Ford 'badged' vehicle built on Miata frame?

That makes sense. Bad management can take down any company.

American styling is not what I want, and I have never liked muscle cars very much, but that does at least look better to me than any Mustang produced since the 1960's.

My neighbor had a 2001+ model Impala, don't remember the exact year, that she bought new. It had more problems in the first six months than my parents '94 Camry had in the previous 6 years. When the Impala finally threw a rod at 37K miles, she dumped it and bought a Toyota which has had almost zero problems for a few years now, and nothing major.

Toyota should be outselling GM by 100 to 1, not catching up with them. When even Chevrolet's flagship sport scar is a problematic piece of crap, it is time to throw in the towel.

I am sorry to see people losing their jobs, but times are tough. We don't have to buy shitty cars out of loyalty, the American auto makers have had many years to catch up and they failed miserably.

Pat

Pat

The Camry is certainly made in vast numbers in the US. Likewise, here is the UK Toyota, Honda and Nissan have very large plants.

Ironically, despite the almost complete collapse of the UK's home-grown car industry due to crap products (BL/Rover) and labour unrest, we make more cars here than we have ever done. The US sounds as if it's going the same way.

Yes, I figured that at least the two most popular ones I listed were made here, though I can't see them needing more production outlets for the exotics like the McLaren, the Elise or the Aquada.

I have a feeling that Larry was trying to catch me in a word trap since I mentioned the cars as "overseas", rather than "a vehicle designed by a Japanese or German auto maker".

Sure we can copy them and make their products here, but design our own that are as good or better? No way, both the US and the UK have been soundly beaten in that area. At least the UK makes a few interesting cars, even if they are expensive and not very practical for daily drivers.

I may be wrong about an attempted word trap, but it is hard to believe that Larry really cares about which cars I want to own.

Absolutely. Of course, it is a huge industry, but it is shrinking very quickly, as shown by the massive layoffs and small sales figures, especially for Ford.

Pat

"pws"

.....read "management".....

That pretty much says it all, as far as I'm concerned. The toughest part on the conscience is being an American family/consumer, and a "Union Member".

yes, thank you, my bad.

Yes, I would love to be able to say, "look at this finely crafted American car, much better than that equally-priced import". There may be a parallel universe somewhere where another Pat is saying that with conviction, but I don't think that I could say it here without laughing even if you paid me. ;-)

Pat

And in particular mindless cost cutting, I would think. Not cost saving through better design, but using solutions that are "just as good." Without, say, giving a thought that in the buyers' minds, it will correspondingly reduce the value of the car. And if then those cost cutting measures also produce increased (expensive) warranty work, the company has done a great job of cutting itself at both sides of the knife. Add customer dissatisfaction and the company has found a way to cut itself at three sides of their two-sided knife.

Of course, the cost-cutting looks good on the resume of the manager, and by the time the adverse effects really start to show up, the manager has already been promoted on to the next company to screw up.

I wonder when it will start to affect Mazda. The company has done a great job in lowering the (real dollar) cost of the Miata, especially looking at what you get in light weight engineering etc. But some people are bitching about the cheap-looking materials of the interior. If it cuts sales, that was no savings.

Leon

We call that shooting themselves in the foot.

We call that shooting themselves in the head.

I have no seat time in an NC, but when I compare our new $17k Mazda3 with the $10k 1985 Accord it replaced, I am blown away. (The CPI has just about doubled since 1985, putting the old Accord at about $20k in today's dollars.) It's the same size, but much better equipped, much safer, quieter, better handling, much quicker, and gets similar mileage.

On the other hand, it would've been really tough to keep up the high standard in this area and good looking materials I know from my '93.

cu .\\arc

Marc, Is this tongue in cheek? I'm assuming so as I think that was kind of the knock on the NA, that it was a pretty cookie-cutter simple / inexpensive (big difference from cheap) looking design on the interior. I thought the NB made a pretty nice improvement on that front with everything being nicely integrated and significantly better looking and feeling materials. But they also made a big mistake IMHO by cheaping out on the seats.

Later, Chris