Jens Posted January 8, 2007 Posted January 8, 2007 I just about jumped outta my socks when I saw on the news that Toyota Motors may pass General Motors as the number one automaker in the world in a year or two. God help us. We need the US government to step in and stop this travesty. We are all DOOMED if this actually happens. We gotta keep bragging rights on this one. --- GM makes some great cars! Not the car you had in the 80's. Quote
DirtyHarry Posted January 8, 2007 Posted January 8, 2007 Atleast we're still better at making porn than the Japanese. Though they do some nice stuff with fecal matter and midgets. Quote
G-spotter Posted January 8, 2007 Posted January 8, 2007 GM sucks dude, get real. For the last 20 years the American car makers believed that they could make any shit sell through marketing. Meanwhile the Japanese made quality cars. Now that no one with more than two teeth will buy an American car, you cry to Mommy? Fuck that. Every North American carmaker deserves to go bankrupt. And the "Big Three" CEOs should be hanged, burned, pitchforked and mutilated. Quote
Couloir Posted January 8, 2007 Posted January 8, 2007 I just about jumped outta my socks when I saw on the news that Toyota Motors may pass General Motors as the number one automaker in the world in a year or two. God help us. We need the US government to step in and stop this travesty. We are all DOOMED if this actually happens. We gotta keep bragging rights on this one. --- GM makes some great cars! Not the car you had in the 80's. Get the government involved?!? How about GM get rid of the unions and start making quality cars? Every Toyota I have ever owned has performed flawless. Every American car I have ever owned, no so much. Â The Toyotas we buy are pretty much manufactured here in the states. American jobs. Those workers seem pretty happy and they make pretty good cars. Quote
G-spotter Posted January 8, 2007 Posted January 8, 2007 Atleast we're still better at making porn than the Japanese. Though they do some nice stuff with fecal matter and midgets. Â bukkake and hentai are Japanese words Quote
tvashtarkatena Posted January 9, 2007 Posted January 9, 2007 (edited) Get the government involved?!? How about GM get rid of the unions and start making quality cars? Every Toyota I have ever owned has performed flawless. Every American car I have ever owned, no so much. The Toyotas we buy are pretty much manufactured here in the states. American jobs. Those workers seem pretty happy and they make pretty good cars.  Toyota makes its Corollas and Tacomas in the USA using union labor, so there goes that argument.  Toyota will also sell about a quarter of a million Prius hybrids in the US in 2007. That might be a little closer to the mark as to why they're doing better than GM. Edited January 9, 2007 by tvashtarkatena Quote
JayB Posted January 10, 2007 Posted January 10, 2007 Toyota makes its Corollas and Tacomas in the USA using union labor... Â You sure about that? Quote
Jens Posted January 10, 2007 Author Posted January 10, 2007 Ultimately the dollar goes to Japan. Â GM kicks ass. Â I can think of a number of little towns that you wouldn't want to stop in with your Prius and Hillary 08' sticker in. Â Quote
tvashtarkatena Posted January 10, 2007 Posted January 10, 2007 Check out the UAW website. They've got a list of every car they make. Quote
tvashtarkatena Posted January 10, 2007 Posted January 10, 2007 (edited) Ultimately the dollar goes to Japan. GM kicks ass.  I can think of a number of little towns that you wouldn't want to stop in with your Prius and Hillary 08' sticker in.  Jens, buddy, GM has consistently produced the most boring, lackluster fleet of cars and trucks on the planet. Talk about some UGLY vehicles! But the interiors? To hurl for!  Besides, a JP auto made in the US uses a huge number of locally mfgd parts and, of course, all local labor. A lot of the purchase dollars stay right here.  Whenever a US automaker runs into $$$ trouble it's never that management decided to produce cars no one wants and not produce cars that people do, it's always labor's fault. Blame the production line peon. As for GM specifically, they have the added burden of being a successful, long lived company, so their pensions are eating them alive. A nationwide retirement savings initiative, equally spreading that burden over all corporations, would relieve individual companies of that burden and effectively solve the problem but NOOOOOOOOOO, that would be too socialist. So its 'fuck you GM and all your current and former employees'.  And as for the small town thing, well, a friend of mine just went on a Prius roadtrip all through rural eastern WA and OR, and they said the interest in their vehicle was HUGE. Especially when they told onlookers about the 50 mpg they were getting on average. As for bumper stickers, I've been all over this state and several others with a No Iraq War bumper sticker on my car and a War is Terrorism sticker on my motorcycle helmet, and the only place anyone ever gave me the thumbs down or any other negative indication was Pissaquah...hardly a small town.  Ultimately, the planet doesn't really care whether city folk or country folk are driving fuel efficient vehicles, as long as the numbers are increasing. And remember, it was small towns and farms where the biofuels got their start a century ago (to power farm equipment). Edited January 10, 2007 by tvashtarkatena Quote
counterfeitfake Posted January 10, 2007 Posted January 10, 2007 Ultimately the dollar goes to Japan. GM kicks ass.  I can think of a number of little towns that you wouldn't want to stop in with your Prius and Hillary 08' sticker in.  Because... conservatives who feel strongly about American cars are violent? Excellent. Quote
dbconlin Posted January 10, 2007 Posted January 10, 2007 Ultimately the dollar goes to Japan. GM kicks ass.  I can think of a number of little towns that you wouldn't want to stop in with your Prius and Hillary 08' sticker in.  Because... conservatives who feel strongly about American cars are violent? Excellent.  ...and are card-carrying members of the NRA. Quote
JayB Posted January 10, 2007 Posted January 10, 2007 Check out the UAW website. They've got a list of every car they make. Â Thanks for that link. Good to know which vehicles to avoid buying. May have to go for the FJ Cruiser instead of the Tacoma when the time comes to replace the current Toyota Pickup in a few years. Quote
Couloir Posted January 10, 2007 Posted January 10, 2007 Check out the UAW website. They've got a list of every car they make. Which is a very small percentage of union hands on Japanese Vehicles when you cross reference it with the list of Japanese Auto plants in the US. Pick up a copy of Consumer Reports. Year after year almost all of Toyota and Hondas are 'recommended' compared with a small percentage of American cars. Â Maybe not 100%, but I still think the unions (UAW here) and the way they do business shares a lot of the blame for this. Quote
tvashtarkatena Posted January 10, 2007 Posted January 10, 2007 Which is a very small percentage of union hands on Japanese Vehicles when you cross reference it with the list of Japanese Auto plants in the US. Pick up a copy of Consumer Reports. Year after year almost all of Toyota and Hondas are 'recommended' compared with a small percentage of American cars. Â Maybe not 100%, but I still think the unions (UAW here) and the way they do business shares a lot of the blame for this. Â Well, your reference failed to offer any statistics one way or the other about the US union labor content of Japanese vehicles, so my earlier, very specific refutation still stands. Â And you may 'think' its the unions who are to blame, but auto industry analysists, including those who have posted on the JAMA website, apparently don't agree. They claim that US protectionism, poor dealership relationships, and a lack of vehicles that the public might actually want to buy as the root of the problem, none of which have anything to do with unions whatsoever. Â I think your desire to blame unions dates back to Lee Ioccoca, when unions were much more powerful than they are today. Quote
tvashtarkatena Posted January 10, 2007 Posted January 10, 2007 Check out the UAW website. They've got a list of every car they make. Â Thanks for that link. Good to know which vehicles to avoid buying. May have to go for the FJ Cruiser instead of the Tacoma when the time comes to replace the current Toyota Pickup in a few years. Â Heaven forbid that you buy something more fuel efficient. I guess that would require a little too much personal responsibility than your supposedly traditional conservative nature is willing to cough up. I know, I know, you need a big pickup for all those heavy bulk loads you haul around every day. Quote
sill Posted January 11, 2007 Posted January 11, 2007 Toyata just offers a better product, more reliable product. Quote
JayB Posted January 11, 2007 Posted January 11, 2007 Check out the UAW website. They've got a list of every car they make. Â Thanks for that link. Good to know which vehicles to avoid buying. May have to go for the FJ Cruiser instead of the Tacoma when the time comes to replace the current Toyota Pickup in a few years. Â Heaven forbid that you buy something more fuel efficient. I guess that would require a little too much personal responsibility than your supposedly traditional conservative nature is willing to cough up. I know, I know, you need a big pickup for all those heavy bulk loads you haul around every day. Â Hahaha. Yeah, the mid-90's Pickup is quite the behemoth. Â I've commuted to work by bike, day-in, day-out, in Seattle and Boston for the past seven years, and with the exception of a single three-year period, I have done all of my day-to-day commuting either on foot or by bike for the entirety of my adult life, so spare me the sanctimony unless you've got something more substantial than your fluoride-free lifestyle to bring to the eco-righteousness table there, amigo. Â Too funny. Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Quote
JayB Posted January 11, 2007 Posted January 11, 2007 Which is a very small percentage of union hands on Japanese Vehicles when you cross reference it with the list of Japanese Auto plants in the US. Pick up a copy of Consumer Reports. Year after year almost all of Toyota and Hondas are 'recommended' compared with a small percentage of American cars. Â Maybe not 100%, but I still think the unions (UAW here) and the way they do business shares a lot of the blame for this. Â Well, your reference failed to offer any statistics one way or the other about the US union labor content of Japanese vehicles, so my earlier, very specific refutation still stands. Â And you may 'think' its the unions who are to blame, but auto industry analysists, including those who have posted on the JAMA website, apparently don't agree. They claim that US protectionism, poor dealership relationships, and a lack of vehicles that the public might actually want to buy as the root of the problem, none of which have anything to do with unions whatsoever. Â I think your desire to blame unions dates back to Lee Ioccoca, when unions were much more powerful than they are today. Â Yeah - I'm sure this was management's idea: Â http://www.detnews.com/2005/autosinsider/0510/17/A01-351179.htm Quote
tvashtarkatena Posted January 11, 2007 Posted January 11, 2007 (edited) Thanks for proving my point; What do you need a truck for? Â BTW, you've got self-righteous DOWN, my man. Congrats. Edited January 11, 2007 by tvashtarkatena Quote
JayB Posted January 11, 2007 Posted January 11, 2007 What do you need a car for? You don't need a car to do whatever it is that you do with your time any more than I *need* a truck to carry my kayaks to rivers, or sleep in, or travel over snowy logging roads in Maine or whatever else I choose to do with it. I can pretty much guarantee that you're burning a hell of a lot more fossil fuel than I am per-week, so you're hardly in a position to question anyone elses choices or conduct - much less mine - are you? Â I don't ride because I think it makes me an eco-saint, I ride because I like being fit, hate sitting in traffic, and it saves me a bit of money. I only mention it when bloviating eco-wanks think that making the staggering personal sacrifice involved in....owning a subcompact with a couple of bumper stickers that advertise their empty and profoundly ineffectual moral narcissim "Free Tibet!" "Hey, Look at me, I want to Free Tibet! Aren't I something!"...makes them some kind of enviro-hero. Whatever. Â Until you adopt the life of a Yemeni goatherd and decide to spend the rest of your days squatting under a lean-to and subsisting on grubs and roots that you pry-from the earth with a digging stick, the fact of the matter is that you've got exactly jack shit on anyone else when it comes to the enviro-thing, and the only thing that makes you different from the guy in the F350 is the magnitude of your narcissm, not the magnitude of your ecological footprint, which is hardly any different. Quote
G-spotter Posted January 11, 2007 Posted January 11, 2007 Get a diesel FJ and switch to bio. Best of both worlds. Quote
tvashtarkatena Posted January 11, 2007 Posted January 11, 2007 Oh, JayB, I didn't think you were that vulnerable. I'm going to have to lighten up on you. Â I work from home, so I'm not sure how the fuel wrestle off would work out. Maybe your chain lubricant would tip the scales, maybe not. Â Don't worry, we're both holy men. Keep cycling, my man. That rocks. Quote
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