As GM & Ford continue to make front page news in regards to their large revenue losses and substantial layoffs, there are lot of people that continue to point out and blame both organizations for their own downfall. Most of these arguments are valid and are needed to wake up the head honchos at GM & Ford to create a turn around for the better.

Believe me I am not one of those buy only American fanatics (I own a Lexus and BMW). I believe in a global economy and buying the best product you can for your money, however as an American it is to all our benefits that GM & FORD succeed and come out of this mess. We all have our patriotic pride & the downfall of GM & Ford will not be good for the nation, our people and even their competitors.

Toyota doesn't want to see GM & FORD fail, and one of the reasons is there would be a backlash against those foreign car companies that were part of the downfall. A massive unemployment of GM & FORD labor would create a huge backlash of anything NOT MADE American that would bring back those days of bashing foreign made cars in public.

HOWEVER this all being said, my concience is telling me for my next vehicle purchase to make the extra effort to buy American . You can tell me even GM and Ford don't make it completely in America but ultimate the revenue goes to an AMERICAN company if you buy from them. Why not buy the new Chevy Tahoe or Caddy Escalade over a Lexus or BMW equivalent?

I know you all love your Lexus and BMW with a passion, but doesn't this gloomy situation for Ford & GM make you want to do something to further benefit our country?

I am still conflicted because this situation is stirring up my patriotism in supporting America and wondering if I buy foreign it will just make the situation here in America worse in the long run, especially if GM & Ford can't climb out of the hold they are in now.

I look forward to your opinions.

 

Wow, great idea, and something I have personally thought about.

Then I think of the crap my family PAID FOR, from Ford and GM in teh past. We CHOSE to buy these cars instead of buying another Japanese car.

Well, our nissan Sentra was a staple for over 10 years in our family as we went through countless American cars and gave up on them and bought Japanese (Lexus and Mazda) and have been COMPLETELY satisfied.

Outside a Z06 or Vette, and maybe a STS, I see no reason to buy American. When my family gave them our money, in return we got TOTAL CRAP.

So I am glad they have improved, but they EARNED their position. Its not like Ford and GM were building FANTASTIC cars and Americans just ignored them.

They build AVERAGE cars, with no STRONG ARGUMENT to buy over Japanese except BEING CHEAPER WITH REBATES.

This doesn't even include, brand image (which sucks), features (which lack behind the competiton) and other items.


I WILL NEVER feel bad for a company, ANY COMPANY, that is misguided and sells crap to consumers and then wants us to forget and save them.

 

Sick - your family sounds just like mine. Bought American cars all the time in the 70's & Mid 80s, got tired of the problems and started buying Japanese for the improved reliability and never looked back since.

I too would say the Corvette is a great deal and the Cadillac line is strong and appealing.

You are correct, we can not feel bad about a company that doesn't perform, we just don't consider them during our purchasing process. This is unfortunate but true.

As Americans we should all hope that GM & FORD rebound and succeed, so Americans can keep their jobs at these organizations (both blue and white collar) and the American economy can continue to grow. Myself and the other members in this forum are fortunate enough to drive luxury vehicles, but it's also in our best interest that we live in the time of the good times where more people are happy and not resentful of this increasing gap between the rich and poor.

 

Great point. At this point, its going to really take American made cars to really be convincing, to prove to me (and tons of others) that "hey, this car is just BETTER than the imports".
The crazy thing is, I have wrote my support here for the 300C, clearly an American made hit and they got it right!
1. Very good price
2. More power than the competition
3. It looks brutal, in an American way.

Yet, its built in Canada!! Goes to show the auto economy is just global now!

It is just amazing to me that their managment is still clueless!! it STARTS FROM THE TOP and works DOWN!!

I mean, look at Nissan, they were in WORSE condition and Ghosen came in and turned things around. It started with HIM!!

He said in his first meeting, everyone at Nissan was blaming outside conditions, etc etc. He said "LOOK, WE ARE THE PROBLEM". We have to fix OURSELVES.

I am not a huge fan of his car products but there is no denying his brutal vision worked!

 

consumers' sympathy will not help a company much.
sure a few millions will help in a short term
but if they did not solve the core problem, which is the company,
history will just repeat itself.


I am not spending money to let them burn them off for fun
and fatten the executives' pockets.

 

Cause I don't want to own a subpar product.

I can't care less where a vehicle is from if its subpar then im not touching it. Only exception is the vette. Even so at the moment best I could get is probably a C4.. so not much help to chevy...

 

I have a ton of family and friends in the big 3. My fiancé’s father has been at GM for over 35 years so you can only begin to think what kind of debates we get into.

Your comment above is one of them.

My statement to go with that is, do you really care if you make a company rich? (unless your a stock holder). Does it really matter if the Ford Family makes the profit or if Honda does? No, not really.....

What matters to me is that they keep the jobs here and keep spending money here. If you want to take profits to your home country, fine its just business to me. But keep building plants here; keep employing people here so those workers can spend their money in our economy.

 

My family is a car racing family stretching way back and a good part of us has always owned American cars. However, have seen the quality falter.

When I was in business school, I remember a case study about Ford and their attempts to improve quality in the late 1990s. It was a priceless case study, but I felt it was short on a few conclusions.

A lot of the case study focused on quality improvement programs similar to those in GE. Ford's system was quite complex, but looking at it on paper, if quality was really job #1, I felt these guys and gals could get it done.

However, having worked in very large organizations, I had no doubt that in the end individual bickering and the "me, me, me" attitude is what killed that quality improvement program, unlike most of the Japanese and other Asian car companies where teamwork is emphasized over and over and over again in the manufacturing process.

War is no different in that aspect. Heroes come about in war because they do an outstanding effort above what is required while still working in the framework of a team set out to accomplish a mission.

If clucks like the management at the American car manufacturers would put their spending habits, corporate perks, golden parachutes and other individualistic routines aside, they could build a pretty darned good car.

 

One of the BIg 3's issues for a long time was looking at their Tier 1's for price reductions to help out their own inefficiencies. I sat there and watched them ask year after year for price reductions in a time when raw materials were sky rocketing!

If I could do a "best of" for the big 3, the one that takes if the cake is when they walk in your warehouse and say "Bar code scanning the product at the gate will reduce mis-ships and reduce short-ships and the money you save with our idea, you can knock off the price you charge us"

Classic stuff like that.

You as asking for price reductions on parts year after year while costs are going UP, YET you want better quality? The two don’t mix, quality is an overhead, and it is expensive to manage and run and if you want it, pay for it!

You want us to build this part at this price and want top quality shipped, it doesn’t work that way. You walk into a MFG shop shipping to Ford and Toyota\Honda and look at the difference. The constraints and requirements are less with the foreign companies, they are willing to pay a little more for the parts since their org is not a capital sucker and its not that the tier one is making more money because their paying more for the parts, it just means they have a little more margin to make sure the quality aspect is well taken care of!

I LOVE how they will run into a business trying to tell you how to save money, yet they will say "hey you need to triple sort this part, two via automatic and one hand\belt sort"

Ok dipshat, do you even know how much a trip short will cost?????????

Does it mean less bad PPM SHIPPED, sure, does it raise the hell out of the cost, yeah, are you willing to pay for it? NO.

 

Great point. GM/Ford and others have squeezed suppliers ***** so tight, to a keep a contract, they make cheap parts that just won't last, to keep GM and the others happy.

Toyota for instance is the only company that WORKS WITH suppliers when a cost/solution cannot be found.

Huge difference in philiosophy and incidently cars.

 

The stories are really endless....

The last Ford push. Lets reduce the total amount of suppliers so lets deal with 3-4 onsite\on campus distributors whom deal with 32131232 suppliers. Ok sounds good? Then hey when we should be paying in 60, lets pay 80-90 days out, new distributor says pay us or we stop shipping, they stop shipping Ford says ok screw off and 86's the whole deal and all that energy and effort is done and wasted simply because "they could"

They really don't care about their suppliers, they treat them like do what we say or we will just find someone else.

Yeah those outstanding relationships will bring quality parts in the door.

 

I worked in a Fortune 500 company about a year ago and they also pulled a similar stunt with payments and suppliers. I worked really hard with my suppliers to ensure prompt payment so that the projects could continue, but the home office went to its textbook of what to do in financially difficult times and told me and everyone else to hold off on payments.

 

It is funny the games they play. In the end they shut down a couple 50mill startup distributors and went back to sourcing the parts directly.

It was their idea in the first place to go to the structure of sourcing "one type" of part from only a handful of places. Then shortly after, pull the plug because of their own practices. There isn't much room for margin as there is, then they want to not pay for extended periods of time.

Hell when raw material (in this case steel) sky rocket, they refused to pay a surcharge on parts even though it was in their contract! Countless suppliers tied up in court for over a year! Only then did they decide to pay the surcharge.

Not a good way to get product out the door with high quality....

 

America is starting to offer the best bang for the buck with products like the ChevyCobolt SS, Saturn Redline cars, Ponitac with the GTO and others, Caddy with the V series, Chrysler with the retun of the Hemi, and Ford with the Mustang GT. Quality and reliabilty have been turnoffs to many including myself. Now that I've seen some better products from the big 3, and test drove a few of them, I am quite pleased with the progress America has made in quality control with the excepton of the Vette C6 with the flimsy door mechanism on the console. Love the GTO though

 

So many good points made and there are many other issues that brought this to where it is now. For me, I feel these guys are not dummies. Someone should have determined that sooner or later, the bottom would drop out. So I don't feel too bad. In my work, we have to plan then plan again. There is too much opportunity to see the shortcomings and change directions. But these guys were still making tons of money and sucked it dry. Now it's dry...or getting dry.

Besides, buying foreign cars does help americans. The last time I looked JMLexus was owned by Jim Moran. I believe he is an american. Jim Maroone of Maroone Honda is an american. They employ lots of americans and pump millions into american economy. No diiferent than Sony, Sansaui, or any other foreign made electronic device sold in Brandsmart, Circuit City or Kmart. Employing americans in american stores in america. Brandsmart sells high quality stuff along with low quality stuff. You can spend a little or a lot. Overhead is kept in control and they even sell used (refurbished)....and they thrive. They keep a sharp eye on the competition and will reduce their prices when needed to compete. In my house are sony, JVC, Zenith, Dell, HP and a couple other brands of electronics. I don't care who makes them. I care about price in relation to quality.