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Posted by D. Sherman on Saturday, December 22, 2007 at 11:36:16 :
In Reply to: Re: If you switched years ago.... posted by Brian Holt on Saturday, December 22, 2007 at 10:15:19 :
I remember the days in high school when a car lot across the street put up a sign that said, "Honda Car $1395". They had to say "Honda Car" because everybody thought a Honda was a motorcycle. I don't dispute that American companies are making good trucks. The problem is that most people don't want a truck. Most people want a car that's easy to drive, easy on the gas, and is reliable. That's where the big three lost it. There was probably 20 years there when lots of Americans really, really wanted to buy an American car, and would have done so if the American cars had even come remotely close to the Japanese in quality, reliability, and price. The big three had to work hard to drive loyal American customers away, but they finally succeeded. Now they have to work hard to win them back, not just for trucks and SUVs, but for cars. The last time I looked at new cars, I wanted an economy car. I looked at Honda, Toyota, and Nissan. Then I went to the Chrysler dealership. My first thought, when he showed me their economy car offering was "I didn't know they still made these". It was a 10 year old design, clunky on the outside and covered with cheap plastic on the inside. I have no idea what it was called. It was too big, used too much gas, and the salesman couldn't even get me to drive it around the block. I bought the Honda and drove it 250,000 miles with nothing but standard maintenance. After than I bought a used Honda and it's about to turn over 300,000 miles. It needs a valve job, but that'll be its first one.
American companies could easily build cars like this, but they've never wanted to. At best, when the market demands something small and economical, they'll OEM something from Asia like the Ford Ranger or the Chevy Sprint. In business, when it comes to meeting the customer's needs, you have two choices; you can make what the customer wants to buy, or you can force the customer to buy what you want to make. For too long, the big three have been doing the latter. It worked somewhat while gas was cheap. It's not working so well now.
People who have to commute 50 miles each way to work can no longer afford to do it at 15 mpg. People who have no mechanical skills or interests don't want to take the car into the dealer every couple of months for some weird "drivability" issue with the computer, or brakes that never quite work right, or electronic gizmos that quit working, even if it's still under warranty, and they also don't want that nice near car becoming a ratty old car prematurely because of cheezy plastic parts breaking, body parts getting out of alignment, paint coming off, and so on. I will probably never buy a new car again in my life. Maybe Chrysler's making great cars now. Or if they're not, maybe they're designing some and they'll be selling them next year. I hope so. Designing great cars shouldn't be that hard. But at this point, for the business to make money, they're going to have to be cars that people will buy because they're great cars, not simply because they're made in America.
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