OT: It's the label that matters

WSJ ran an article about how the Big Three are trying to improve quality but no one is noticing.

A note in that article said that a testing company would strip all the labels off cars and then tell the people testing the vehicle that a Toyota Camry was a Ford Fukus, for instance. They found if they used one of the Big 3 labels, the people looking at the vehicle immediately seemed to downgrade their perception.

This is a problem. This means that even IF the Big 3 ever start building cars as good as Toyota, and IF Toyota ever falls down to their level, that people won't be able to tell.

I'm confused. My dad almost didn't buy our first Toyota (used) because he grew up in an era where Japanese meant cheap and shoddy. How did Toyota overcome that? The Big 3, I fear, have become synonymous with bad in so many people's minds that it may be an impossible obstacle to overcome.

I know that when we bought our first Toyota both my parents were heavily impressed with the quality vs the same era American cars. The reason we were looking for used is we couldn't afford a new one at the time. We had looked at all the new cars the year before, and found that nothing really had changed since our 1962 Corvair had been made. Oh, Ralph Nader had forced some safety improvements, but the paint, fit and finish had probably not changed since the 1930's. We were replacing our Corvair at 90,000 miles because we had the following problems:

  1. The front passenger floor had rotted through and been repaired. Twice.
  2. The engine needed the valves ground. Twice.
  3. The electrical system was body return ground and that was rotting out. We had a turn signal that did not work on one side, for instance, and we'd had to rework the ground to get it working again at least twice. It was bloody cold sticking one's hand out the window to signal in the middle of winter!
  4. One could not fit 2 adults, a 15 year old, a 9 year old and a 3 year old in an American car smaller than a Chevelle, and the 73-74Chevelle was the most butt-ugly car ever built short of the 1970 Monte Carlo and the 1958 Impala.

And from what we'd seen of the 1973's, there was little or no change in the quality of the build in American cars. We hadn't looked at Toyota, because at that time, there was no Toyota dealer in that town. We had looked at VW, which because of the rise in the value of the mark was getting priced out of the market, and the FIAT, which we were unimpressed with. We stumbled quite by accident on the Toyota Carina in a used car lot. The dealer had no idea what to do with it. He'd priced it at $1899, which is probably pretty close to what it cost new, even though it was 2 years old already and had

37,000 miles on it.. But that was in 1974, at the height of the gas crunch, and our only alternate choice, apart from a lot full of V8's, was a Dodge Slant 6 that had been in a wreck. My dad thought V-8's were tremendously wasteful for most of the driving we did in those days and he never owned one. My brother owned one once, but it turned out to be an American POS that no one knew how to fix the problems.

Charles of Schaumburg

Reply to
n5hsr
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Why is this article labeled as OT?

Reply to
badgolferman

Because it's about the Big Three.

Charles

Reply to
n5hsr

Then why is it off topic? After all Toyota is #1 or #2 among the Big Three. ;)

Reply to
larry moe 'n curly

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