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Coming from the Midwest I still run across quite a few people who are hardcore buy only American types. Typically these are also people who trade in every 2-3 years though, they are definitely not ones with plans to keep a vehicle 8-10 years.
Toyota alone employs something like 35k+ American workers..that isn't insignificant.
I have found the Buy American types feel that the problems the Detroit cars give them is normal. They have never experienced a good, well made car. The longest I ever kept a Detroit 3 car was five years, most getting traded in after three. The LEAST I ever kept a Japanese make car was eight years. I have had my Nissan truck for 24 years.
I have found the Buy American types feel that the problems the Detroit cars give them is normal. They have never experienced a good, well made car. The longest I ever kept a Detroit 3 car was five years, most getting traded in after three. The LEAST I ever kept a Japanese make car was eight years. I have had my Nissan truck for 24 years.
The shortest I ever kept a Detroit 3 car was 3 years; the longest was 18 years (I have owned my '76 Cadillac since 1999).
I have a 2017 Toyota Corolla, too. It was built in Blue Springs, Mississippi. I expect even better durability with it. I'm 64 now and that Corolla should be the last car I ever have to buy.
You probably could be 20 or 30 years younger and make this statement. The Corollas I've had have been the most reliable cars I've ever owned. I didn't keep them much over 12 years, but I never had a a single non-maintenance repair expense.
Not exactly. Those employee's spent their paychecks here at local shops, the plant's owners paid property taxes, american suppliers made profits that were kept here and provided more jobs, American construction companies built the plant's, and American folks had jobs that paid for home's and educations and supported their local communities. So yeah whatever was left over went to the parent Japanese companies as profits, but those profits were used to expand the buisiness and hire more Americans. I see it as a win/win.
The only issue that I can see is when the automakers will play off different states to get goodies from the governments at taxpayer expense. Mercedes Benz did that in Alabama to the extent that it blew a hole in the state budget about 20 years ago.
[quote=stilldriveem;50066664]Not exactly. Those employee's spent their paychecks here at local shops, the plant's owners paid property taxes, american suppliers made profits that were kept here and provided more jobs, American construction companies built the plant's, and American folks had jobs that paid for home's and educations and supported their local communities. So yeah whatever was left over went to the parent Japanese companies as profits, but those profits were used to expand the buisiness and hire more Americans. I see it as a win/win.[/QUOTE
Would you still feel the same if you knew for every American job that was generated by foreign assembly in the US 3 or 4 more we eliminated? That's basically what has happened.
The final assembly jobs wash-out but the net loss comes from the fact that most imports still use far more foreign parts. For example, instead of getting a seat from Lear (Southfield, MI) or Johnson Controls (Milwaukee, WI) your car may have a seat from Toyota Boshoku (Japan) or NHK (Japan.)
It's great that some foreign companies have opened plants here but that is just one of the many things involved with the automotive supply chain. Focusing on where a car is built is not anywhere near the whole story.
The thing is tho, the Japanese have brought us arguably better products at least in the reliability sense.
What I see as a tragic loss for both the american worker and the end consumer is all the manufacturing of other items (you name it) that has been outsourced to China resulting in basically garbage throwaway products.
And all of the profits from those Japanese cars (no matter where they are made) are still going back to Japan. I know it doesn't matter to some people but supporting an American company is still important to me.
The thing is tho, the Japanese have brought us arguably better products at least in the reliability sense.
What I see as a tragic loss for both the american worker and the end consumer is all the manufacturing of other items (you name it) that has been outsourced to China resulting in basically garbage throwaway products.
Don't disagree with any of that, but people need to keep in mind the Japanese automakers came here with significant funding from their government which helped them build higher quality cars from the beginning.
Yet the domestic automakers received no sort of help from our government and people were all bent out of shape over the bailout loans GM and Chrysler got.
There is no doubt that the American automakers had their fair share of self-inflicted wounds, but if people knew the whole story I think they would be less critical.
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