GM, Ford, Chrysler vs. Toyota, Nissan, Honda production

GM knows muscle cars and land-yachts, but couldn't innovate to save its rear end. Always copying and playing catch-up with the rare exception(usually from the very high-end market)

In message , Crunchy Cookie writes

Toyota, the third largest manufacturer in the world, is Japanese and is wholly owned.

By fine diesel design, do you mean the slow, noisy, black smoke cloud emitting

300SD? Or maybe the 240D? If so, it hard to imagine GM making anything more pathetic. I still remember my office mate giving me a ride in his MB diesel. He was actually proud that the battery cost $120. The thing was a joke. They might have made good taxi's in Europe, but they were horrid cars for the US. It did have nice seats which were quite enjoyable until he started up the clatterbox of an engine. I have diesel farm tractors that were quieter than that piece of junk. The Oldsmobile diesel may have put a wooden spike through the US market for diesels, but the MB diesel certainly didn't help it any. And then there were the awesome Rabbit diesels - have you ever seen one consume it own oil supply and self destruct? I've seen it three times - which is pretty incredible considering the few that were sold in the US. Oh yeah, lets not forget the Peugeot diesels that were sold here......GM didn't really need much help killing diesels. Diesels are successful in Europe because of the distorted fuel taxes in Europe. Until we have something like that here, diesels will remain a niche market vehicle. However, as far as I can tell the current VW TDIs are not offensive. I even considered buying one, until I remembered they were a VW product. My family has had enough experience with VWs so that I know better (1 Audi Coupe, 1 Jettta, 1 Passat).

Regards,

Ed White

Who owns Toyota? It has stockholders just like GM, but I doubt most of them are Americans. Heck, I am not even sure most GM stockholders are American anyomore. See

From : How many Toyota Motor Corporation shareholders are there globally?

As of March 31, 2002, there were approximately 276,449 shareholders of record.

Ed

And it took GM to figure out a worthy application for that...

I haven't seen tests for the new one, but noone in the press could reproduce stated mileage of the old Prius...

In message , C. E. White writes

You don't live in England where the fuel tax is horrendous.

But here in New England, Rhode Island in particular we chip in nearly $.60 a gallon in taxes alone. To those of us in the U.S., that's horrendous.

How England and most other European countries got away with the tax scam you have is beyond me. If they tried that here you'd see us lynching politicians in the streets.

European g'ments are experts at taxation. How about a tax on furnishings? Or TVs? How else to pay for socialism?

Chas Hurst

snip

If 20% of Brits had no health-care insurance, there would be lynching over there. You get what you pay for.

It's more like 40% here. There was a 27% rise in the cost of health insurance yet the teachers here (who average $50K for a 9 month school year) are striking because the school board asked them to split the difference. I can't really blame the teachers for striking but it doesn't address how obscenely profitable the healthcare industry is. As for the lynchings, if the corporate republican income redistribution trend doesn't reverse, shit's gonna fly.

JD

And how is our government going to pay for the huge military, farm subsidies, social security, medicare, police, fire departments, roads, etc., etc., etc..?

Ed

furnishings? Or

Right now the G'ment is going to borrow money by selling T-bills to oil wealthy Arabs. The next generation will be paying for that in taxes, either higher or new. Or substantially reduced services. What great gift for the kids.

Chas

We're rapidly approaching that point in the U.S. $87 billion to re-build Iraq including health care. Over $600 billion in deficit spending while we have tax cutting going on. People need to wake up.

This is what got me. THEY get free health-care. We get a bigger tax and doctor's bill.

LoL asian car owners trying to prove a point. Funnier then comedy central.

All the japs did was steal the idea and used it. Anyone can steal. To bad they can't invent anything on their own.

The only reason people are buying asian cars are because of the cheap price. Typical american cars were the same price what asian imports are now. Cost goes up through the years, but no one wants to get a real job to pay for something.

KIAs are the cheapest i guess. They must be the best cars around. But i hope they put a lot of "variable" names on their engine parts so i can be brain washed by their ads. Or like v-tech, so i can brag about it to my dawgs.

People who buy asian cars=ignorant people who dont know anything about cars. That is why 90% of ricers are asian cars. Why are they riced out, because the owners are idiots and "think" ricing out a car will make it go faster.

All of us should be stunned the asians are using our technology or europe's(sarcasm). Just like the other guy said before. We have used all those things before. There was prototypes of four wheel steering cars for GM. It worked perfect, but management cut costs. We can engineer and make anything badass, but if the CEOs want to make more money and layoff people, they gonna do what they like.

Big deal four cylinders are making 200hp. The year is 2003. It is called technology. A ricer can make 400hp out of his 4 cylinder with adding a turbo, or modifying it. BIG DEAL. Domestics were getting

400hp back in the 80s. Vw beetles were getting that in the 70s at the drag strips. You trying to impress me with asian cars isn't going to happen.

And 8,000rpm reving engines are not for city traffic. Unless the person is already reving the crap out of it. BTW, it isn't very economic to be running an engine at high rpms. Most domestic cars and europe have enough torque that cars can be driven at low rpms. Cars can move quickly and save fuel at the same time. Our old v8 big blocks can be made to run at 10,000rpms all day long. Nascar has no problems with it.

Asian imports are reliable. False. Go take a look at the jap newsgroups and people crying about things breaking down. They cost more to fix and harder to work on. And if they are such great cars, i would see a lot more older asian cars on the road. But i dont.

And to the other arguement. Not everyone is lazy workers. But yes, a lot of the bosses/supervisors love to do crap during the workplace. Then the bosses want credit for what those real workers did. This goes on everyplace. Just looking for a promotion so someday they can be brown nosing the CEO.

If Japanese cars are just knockoffs, then why are some of them better performers and more reliable?

GM and Ford aren't 10 years behind in hybrid technology because the most important parts of this technology were invented outside the industry, so every car maker has access to the very same technology. What's wrong is that GM, Ford, and Chrysler just don't run their design projects very well, probably because their companies are dominated by business types rather than engineering types. I don't have experience with Japanese car maker, but in their other companies, management doesn't seem to overrule the engineers nearly as much, except when they want them to do better.

Innovation and engineering aren't necessarily the same. It's true that Japan hasn't invented much, but back in the 19th century the most innovative country was Great Britain, yet they lagged the U.S. because American companies could take British ideas and implement them better, thanks to better management and engineering.

Some Japanese inventions: the tunnel diode (but the transistor blew it away), Yagi antennas, the modern form of video tape (every other line is recorded out of phase so the tracks don't interfere with one another, even without any space between tracks, allowing much less tape to be used), the Toyota production system, the blue LED, and the blue LED laser (same guy for both, but he packed up and moved to the U.S. because of a better offer).