American Made Vehicles?

I think if you've been driving a Toyota truck and wanna switch to an american made vehichle, you're going to find yourself sorely dissapointed in the long run.

Buy another Toyota. Can't be beat.

Now, keep in mind - I work in tool & die in Windsor, Ont and have just been laid off. My shop only makes dies foir the auto industry.

keeping that in mind, knowng first hand that not supporting north american made vehichles can lead to lose of industy - realistically speaking Toyota is still better than anything made on US soil.

The big three doesn't feel loyal to you, and will gladly send their work to countries like Mexico and China where work is cheap. Love you're country but don't make poor consumer decisions based on blind patriotism.
 
mlot51 said:
If youre feeling brave, check out the Dodge Rams. Some are union made. I had a 2004 Ram 4x4 that was Union assembled in St. Louis. Even had the little "Union Made" sticker on the window. The truck was actually put together quite nicely, so cudos to the folks in St Louis.
Click to expand...

About 5 miles from my house (For $ALE!!) in Fenton, MO. They do the Ram trucks and Caravans. Several automakers still have plants around St. Louis but, in general, they seem to be closing or cutting back.

(Not an endorsement - just a factoid. My own vehicle is a 4wd Toyota.)
 
I find some humor in this thread as my buddies all drive pickups made by the big three and give me the buy American ribbing. I have to remind them that my '05 Tundra was made in Kentucky, not Mexico or Canada like theirs. That tends to get a rise out of them. Now if Toyota just offered a diesel...
Toyota has built their reputation on making reliable pickups. The new models compete well with the US fullsize trucks. They come up short for the HD 3/4 and 1 tons but I can see them coming.
I do my best to by american but it is becoming harder and harder in this global economy.
 
James Todd said:
We own:
1989 Toyota pickup 275.000 miles
1989 Toyota pickup 310,000 miles
1997 Nissan pickup 375,000 miles
1995 Nissan pickup 325,000 miles
Absolutely no problems other than oil changes, one clutch, and regular tune-ups. Great trucks for daily driving.
Either brand gets my vote!
James
Click to expand...

Five Fords:
91 Ranger 487,674 miles original motor and trans 2.3l 4cyc
94 Taurus 200,600 miles orginal motor second trans (taurus weakness is the auto trans)
93 F150 402,421 miles all orginal 5.0l v8
02 F250 90,034 miles no problems 5.8l v8
07 sport trac 13,450 miles again just a baby in the family

Any brands works maintenance is the key, American brands are close to par with Japanese brand. In today world everything is global, personally I perfer American brands. FYI Toyota's quality is slipping not as good as a few years ago. Nissan had problems with their titian's rear end. Both make good trucks but with my luck with Ford I will continue to buy them.
 
mete said:
VW had a plant near Pittsburgh back a few years and they gave it up. Why ? My prediction came true the unions destroyed them !!!
Click to expand...

I'd be very surprised to find a business that unions have destroyed. No problem finding businesses that management has destroyed. I've worked for several.
 
Ford F-150 are made right here in Kansas City....

My ride is a 1983 Mercedes 300 Diesel. 230,000 mi and rolling on towards 400+!!

I agree with superduty truck, any brand can be good. Just maintain it.
 
As one who has worked with many a "union guy", including Detroit auto types, I always look for the union label and go the other direction. My first car was a new '72 Mazda. I bought Japanese because even back then I knew the QC was far superior and it was unlikely a Nipponese car worker would put an old fish carcass in your rocker panel because "the man" screwed with him.
I currently own an "inherited" 2002 Ford explorer and at about 75,000 miles have had several body hardware issues: Door locks intermittent, busted window crank cables, rear hatch not lockable. Mostly just annoying stuff, but that's what kind of thing I recall my Dad having trouble with on his 60's - 70's GM cars/trucks. I do know folks with great high mileage US car stories but much more in the Japan category. Lots of cultural differences I'm sure have an impact.
 
Jack Knife, What behaviour on the part of Unions are you talking about? You mean employer paid healthcare, 40 hour workweek, overtime pay, senority based structures, child labor law, FMLA, HIPA, clean & safe working conditions. vacation and personal holidays, prevailing wage, minimum wage, the list goes on and on... now do you care to rebut and explain why you dont care for Unions? Becuase from what your post sounds like is that you really have no idea what your talking about. As Unions are the sum of the represented employee's, not the other way around. What Tuarus did to Smith and Wesson and to the U.S. by proxy is reason enought for me to never buy their cheap immitations of a S&W. Again do your homework. the cars in the 30's 40's 50's 60's were IMPECCABLY made to the finest and strictest tolerances of their time. I submit the Chevy Small block 283 -327 and 350 of the late 50's and early to late 60's Chevrolet had to stop making them becuase they flat lasted to long and Dealers we're complaining they were not making any money on warrenty work, so then we saw the Rod ratio change and the horrible 267, 305, 307, and 400 cubic inch engines offered they all had bad problems. as well as earlyer engines such as the Ford Flat Head v8 and the again GMC Stove Bolt 6's many are still on the road and many still have virgin bores. While I agree today you will be hard pressed to find a NEWER domestic vehicle that will match a Honda/Toyota/Nissan's longevity and ease of maintence (I daily drive a 1995 Honda Civic DX for that very reason) the change over from quality to quantity was in the the early 60's when the big three's board of directors started dictating to the engineers when they want a certain part to fail (your 50,000 mile warrenty) instead of telling them to produce the best quality part at the most economical cost.

Jason
 
J.S. Carter said:
Jack Knife, What behaviour on the part of Unions are you talking about? You mean employer paid healthcare, 40 hour workweek, overtime pay, senority based structures, child labor law, FMLA, HIPA, clean & safe working conditions. vacation and personal holidays, prevailing wage, minimum wage, the list goes on and on... now do you care to rebut and explain why you dont care for Unions? Becuase from what your post sounds like is that you really have no idea what your talking about. As Unions are the sum of the represented employee's, not the other way around. What Tuarus did to Smith and Wesson and to the U.S. by proxy is reason enought for me to never buy their cheap immitations of a S&W. Again do your homework. the cars in the 30's 40's 50's 60's were IMPECCABLY made to the finest and strictest tolerances of their time. I submit the Chevy Small block 283 -327 and 350 of the late 50's and early to late 60's Chevrolet had to stop making them becuase they flat lasted to long and Dealers we're complaining they were not making any money on warrenty work, so then we saw the Rod ratio change and the horrible 267, 305, 307, and 400 cubic inch engines offered they all had bad problems. as well as earlyer engines such as the Ford Flat Head v8 and the again GMC Stove Bolt 6's many are still on the road and many still have virgin bores. While I agree today you will be hard pressed to find a NEWER domestic vehicle that will match a Honda/Toyota/Nissan's longevity and ease of maintence (I daily drive a 1995 Honda Civic DX for that very reason) the change over from quality to quantity was in the the early 60's when the big three's board of directors started dictating to the engineers when they want a certain part to fail (your 50,000 mile warrenty) instead of telling them to produce the best quality part at the most economical cost.

Jason
Click to expand...

The only time unions had a valid place was before the labor laws signed by President FDR. Modern labor laws cover what you mentioned. If an emlpyee has a problem these days one call to the U.S. Wage Hour board will get things hopping, as will OSHA. I know because we had an issue at one of the machine shops I worked at and one dime got some pretty fast results from OSHA.

As for the impecable quality you speak of, you must be a young guy who did not have to drive one of these cars edc and depend on them to get to work. My family and I lived with those cars. Before the import invasion, very few of them were anywhere near as reliable as what you could buy from Germany and later Japan. If you feel the small block Chevy was a good engine, they you're welcome to that opinion. But I saw too many of them burning oil and needing rebuilds at what today would be ridiculiusly low milage. It was no accident that GM would only give you a 12 month and 12,000 mile warenttee on those "impeccable" cars. I had a 1967 Chevy C-10 that the drive shaft dropped out of it at 19,000 miles. The engine needed a top end job at 68,000. In the 1950's and 60's it was very rare for a car to see 100,000 thousand miles, don't try to tell me other because I was there. That includes the 283 and 327 V8's. The cars of the 40's and 50's were very far from impeccable as you may think. It was a Sunday morning ritual that 75 percent of the men in America had to be under the hood tinkering and fixing the old cars so they would keep running for the following week. Points, plugs, condenser, valve adjustment or other things. Rattle trap bodies that after a few years sounded like a tinkers junk wagon when you went down a bumpy road. Oil splotches on the driveway were a normal thing. How many Honda's or Toyota's leave oil slicks behind?

American auto unions encoureged poor work ethics as an emplyee could not be fired for anything short of murder. The unions protected the worker to the point of brazen arragance and the feeling he did not have to do his best. There are cases of spoiled workers actually sabotaging things because they felt they were not being pampered enough. Unions as organized in America, drove up prices and dereased quality, and provided an income for organized crime. If they had thier way they would do away with a open free market place.

As for the Taurus vs Smith and Wesson, Smith and Wesson needed to be kicked in the butt to get back to making a decent gun again. They had turned out alot of poor guns in the 70's, and were not changing with the times. Thats called stagnation in any book. Now at least they are back to making a good gun again with a warentee that is as good as what the competion is offering. If Taurus had not pushed the issue, do you think S&W would have upped the ante out of the goodness of their corporate heart? I think not.

I know that I bought my last U.S. made car in the 1980's and never went back. Toyota has given me the best service of any car I've had in my life. I'm old enough to have had alot.
 
We will agree to disagree then on all points. Yes I am young reletivly (31) and you do have valid points about the arrogance of the employees represesented by Unions Ii see it every day, I'm a steward in the IBEW) however do you think the companies would've handed over those amneties mentioned by there own good hearts, no i dont think so. as well every major desicion the Labor board has made in the last few years has been to the benifit of the companies in my neck of the woods. Your Tuarus/S&W history seems incomplete. Smith DID go down to Brazil at their beckoning and set up a huge manufacturing facility at their expense. and then a few days before the plant was to open the Brazilian Govt came in and told the S&W guys they had 24 hours to get out of the country...it had nothing to do with warrenties or rival competition. I'll bet the 67 C10 had a 307 in it too the most leakin engine chevy ever put out, bad factory main seals. but growing up poor in the midwest we drove the OLD clunkers,(my first truck was a 1940 Chevy p/u that i set on a 78 nova front subframe welded to a 72 GMC leaf spring frame.) But the ones we had were solid, no they didnt have the cushioned pillowlike ride we have today but they were made to the best compromise between cost and affordability. not everyone could run a Duesenburg, Auburn or Cord. thats why I still say they were impeccable. yes you kept a set of points and condensers in the glove box, and I still remember how to set the dwell. if ya drove a Ford you had better had those + a remote solenoid! Chrysler you needed an extra ballast resistor handy... anyway, you remember them how you want to and I'll remember them how i want to. for the engineering marvels they were.
 
My vehicle is a Colnago C40 Italian racing bicycle; 2nd vehicle is a Waterford 2200 racing bicycle from Waterford, Wisconsin; next vehicle is a 2008 Lexus RX 400H; next vehicle is a 2002 Toyota, Corolla with 21,000 original miles.

So, as you can see, I have one American vehicle with the Waterford bicycle.

Life is good with fine engineering.

Terry Newton
 
Bernoulli said:
I'd be very surprised to find a business that unions have destroyed.
Click to expand...


Try the US auto industry; they haven't destroyed it quite yet, but only because the unions have been forced into all kinds of concessions to get that industry competitive with its foreign counterparts.
 
http://www.uaw.org/uawmade/auto/2008/2008vehicles.pdf

http://www.overthehillcarpeople.com/

For those of you who are convinced that the location of final assembly of a foreign owned car means lots of US jobs and a big boost to the economy. Keep in mind also that Ford and GM employee most of their people in union states where wages are higher and benefits are greater. Just something to think about. And its been my experience that a Ford or GM smallblock will run forever, and I think it's very ironic that the same US media that constantly tells consumers American cars are crap then have the nerve to run stories about how people not buying American cars is bad for the economy, life can be funny like that. One more thing, you guys ever bought parts for an import, makes you wonder where the missing Three-Pointed Star is on the hood of that Japanese or Korean car.
 
Spydiefan04 said:
One more thing, you guys ever bought parts for an import, makes you wonder where the missing Three-Pointed Star is on the hood of that Japanese or Korean car.
Click to expand...

I hear ya! :D have to get all my parts at the junk yard. $400 for a cruise control unit for a 24 year old car! No thanks.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top