Amazing how Honda and Toyota manage to build Accords and Camrys and Avalons here in the U.S. just fine, thank you very much.
Honda and Toyota (as well as BMW who also builds in the US) know how to efficiently build a vehicle, stay within budget and not bend over and drop their pants for unions...
"Amazing how Honda and Toyota manage to build Accords and Camrys and Avalons here in the U.S. just fine, thank you very much."
Do they employ union labor?
Subsidized by other markets? Built at a loss to drive GM and Ford out of the market?
Just asking...
"Ford insiders say the new trio will be built in Mexico, where labor costs are lower..."
Can we expect to see a mass exodus of illegal aliens back over the border into Mexico????
The Honda and Toyota plants son't suffer under the UAW yoke.
The other thing the article points to, that Ford and GM have been doing for my entire adult life, is seldom really upgrading their least expensive models, for little cost, other than cosemtically.
Toyota has had an opposite philosophy for years. When the return on investment of a feature in a "high-end" model has been achieved, Toyota starts moving the results, the technological results, of that investment (already paid off, and already profited on) down to lower-end models.
That process has made the Toyota Corolla nearly the best "economy" car for its money; and it is full of engine, drive-train, electronics, suspension and "creature" features that started, in the Cressida, the Avalon and the Camry.
I have felt for years that Toyota was a company that prodcued cars and wanted to produce cars, while GM in particular was more simply a marketer of cars that it produced. To me the difference between the focus of GM and Toyota has been like GM has the same short-term sensationalist view of things as the LameStreamMedia and Toyota is trying to do a better job at building cars, counting on their good work as what will sell their cars, regardless of immediate popular trends.