years In the Making' (bloomberg.com) 293
American business journalist Joe Nocera writes in a Bloomberg article about "how badly things have deteriorated for the U.S. car makers," after the recent news that both General Motors and Ford will soon be exiting the sedan market in the country. Slashdot reader gollum123 shares the report: Much of the analysis about Ford and GM's exit from the sedan market stressed that sedan sales have lost ground in recent years "as consumers have gravitated toward pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles," as the New York Times put it. If you look at the historical sales figures of the top Japanese sedans, you'll see a small decline in recent years, but nothing like the big drop-off in sales that have hammered the American companies. So in addition to the overall decline in sedan sales, there is a second, largely overlooked, dynamic taking place: Americans have only stopped buying American sedans, not Japanese sedans. The American car companies now say they are going to count on profits from trucks and SUVs while moving toward autonomous and all-electric vehicles. They had better hope that transition takes place quickly.
I couldn't help noticing that while the top three selling vehicles in the U.S. are, indeed, American-made trucks, No. 4 on the list is Nissan's top SUV, the Rogue, the sales of which have gone from 18,000 in 2007 to 403,000 last year. No. 5 is a Toyota SUV, the Rav4 (407,000 in 2017). No. 6 is the Honda CR-V (378,000). And the leading American SUV? It's the Chevy Equinox. Last year, Chevrolet sold 290,000 of them -- 100,000 fewer than the Toyota Camry.
I couldn't help noticing that while the top three selling vehicles in the U.S. are, indeed, American-made trucks, No. 4 on the list is Nissan's top SUV, the Rogue, the sales of which have gone from 18,000 in 2007 to 403,000 last year. No. 5 is a Toyota SUV, the Rav4 (407,000 in 2017). No. 6 is the Honda CR-V (378,000). And the leading American SUV? It's the Chevy Equinox. Last year, Chevrolet sold 290,000 of them -- 100,000 fewer than the Toyota Camry.
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The most insightful comment this year
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Re:Japan still HAS car companies. (Score:4, Interesting)
The caveat: "You must finance with GM financial". Of course, at their rates which are well above what the local credit unions charge, and no doubt plenty of the uneducated crowd who buy their trucks will be suckered to sign to a long term (yes, 84 month now!) loan ensures they make most of that back.
The leases are where they make a killing. Now over a quarter of new vehicles are lease.
That is financial insanity. Yeah, there are a few people who own their business and it makes some kind of legit tax sense to lease the vehicle, but that cannot be more than 5% of the populace.
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Re: Business opportunity... (Score:2)
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Not really. Go find a picture of any of the current "retro" muscle cars parked next to one of the original classics - the new models are comically huge in comparison. They don't look big to our modern eyes because everything else has grown in size so much. Even a lot of the land barges from the 1970's aren't even as large compared to modern cars. They may be a bit longer, but the modern car is just as wide and much taller, and weighs more too.
It's not just the Americans either. The largest Honda from 4
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I like your idea.
Look at recent trends for TV reboots like Magnum, PI, Hawaii 5-0, Murphy Brown ...
Look at the record players (Bluetooth for crying out loud) and the booming vinyl business.
I'd go for a vintage reboot of Mustang, Impala, Cougar XR7, etc.
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Good idea. I'd happily drive an electric carbon-fiber Charger.
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One can even buy electric cars as kits, and I'm sure there are builders who would put one together for a price.
I think jcr.mac was thinking of something more specific.
No doubt he was thinking of buying a supported vehicle with a warranty, a service manual, and parts availability.
Re:Business opportunity... (Score:4, Interesting)
No, the designs are outdated. Front bumpers have to be below knee level, encase of pedestrian collision. Also 1 in 8, on the road, will be involved in an accident this year.
Good work, AC. This is the reason this can't happen. You can have kit cars based on outdated designs and as long as you do some token amount of the assembly work you can register it as a custom vehicle under federal regs. It has to pass emissions testing wherever you register it, but it tests as the donor vehicle so if you put an old motor in it and top it off with your choice of modern fuel injection system you can have no emissions system whatsoever beyond the O2 sensor. But a car sold in volume has to pass all kinds of modern regulations about bumper height, rear deck height, hood crumple area, side rear view mirror breakaway and the like which didn't exist back when those cars were born. The modern shapes of vehicles like the Mustang and Camaro are best-effort attempts to recreate the old body styles while conforming to modern safety (and efficiency) regulations.
Meh (Score:5, Insightful)
the 70's and beyond were horrible for american (Score:5, Interesting)
cars.
Rust was the worst issue, but when Japanese and Korean cars started flooding the market for less money and lasting about 30-50% better (in terms of mileage and gas economy)
it seemed to be a wake-up call for US car makers. This was hubris on the part of Ford, Chevrolet, Chrysler... They had their cheaply manufactured, planned obsolescence system and they were going to stick with it.
I'm guessing at this point, more US vehicles are produced in Canada and places like the Toyota factory in South Carolina build more vehicles than Detroit.
New technology (self driving cars, electric cars...) eventually mean that people don't need to buy a vehicle unless it's for work. Need a ride someplace, just order a car...
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Many non-American brands make vehicles in the US, e.g. Honda, BMW, Toyota, etc. For SUVs they can get around some tariffs by doing so, plus it costs more to ship huge SUVs across the Pacific. I just got an Acura SUV that was made in Ohio.
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Re: the 70's and beyond were horrible for american (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: the 70's and beyond were horrible for american (Score:2, Insightful)
Damn skippy. Nothing like working for slave wages (even with several years of experience), working shit hours, and knowing there is no advancement unless you speak Korean. I would get another job but I have a couple months left on my relocation deal. I am already looking to get out of automotive. (85% of the elantra, sonata and Santa fe come out of my plant and I am the quality engineer for most of it)
Re:the 70's and beyond were horrible for american (Score:4, Insightful)
you should go and find out the NUMMI story. Unionised workers before and after, but what changed was management attitude to workers and hence workers attitude to work.
Union bashing is a tool of the elite - those who have and want to continue to run things (koch et al).
Re:the 70's and beyond were horrible for american (Score:4, Interesting)
A great interesting story. You are looking for This American Life #403 - https://www.thisamericanlife.o... [thisamericanlife.org]
It is well worth a listen. We drover a Chevy Nova (later Geo Prism) built at the Nummi plant and it was outstanding. Actually ruined us since we knew it was really a Toyota. I've never bought anything but Japanese since.
Re:the 70's and beyond were horrible for american (Score:5, Insightful)
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It was a one-way street. Japanese could sell their cars in America, but Americans were blocked - by tariffs - from selling in Japan. How could there have been any other outcome? It was unfair from the beginning.
Tariffs - great for every other country but America, but God forbid if we want to protect our workers by raising the cost of foreign goods. It's just bizarre how these tariffs work spectacularly well for Japan, Germany, China, Canada, etc.
Import tariffs are necessary to protect US quality of li
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That is a bit different to the picture painted by this other comment here: https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org]
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It's not a one way street, Trump wants US companies to build cars in the US and export them to Japan. Japanese companies built factories in the US.
US companies could build factories in Japan if they wanted to, but US cars aren't really suited to the Japanese market. US cars are too inefficient, too large, don't have the features and localization that Japanese people expect. The US is claiming that it's strict Japanese emissions standards that are to blame, but even if those were relaxed they wouldn't sell m
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When I heard that the U.S. government complained that German customers have to pay VAT on U.S. cars, I was wondering if I was in some bizarro parallel world like Alice in Wonderland.
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And this is why tariffs are mostly bad. Frequently foreign competition wins because it is making a BETTER PRODUCT. This means by slapping a tariff on it you are hurting the competitiveness of all users of that product to reward the poor management of those that make it domestically.
Somehow lost in the debate is that before the income tax tariffs were a key, maybe even primary, form of paying for government. If the tariff debate were re-framed as applying to all imported goods (no exceptions!!) and the income tax being abolished for example that would be a great trade that most people could get behind.
We want interdependent economies because they increase efficiency, prevent wars, and make the world more equal.
That was the thinking behind the world not having WW1. It wasn't true then and still isn't true now.
How to make good car. (Score:2)
Listen to what people who buy and sell cars say about local conditions.
Cold morning in winter? Car has to start to get car owner to work on time. Test car during design until it can start in cold weather conditions.
Understand normal people have jobs and have to get to work on time. Having a car that can start without needing repair work is important.
Understand the politics of pollution. Have something like CVCC ready for political winning.
Make car look great every
by by forever (Score:2)
They lost sales because they aren't trying to sell (Score:2)
They lost sales because they cost too much.
They can aggressively price their cars, offer incentives and it will sell.
Those cars sold more in the previous years because they got the dealerships to sell more with financial incentives.
Go out buying a car and the prices of cars are all over the place. There are leases being offered that are hundreds of dollars different between the same class of cars. Even the same car can be leased for $300 one year and it's $550 the next year.
I've noticed that east an
Out with the old, (Score:2)
in with the new.
America is stuck in the present and too goddam greedy to be farsighted (just look up Gary Larson).
The old Capitalism was, "If you don't have to change, then fon't spend the money."
Long-term planners see around corners and are flexible and welcome the capital advantage of change.
The American automobile manufacturing plants are going the way of textiles, shoes, toys, etc.
Every goddam time David Muir presents the "Made in America," snippet, the fucking stuff is mom & pop and useless as tits
First car I bought new was an 87 Escort (Score:2)
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First car I bought was an 86 Mercury Lynx. It was used and was about 6 years old when I bought it so I was able to pay in cash, about $1,800 at the time.
I too had the battery slowly die but it had a manual transmission so it just needed a push. The worst part that I experienced was when the computer died. I had to get it towed to get the part replaced. But it was about 10 years old at that point. The one problem that I did run into was that sill under the hood rusted through, which dripped water into t
Reversing bad carma (Score:5, Insightful)
Once you get a bad broad reputation, it's hard to kick. Your newer stuff has to be better than the competition to correct the reputation. "Equal" is not strong enough. That's just human psychology in action.
It's like somebody with a notorious reputation for lying. To clean their reputation, they'd have to lie less than average for a good while to get back in good graces. Lying the same amount would supply enough lies to reinforce their existing reputation.
You hear that Microsoft, Oracle, Comcast, and IBM?
In 10 to 20 years... (Score:5, Insightful)
... from now we will be reading an article saying that "The supremacy of *Korean* cars has been 40 years in the making", and in 30 to 40 years from now, we will be reading an article titled "The supremacy of Chinese cars has been 40 years in the making"
that is the cycle of such things. Happened with cars, consumer electronics, tvs and monitors, computer components, appliances, the works.
I was born in late 1972, and I do remember a lot of things...
Remember the the 70's when japan was the place were cheapo-low-quality plastic toys and shoody appliances were made? everyone wanted a Zenith or GE, or RCA TV. No stinking toshibas, or Hitachis! And cars, everyone wanted a chevy or a ford (or a european). Japanese cars were a synonym of cheapo-low quality.
Remember the 80s when having a "Samtron" monitor in your computer was a sign of low quality? Rember in the 80's, when no one in their right mind would buy a Hyundai car? Nope, everyone wanted a toyota then, and a trinitron TV, or a NEC monitor. Samsung and Lucky Goldstar TVs were for loosers!
Remember the '90s and early 00's, when no one in their right mind would buy a Chery or a Geely car? Or a Haier TV or appliance? What now, GE appliances is a wholy owned subsidiary of Haier, which is the bigest Appliance manufacturer worldwide, while Geely owns both volvo and Lotus, and chery is assembling jaguars and land rovers for the chinese market.
So, countries upend other countries. do not dismiss them on the base of "percieived" quality (it will improve) or "perceived lack of innovation" (for they will innovate). Just take solace in that, just like in Japan, the chinese juggernaut will stop, and be upended by someone else...
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I think what you're describing is the result of a cycle that all countries go through:
1. The beginning:
A country has sensible laws, lots of unsatisfied demand and few established players. The public is engaged and investment in infrastructure, education and research is high. This leads to low costs, easy access to skilled labor and untapped technology. Countless individuals rise up to take advantage of the opportunities, creating numerous small businesses.
2. The rise:
The most effective small businesses expe
Ford, GM decided they were going to suck at cars.. (Score:2)
I drove a Pontiac Grand Am (with the aluminum 4-cylinder, not the iron V6 boat anchor, up front) all over the country for more than a decade, my brother drives it still. And I bought it used. The Ford Fusion of recent years was my preferred flavor of rental car, vastly better than getting stuck with a Kia on trips. I always thought that it would be nicer if it stuck out a little le
Japanese Auto Quality is a Myth (Score:2)
Our 2008 Mercury Mariner has been trouble free for over 10 years. Our 2013 Tesla Model S has also been pretty much trouble free.
In my experience, the supremacy of Japanese cars is a myth. They are not more reliable. Don't get me started on Jaguar and Volkswagon... If you wisely select the right models, American cars ar
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I have owned a RAV4, Highlander, and two Tacomas.
All have lasted 10 years with 150,000+ miles, when I traded them in for a good chunk of $ to buy a new one (Highlander is on year 6 right now). Never had any issues other than normal wear and tear.
I did have the misfortune to own a Dodge Durango. It lasted just past it's 3 year warranty when major repair jobs started happening with frequency. After thousands of dollars I dumped that POS and got
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I had to get a replacement daily driver in 2009 and found a 1990 Toyota Corolla with working A/C for $3,000. I drove it for around a year before replacing it with my Wife's 2004 model, she started driving a minivan. The only two things that I could find that didn't work or weren't quite right was the cassette deck that was jammed, and nobody had a battery with terminals of the same dimensions as the original, so I had to replace the clamps on the wiring. That was the first car I've ever owned that I bought
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I think there probably is a lot of misplaced hype in brand names. I count Corollas as being exceptionally reliable. But I have a few friends that have owned 4runners and had lots of problems with them.
In part that is why I plan to get a Tesla in a decade or so. By then the Model S and 3 should be well established enough that they should be nearly bullet proof. That is of course provided that they don't completely revamp the designs multiple times between now and then.
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Senge (Score:2)
That summary reads like a case study straight out of Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline... Detroit making all the wrong decisions for short term gain (and long term demise). Don't they read Senge in Detroit?
For that matter, the software industry with their Agile fad should also read it.
Anyway, my 19-year-old Toyota pickup truck with 230 000 miles on the clock still goes like a rocket (as far as diesels CAN go like rockets...). And despite all the scratches and dents (but without rust), not a week goes by
Nissan Rogue - nice design if you get a good one (Score:3)
I had a 2014 Nissan Rogue. It's actually a rather nicely designed vehicle with a good layout, nice controls, and a lot of functionality. It is also one of the few mid-sized vehicles with a 3rd row seat. This is essentially, a modern station wagon with AWD.
However, I encountered two issues with my Nissan Rogue AWD.
ISSUE 1) Fuel Economy - It never came close to the estimated EPA mileage - not even in the ballpark. In fact if you review
RATED: 25 City, 31 Highway, 27 Combined.
Over the life of the vehicle I averaged 23.5 MPG. Now I drove nearly a 100 miles a day, mostly highway. And if you look at FuelEconomy.gov, you'll see my mileage was the norm.
https://www.fueleconomy.gov/fe... [fueleconomy.gov]
Frankly, I believe that Nissan used a computer algorithm to put the vehicle in a more efficient low-power fuel economy mode for testing. I believe you only enter this mode if you are driving like 50 MPH. It is one thing, to expect EPA estimates to be off. But usually, when you buy a vehicle, you at least expect your HWY mileage to be better than the CTY rating. And considering my prior vehicle was a Nissan Versa, rated at 30CTY, 37HWY, 33C, in which on the same commute I averaged around 36.5MPG. So yes, I felt very deceived.
ISSUE 2) 36K/3YR warranty - so I added the extended warranty at purchase as well. I had an intermittent issue with the AC they told me to bring it in when it was occurring. However, when it finally did and completely failed. The vehicle was at 37,000 miles and 13 months of age. Took them a week to diagnose and fix the problem. Which they claimed was the blower motor fuse, and that the blower motor was fine. Nissan refused to cover it under warranty. A 13 month old vehicle that had the problems in it's first year. Fuses are considered replaceables, so the extended warranty didn't cover it. $700+ to fix a brand new car. I fought with Nissan national, and they finally covered half the cost. Within 6 months, the problem was back. Nissan wanted more money to diagnose.
Driving a 100 miles a day in summer heat sweating while going thru a nasty divorce and battling depression is NO FUN. There were days I damn near wanted to drive the thing off the road, or into a showroom. Finally, I gave up, why fight to struggle and pay for a vehicle that wasn't working. It needed a set of four new tires - runflats so about double the price. And I gave up and let the bank take it.
Thanks Nissan...
Love the car, but the fact Nissan wouldn't stand behind their product when it was only a year old. NOT COOL!!!!
(And without a doubt they are cheating on the EPA mileage and need to be penalized on it like Kia was.)
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A Tesla Model S has already gone over 400,000 miles [tesloop.com].
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And it's on it's 3rd battery, after only 3 years.
Re:duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Your average ICE doesn't even reach the distance that Tesla did one one battery without some very expensive maintenance, so waht are you moaning about?
Re: duh (Score:3)
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I can picture Elon sending out a SpaceX Falcon to go change the battery in that Tesla.
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It's 100% about tarrifs not build quality (Score:5, Informative)
The reason the US car makers favor trucks is that the japanese trucks have a 25% tarrif since 1973. It's much more profitable for US automakers so they emphasize this category over the thin margins on sedans. Additionally one has to consider the labor and material costs. For some cost structures it's much better to sell one high ticket item over two smaller ticket items, favoring the production of trucks over cars.
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Isn't this the "chicken tax"? Weird how these things can last half a century.
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Today a Japanese car will have just as many US made components as a US car, and parts will have gone through factories in multiple countries. Some Japanese cars have final assembly in the US as well.
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It IS about build quality. And tariffs. And weird loopholes in American law that allow massive SUVs and pickups to be really cheap because they are classified as trucks, not cars which meant Detroit could get away with building low-quality, unsafe, fuel-guzzling vehicles that were cheap to design and build.
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To reword what you have said:
American Manufacturers have conceded defeat in the sedan arena because they are too greedy and the only way to make HUGE profits is to bilk customers out of 25% of their money through a tariff introduced in 1973 on trucks.
TL;DR, American auto manufacturers admit that buying Japanese is smarter for the consumer because American auto manufacturers are unable to provide the quality that the Japanese can provide at a lower cost to the consumer.
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Re: That's a bit of an exageration (Score:2)
Re: duh (Score:2, Troll)
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Dumb, lazy fuck.
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Compared to the Dodge Caravan which needed a transmission work just before the 70,000 mile warranty was up, but the dealer insisted it didn't. Then it utterly failed just after 70,000 miles, and the dealer insisted it wasn't under warranty. And then the transmission needed to be replaced / repaired a couple more times before we got rid of that minivan at 120,000 miles when it
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and my 1998 f150 has 330k miles -- whose anecdote wins here?
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5 speed? That's what my '98 has, along with the V6 so avoiding the usual problems at 200,000 (actually 300,000 km here) of failing tranny and blown head gasket, besides the fun of doing a simple tuneup on the V8's (and plugs blowing out of the 5.4l). A few also came with the E104D or whatever the number was, tranny. That one would last forever if you stopped before putting it in reverse (adding the OD weakened the reverse).
Also watch those brake lines, Ford uses crap metal in them, or did.
The Japanese truck
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yeah, 5 speed manual (triton v8)
it's not the most aesthetically pleasing vehicle, but it's a great work truck.
thanks for the tip on the brake line, heh Coincidentally my '14 fusion had a brake line fail just this past summer.
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And really, if someone is going to buy a new Sedan, who wouldn't want to get a Japanese model or maybe a German one if you've got some extra cash? Of course, there are some die-hard buy-only-American fans but some of those foreign cars may have more US made parts than the Ford has. The US auto industry knows how to make big gas guzzlers, workhorse trucks that people buy to commute in, but they really do suck at making a good economy car.
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"Much of the analysis about Ford and GM's exit from the sedan market stressed that sedan sales have lost ground in recent years "as consumers have gravitated toward pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles," as the New York Times put it. If you look at the historical sales figures of the top Japanese sedans, you'll see a small decline in recent years, but nothing like the big drop-off in sales that have hammered the American companies. So in addition to the overall decline in sedan sales, there is a second,
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2003 Monte Carlo SS -- 560,000 miles.
Yadda yadda, plural of anecdote is not data, yadda.
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Donated it to the community college auto shop class rather than putting money into figuring out why it kept losing steering fluid and why the battery kept draining. (Electrical problems have been the hardest to figure out, in my experience.)
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Not true. My old work car (a 2005 Impala) hit over 240k before they semi-retired it as a pool car, and it's still road-worthy.
Oddly though I think the 2005 Impala models were better built than the 2009 models.
Re:duh (Score:5, Interesting)
Hondas are good, just avoid the Renaults sold as Japanese cars (Nissans). They're just as bad as the Fiats sold as Chryslers.
My leaf SL is a fine car.
The 350Z that preceded it was a fine car
Bad ones I've had - Plymouth breeze: Just crap. Ford F350: a Dinosaur with a flaky FICM. Ford Ranger: At no point did everything work at the same time.
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I loved my two Mazda MX5s, one NA in the UK and one NB in the US.
I also liked, but didn't love the Subaru impreza, which came in handy when we were driving around some rougher terrain.
My next car will probably be a Tesla once I've got sufficient wonga together.
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I loved my Saturn. Though late in Saturn's life it was clear that they abandoned the original concept of being an autonomous entity and were back to using generic GM frames and parts.
Re:duh (Score:4, Informative)
Which is usually when the trannies go. I've got one with a 5 speed and 420,000 kms on it. I've also known of quite a few, including my last one that lost their capability to move at just under 300,000 kms due to tranny problems, and like so many modern cars, replacing the tranny is an unreasonably large job, as in the first step is remove cab.
After driving Japanese trucks, having something that dies at 300,000 kms is quite a let down, and having worked on both, all I can say is "what the fuck were those Ford engineers smoking?".
First F150 I owned kept blowing its brake light fuse, finally traced it down to the brake light wire running up the steering column, through the little u-joint, where turning the wheels rubbed the insulation off. Fixing that was fun, steps like remove the plug from this wiring harness, keeping track of which of the 20 odd wires went to which pin, then pull the wires through the column. Couldn't even wrap them all into one bundle either.
Attempting to work on any new vehicle has become insane, between the computer buses being overloaded with stuff causing a bad radio to stop the vehicle running to spark plugs that need the engine pulled to replace or just read about the latest Toyota Truck where you had to remove the top of the engine to replace the starter. Even that F150 I had that lost its tranny, had the rear plugs so far under the cab that they were almost impossible to work on and you really needed a $500 tool around for when the plugs broke when removing (carbon with plugs longer then the threads).
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modern gm is better than modern ford.
That's probably because modern GM is Daewoo. Ford ended their partnership with Mazda years ago.
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You left out the sentence before stating that the best selling American-made SUV is the Chevy Equinox. That's what the "290,000 of them" refers to.
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My take on it is that the Japanese case were vastly inferior to American cars until up to maybe the '80s.
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The "chicken tax" to which President Trump refers in that Tweet is a remnant of retaliation against hysteria in 1960s Europe about factory farming [wikipedia.org].
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Surprise!
The refinery complex down in Port Arthur, Texas? Owned by Saudi Arabia.
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I think it's more that trucks and SUVs are protected by tariffs, so the Japanese brands make them in the US competing with the other US brands. But they can do it cheaper without all the legacy stuff. Cars aren't protected, so it's cheaper to import and US brands can't compete. Sure they tried making them in Mexico, but quality dropped and people stopped buying them.
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what about all the japanese cars made in the USA? how are they still better vs a "american" car company?
My mazda 6 was like 80% "domestic" and even has a UAW sticker on the door.
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A divided, distracted enemy is weaker, so yeah, this is exactly what they, and other unfriendly nation states are doing.
It's also easier to believe a Russian troll is a concerned US citizen when they point fingers back at Russia, so the ROI is worth it for them.
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Hillary's campaign manager fell for an obvious, Apple-themed phishing email and gave up his iCloud credentials which were then leveraged to get more shit.
Over 2 years later, that's all we have any actual evidence of.
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Brother-in-law lives and works in the city. So he bought a sedan. Sorry state of city streets has messed up his car's suspension several times in the past decade. He keeps looking at my 40 year old Landcruiser (no mechanical problems), thinking about what he should by next.
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Is that you, Sarah Huckabee?
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what about japanese cars made in the USA?
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Friend of mine has a '87 Nissan truck, one of the first built in the USA. It's all metric accepting perhaps the wheel lug nuts. At that, my '98 Ford seems to be all metric accepting once again, the wheel nuts.
Still the Americans screw it up, my Japanese trucks only used a few common sizes, 8,10,12,14,17,19mm basically covered most everything. My Ford uses, 7,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,18 at least. Some of these sizes I didn't even own such as the 16 which wasn't in many sets.
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First time I've heard someone claim that new car buyers are concerned about having to buy two sets of spanners to work on their car.
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I had an 80s chevrolet and what was the most used socket? 10mm. Like every other car.
You don't know what you are talking about. All cars have been metric for a while, and even a basic 30$ socket set has sae and metric for the odd sae time.
I have a kia and i love it. So much leg room which is kind of unexpected, but it had more leg room than any american car in the same segment i sat in. And reliability and performance are excellent.
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Are you sure? The "tailpipes," are vibrators now.
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Since everyone is sharing stories..
Back in 2006 i got a mazda 6, and in 2007 we needed another car. I wanted my GF to get a mazda CX9. She didnt want to drive a japanese car (She's chinese) and went with a chevy uplander. Lets fastforward a number of years.
Repairs done to the mazda:
Brakes
Tires
Repairs done to the Uplander
Hub Bearings (3 or 4, i forget).
Brakes
tires
battery
Traction control almost never works (the wire connecdting the speed sensor keeps getting ripped out??).
I got rid of the uplander a few mo
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I wanted my GF to get a mazda CX9. She didnt want to drive a japanese car (She's chinese) and went with a chevy uplander.
[...]
point of the story - I have a huge regret buying that turd of an uplander.
Did you buy it or did she buy it? When I bought my wife a car I didn't ask her detailed opinion first - it's my money, my car, my responsibility. She got to say what type of car she wanted (hatchback, SUV, whatever) but not which brand or which model.
of course, when she bought her own car she had full and complete autonomy to spend her money as she saw fit but she *still* asked me things like "Is this a reliable brand? Is this expensive to maintain", etc.
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If Camry outsold the Equinox (290,000) by 100,000, then 390,000 Camrys were sold, more than the CR-V (378,000), ranked #6. But Camry is not one of the top six listed. If the basic facts are wrong, why should I believe the conclusions in this article?
I think the author mixed sales numbers for the full year 2017 with a list of top sellers for the first half of 2018 [businessinsider.com].
I found a page that has 2017's top sellers [msn.com] as
1. Ford F-Series 896,764
2. Chevy Silverado 585,864
3. Ram Truck 500,723
4. Toyota RAV4 407,594
5. Nissan Rogue 403,465
6. Toyota Camry 387,081
7. Honda CR-V 377,895
8. Honda Civic 377,286
9. Toyota Corolla 329,196
10. Honda Accord 322,655
11. Ford Escape 308,296
12. Chevy Equinox 290,458
Those numbers match the ones on http://carsalesbase.com/us- [carsalesbase.com]
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Counter anecdote: In college, my friend had a Chrysler Lazer which was the uptrim sibling of the Dodge Daytona. Biggest piece of shit ever. Something was always breaking or else the engine was burning up.
I enjoyed poking fun at it until I wrecked my car and my pop got me another used car as a "surprise". Boy my heart sank when I saw it was the same piece of shit Chrysler model my friend had. So many things broke on that thing: steering wheel almost came off in my lap, brake cable snapped at an intersection so I had to stop by driving it into a ditch, gear shift kept popping out so I drove the last 100 miles until home forcefully holding the lever in place and destroyed the transmission, in my first job post-college, I saw flames coming out from under the hood as I drove into the parking building so I coasted it into a spot, opened the hood, and beat the flames out with my coat. Then I walked to my office. I left the car there sitting there and so wanted to just abandon the fucking thing, but they don't let you do that, so I donated it to the high school auto shop. They had that thing running in days, and the kids working on it told me, "Cool car!" It was like passing a psychotic ex-girlfriend off onto someone else.
Guess how we know that you're lying?
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Sorry, but the data [google.com] disagrees [wikipedia.org].
Interesting how a collectivist society that works its people to death fails to keep up with a society built on freedom and innovation.