The newer big Chryslers are butt-ugly IMHO, look like something from a Third Reich comic strip. Even this one has a kind of ugly vibe. Buuut, I could see myself driving one, provided it has an alarm system. ;')
Posted on 01/05/2005 6:21:13 AM PST by wmichgrad
That's a tough question, but here's the rule I follow. It led me to buy (new) a 2003 Lexus RX300, built in Japan:
"Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best your money can find. And when men live by trade - with reason, not force, as their final arbiter - it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability - and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward." -- Francisco d'Anconia, Atlas Shrugged -- Ayn Rand
Oh, I don't know about that. I've a 5 yr. old BMW that's never had a problem and never been in the shop except for the few(er) instances of normal fluids service.
But Toyota, Nissan and Honda all build substantial numbers of cars in the USA. Ford and GM build a lot of cars overseas, and even market them as American cars. Chevy's small cars are made in Korea. The new Pontian GTO is made in Austrailia. So nameplates are not a good way to measure where a car is built.
Ownership of a company is also somewhat problematical. The Dodge boys are part of Mercedes, so if you go by corporate-ism they aren't really American anymore. On the other hand Ford owns Mazda and Volvo --- will you buy them proudly?
Of course the real owners of all public companies are the shareholders. Unless you've done a lot of analysis it is probably hard to know what the nationality of the majority of shareholders of a publicly held company is.
Yep, those South Korean models are very attractive.
Oh, you meant the cars....
I remember the late 70's where American autos (not trucks) were getting slaughtered by the Japanese. Japan gave us the Datsun and Ford gave us the Pinto. In the 80's Chrysler got smart and started using Japanese made engines, Mitsubishi. The American cars started getting a little better by the late 80's and into the 90's. American autos made a great financial comeback. Now I have friends that own American cars. They are junky and made like crap once again. No wonder American auto sales are down. Make a good vehicle, get market share. Make a junky vehicle lose market share.
Nope, don't know about that one.
"Average speed from CT to SC last Thanksgiving was 66.9"
That was YOU clogging up I-95?
LOL, GE, your sample size is barely lower than my own. I only have a sample size of one but it's the one that matters. Having owned/driven just about everything made, this older BMW is, without a doubt, the best car we've ever owned.
I drove his 735i ??? a few times. It is by far the best handling car I've driven. Very fun to drive.
"My dad worked at Ford for 30+ years. 99% of the time, he didn't vote for dems. Neither did a lot of the people he worked with."
We've all heard apocryphal stories about how so many union members are really all just Republicans. It's only their leadership that support the Democrats. Bullsh*t, I say. If this is so, then why can't any union member explain to me why they sit back and allow their unions to support and their union dues to bankroll every idiotic leftist cause, leftist candidate, and leftist party to come down the pike.
I have an apocryphal story to tell of my own. My brother-in-law's father was an Electrician who worked at the Ford Rouge Plant for over forty years, beginning in the late thirties. He was one of the original members of the UAW Skilled Trades council, back when the UAW was being created. He saw it all through the years, including the "Battle of the Overpass", the burning of the Ford Rotunda, the construction of the Ford World Headquarters building. But, before he retired he was so disgusted with what the UAW became that he hated every day he went to work and was against everything the union advocated and everyone the union propped up just on general principle.
He told me the turning point for him was during the sixties, when the union was forcing minorities into positions that they were obviously unqualified for just to fill racial quotas. He viewed this policy as life-threatening to him and his colleagues. There was one Sunday he had to repair some high-voltage welding transformers on the line with some minority guy they told him to work with. The minority had brought a liqour bottle with him and was drinking shots all day. My brother-in-law's father had to tell this guy to just sit down and drink because he was afraid the guy would either knock over his ladder or wind up flipping a switch and zapping him to death.
The fact that the union foisted these types of things on the membership, and many other things too numerous to mention, led him to despise the day he ever bought into the "union brotherhood" bullsh*t.
I would look at an American car if it could match up to the quality of a Japanese car.
"killing the goose" ping...
Since the US auto industry's decline continues (despite a rising US population), the best thing for the economy of Michigan is to raise taxes. ;')
The newer big Chryslers are butt-ugly IMHO, look like something from a Third Reich comic strip. Even this one has a kind of ugly vibe. Buuut, I could see myself driving one, provided it has an alarm system. ;')
My first car was an 85 Cougar(10 years old when I bought it). A wire went out and shut the thing down. They had to go inside the door to eventually find it....$400
The less electrical the better IMO.
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