Detroit Vs Japan

Very interesting show on Discovery Times channel last night. Detailed how Japanese auto makers are really going hard after full size pick up truck market. Nissan Titan is making big inroads and so is Honda. Japanese had hard time understanding that Americans just don't like little trucks as much as we like big trucks. Looks like they finally "got it" and now Detroit is feeling the pain. PU Truck are some of the most profitable vehicles made by Detroit.

My own observation: When it comes to innovation the USA has everyone beat. When it comes to refinement that's where we get caught and sometimes surpassed by Japan and Europe to a lesser extent.

We can make a Ford Mustang, A Jeep, Dodge Caravan, or a full size PU truck but then we seem to get complacent and stop the developing and refinement. That's where the Japanese really get going and make up ground.

Ford & Gm bonds at junk status, not good. Auto industry is so resistant to change and so slow to react to market forces. UAW not helping the issue either.

Interesting show if you get a chance to see it. Car designers are very different people. Very artsy. They need engineers to keep them in reality :)

Reply to
Brian Foster
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Brian Foster wrote:

Hmmm... Last I heard, the Titan had something like 3-4% of the big truck market. I don't exactly call that "big inroads". Honda isn't even on the map. Their Ridgeline has been less than successful so far.

Because the Japanese companese do 2 things differently: 1.) They are very engineering-central, and are proud of it. 2.) They don't reinvent the wheel with each new redesign. They simply keep what works, and fix what doesn't. There's no need to change the design of a fuel pump, for instance, when it's been a trouble free design and works quite well. The American brands tend to reengineer everything with massive overhauls of their vehicles.

Though I agree with the Japan reference, in general, I disagree with the European reference. Anyone can build an awefully nice car for $60K. Doing it at $30K is a whole different story. European cars with that level of refinement are very expensive. Witness the BMW 3 series. For more than $40K, you get a car the size of a Ford Focus with a bit more power and a bit more 'refinement'. Yes, it handles better, but it's still a very small car. To beat it all, in a television comparison, the Focus was judged to be built better and had better reliability than cars from Germany. Now, a nice Focus can be had for less than half what a BMW 3 series costs. I don't see this as anything earth shattering from a consumer standpoint. I see it as an overpriced vehicle.

Now, witness that American cars have long been on the JD Power initial quality rankings, and certain models have been on the most reliable list from Consumer Reports. The Chevy Lumina was one of the most reliable cars on the road. Somehow, though, public perception aways makes people believe that a Japanese brand is more reliable. Toyota just announced a recall of over 790,000 cars. If that was GM, the public would point to it and say it was more evidence that American cars are junk. But it's almost not even a story being Toyota.

The latest JD Power Inital Quality study has Buick and Cadillac in 4th and

5th positions, respectively, Toyota in 7th, Hummer in 10th, Honda in 12th, followed by GMC, Lincoln, and Acura. There goes the foreign makers are better idea... At the bottom of the list were Suzuki, Mazda, Land Rover, Volkswagen, Porsche, Volvo, then Kia - the formermost being at the very bottom.

Actually, from 3rd place back, each position is barely better than the former. So, there's not a huge gap in quality between most brands. See for yourself:

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Really? I think this is more perception, and less reality. Ford has done a good job developing a live rear axle setup that does away with some of the nasty natural effects of such a setup when bumps are encountered. Older designs would cause the axle to cause the rear end to sidestep when encountering a bump in mid-corner. Supposedly, the new Mustang has no such habits because of improved design.

GM practially invented hydroforming for frame rails and such, drastically improving the strength of such components. GM vehicles typically have much better gas mileage compared to similar vehicle offerings with similar horsepower ratings. Witness the Corvette and the last generation Camaro/Firbird. The Corvette produces 400 hp, while getting 26 mpg on the highway. This is unheard of in sports cars. It gets better gas mileage than just about any sports car with anywhere near that kind of power. Not Porsche, Ferrari, Acura, Lamborghini, or Dodge can claim that kind of gas mileage. Similar results are spread out through the entire GM line. This was pointed out on Autoline Detroit by the host, and he said that unfortunately for GM, the word simply hasn't reached the customers. It's a marketing problem.

The UAW has nothing to do with it. This is a management problem. GM is simply the size of a company that should have 30%+ marketshare, when they have something like 23%. The market is very heavy with competition, and it's getting worse. When companies like Kia/Hyundai are making cars in Korea and paying people a pittance to build them, it's a little hard to compete. This isn't the fault of UAW workers. This is simply a tragedy that people are willing to buy products produced by companies that pay "sweat shop" wages. The same goes for people who shop at Walmart. 80% of all items sold at Walmart are produced in 3rd world countries in sweat shop conditions. This is simply a crime. We accept the fact because we don't have to witness it and it makes our products cheap. If they worked like that in this country, the government would shut them down. This country has gotten itself in a rat race, where everyone thinks they deserve to live like a billionaire, but the next guy gets paid too much for what he does. If you work for a living, you deserve to be paid enough to make a living. I think current UAW pay is something like $24.50/hr. or something like that. That equates to about $50K a year on a 40 hr work week. That's not exactly living high on the hog. Sure, for a blue collar job, it's pretty decent and there are a lot of people making less. But it's far less than many make, too, that do a lot less work for it. People in the construction fields make even more. I think union boilermakers are something like $35/hr. here locally in the Cincinnati area.

It's interesting that workers in European plants, according to Autoline Detroit, have benefit and protection plans that the UAW would die for. Yet, they're not considered unable to compete...

True, but it's one point of view. Again, you accept those cheap goods because you don't have to witness people working 60 - 80 hrs. a week for a mere $30 or something similar. They typically don't have any retirement plan, no benefits, and work in less than ideal conditions. But, hey...you get a nice car for less than $20K...

Reply to
Ruel Smith

Real Truck Owners wouldn't be caught dead in a Japanese pick up truck. I suspect the Japanese trucks will sell OK in California, in the cities, but out in the country where trucks are trucks and men are men, the domestics will rein supreme for a long time to come.

Reply to
Jeff Strickland

Reply to
L.W.( ßill ) Hughes III

I'm going to have to disagree with y'all ... here in Texas, we see the caravans headed south all the time. Invariably, it's one Japanese pickup pulling another, both loaded down with applicances and stuff... and when I say 'invariably', that's what I mean. Japanese. Always.

And Bill... perhaps you'll tell us how the trucks from the US are getting to Cuba... that one's got me wondering... __ Steve .

Reply to
Stephen Cowell

Reply to
L.W.( ßill ) Hughes III

Reply to
L.W.( ßill ) Hughes III

He swam, but the trucks have to go in by boat.

Reply to
Jeff Strickland

Reply to
L.W.( ßill ) Hughes III

While this may have been the norm in the past, it is rapidly becoming obsolete thinking. Yes, wages are much less overseas (in Asia especially) but costs of living are also much lower as well; the wage/cost of living gap in these regions are wider than the West, but the gap is rapidly closing. "Sweat shop" factories really aren't as prevalent as most of us in the West think; in the case of automotive manufacturers, most of these Asian plants are as state-of-the-art as any in the West and are staffed by workers who want those jobs because they pay better than anything else around.

In a nutshell, the world business climate is changing, and the next three to five generations of Americans are going to be left behind if they aren't prepared for it.

Reading suggestion: "The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Ruel Smith"

Reply to
Matt Macchiarolo

Because Detroit sells outdated equipment, including tooling, to foreign countries.

Reply to
Tom Greening

Reply to
L.W.( ßill ) Hughes III

I've a friend in Thailand who gets paid about 1.50 per hour - she has an MSc as well.. In the villages, 9 year old children work after school.. That's why we can buy silk ties for 2 quid there that get sold for 20 quid here.. Sweat shops very much do exist, and you can bet that the imigrants that make it here are sending the money back home to support their relatives.

Reply to
Dave Milne

Where in my post did I say "sweat shops don't exist?" As the standard of living in these countries grows, you'll see less of them over time.

Reply to
Matt Macchiarolo

And a ways back, in this country right here, big families were the norm becuase kids were more or less field hands. IOW, they worked their asses off to pull their weight for the greater family good. This is still relatively common within certain communities. I seen 9-10 yr old kids all the time bustin their humps mowing grass, feeding livestock, working the fields with pop. Nothing wrong with a kid working his butt off like the rest of the family. If it's done with a whip, that's a different story altogether.

I've been to some of these places first hand and SEEN some of what people bitch about. Are things up to our standards? Not really, but they do go more or less hand in hand with the current economic development of the countries it happens in. Just as it did in our day here.

At $1.50 an hour she is right up there making pretty damn good money for the section of world she lives in. $1.50 hr is pretty damn good for places like India, China, etc and is right in line with the general cost of living in those areas.

You want to see piss poor conditions, for EVERYone concerned, not just kids, go to India one time. The cities there are literal hell holes and I don't care what your age is. Damn near everyone (and in a country of over 1 billion people, "damn near" is a lot) works on a dirt floor in crappy conditions. Do you know how they pave highways over there? By hand. A truck dumps a bunch of big ass rocks at the jobsite, everyone with enough muscle turns the biguns into little 'uns, mom and the kids fill up woven baskets, carry them to the edge of the new road, and dump them out to form the base. Rince, repeat, and at the end of the day setup a tent (if your lucky enough to have one) at the edge of the days progress and wait till morning to do it all again. I've seen it first hand. Are they being "abused"? Not a bit becuase it's just the way it is right now. These places are just beginning to have their Industrial Revolution and improving conditions will follow right along, just as it did here during our revolution.

Migrants that make it here can send enough money home to let their families back east live DAMN good for their areas. Remember, $250/month is ALREADY good money for some of these places. Double that and you're high on the hog.

Reply to
Tom Greening

But since labor costs are still so low in many countries, it's no wonder why businesses (and not just American businesses) are shifting production to those countries.

As far as the Japanese building a better car, I think among major auto manufacturers the quality gap is so small now that it's a crap shoot in trying to determine who builds a "better" car. In the 70's and 80's, it was easier to measure since compared to Japanese imports, American cars of that time were overpriced, gas-guzzling, often-repaired, poorly-built piles of crap. But the industry adjusted and stepped up their game to match the Japanese. Nowadays, the quality gap is more public perception than a quantified, measurable phenomenon.

Case in point...Every car I have ever owned was built by a US manufacturer until about two years ago when we decided to lease a Honda minivan for the wifey. Nice vehicle, had the features we wanted, etc, but it had a major factory defect that eventually forced them to buy it back under the Michigan lemon law. And in the interim, American carmakers introduced refinements in their products that brought us to lease a Ford Freestar instead.

FWIW, living in suburban Detroit, we probably see a lot fewer imports than in other parts of the country, anyway. I visit my parents in Arkansas and probably half of the cars down there are imports. I can only imagine how many imports you see, Bill...

And on that note, it's interesting to see that many parts on my Ford products and TJ are assembled in Mexico...my next-door neighbor, a German with a Mexican wife, works for an international OEM auto supplier, with plants in Mexico, France, Germany, UK, and USA (he currently works as production manager at the US plant here in Michigan). When the TJ when it was introduced, his company made the anti-sway bar assemblies at their Mexico plant, which is where he was stationed at the time. The company supplies parts (mainly insulation and acoustic panels) for every major carmarker in the world.

Reply to
Matt Macchiarolo

Pretty amazing that there's no cars from the '60s, or '70s in those pictures... in fact, I challenge you to show me a picture of an American car made after Castro took power ending up in Cuba... I don't think you can! As far as

*many* ending up there, complete hogwash.... you pulled that one from where the sun don't shine. Perhaps Cuba would be a good place for you... they have no Japanese cars, since there's an embargo and Japan is one of our best allies. __ Steve .
Reply to
Stephen Cowell

LHO was never in Cuba. __ Steve .

Reply to
Stephen Cowell

So what? I think you should move to Iran... you'd like the mullahs, they think a lot like you do. __ Steve .

Reply to
Stephen Cowell

Detroit sells tooling to Cuba? Isn't that illegal? __ Steve .

Reply to
Stephen Cowell

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