Okay I understand the various economic rational for the buy american sentiment. We can not debate that the competition has made all cars better "Foreign" or "Domestic" A lot of the points made here are valid, some are not. The new business model for auto manufacturers is outsourcing parts- meaning someone else makes a lot of the parts they assemble cars with. I believe a lot of that is from the things that the UAW has negotiated in their contracts in wages, benefits and work rules. They priced themselves out of the market. We also have to talk about mature markets, differential product demands and globalization. The mature market business theory is that once a market for a manufactured product is mature the number of manufacturers will decline until there are only a few left. his is driven by basic free market economic theory, the fewer manufacturers will apportion development and tooling costs over greater numbers of units allowing better pricing or more proffit. This leads to what is known as "Economies of scale" Differential product demands- this occurs when the consumer in an economy wants a product different than consumers in other economies. We had this in the US for a while when the US consumer wanted large body on frame rear wheel drive V-8 powered automobiles that weren't particularly fast or handled all that well. Since no one else wanted cars like that our manufacturers tended to have our market to themselves. Look in the 60's the US cars that did well overseas, especially in developing markets were our compacts (Falcon, Dart/Valiant, Chevy II, Nova American) or the intermediates (Fairlane, Malibu, Belvidere, Coronet, Classic/Rebel). Similar situations occurred in foreign countries, most of the British empire drove British cars both by trade regulation and Britain's instance or right hand drive cars. Japan Italy and France had regulations or taxing strategies and road layouts that caused smaller cars and smaller engines to be in demand making home market automobiles more attractive in their markets. In the 50's some demand for smaller cars hit the US, some US companies (AMC and Studebaker) developed smaller models, imports also started arriving here in bigger numbers, by the 60's the big 3 had all had smaller cars, most were still bigger than imports because they used components from the bigger cars to keep production costs down. The US automakers weren't to worried, they felt the percentage of smaller cars wouldn't grow that much and believed smaller cars had smaller profits. Then the US hit the 1970's gasoline became expensive and the product development model of the big 3 (bigger cars, bigger engines) fell out of favor, the demand for smaller cars with smaller engines made many foreign makers attractive and some offered what was perceived or actually was better quality. With some of the barriers down it would only seem natural that globalization would occur, meaning the handful of manufacturers would become global entities. Some of the early stages of automotive globalization was lead by the US companies, Ford had overseas divisions that made product specifically for foreign markets in Germany the Tanus and Zephyer in England The Perfect and Anglia. With Ford it was interesting to note that Ford Motor Company was privately held by a few members of the Ford family, but the overseas operations were public companies with much of the stock held by individuals outside of the Ford family. This was originally set up to allow individuals and organizations of the home countries to hold stock in the companies making cars in their homeland. Some of that "overseas" stock ended up in the hands of US investors as it was the only way they could get stock in any Ford company. GM had Opel (German) Vauxhall (English) and Holden (Australian). It only seems to reason ans the globalization ans consolidation of auto manufacturers occurred not all would be US based.
As for me our Honda is 24 years old next month and has 284,000 miles on it. It has needed fewer repairs that either the Dodge or the Ford and traveled more miles than the Ford and about 1/2 as much as the Dodge but used 1/3 of the repairs the Dodge did, yet it's 3 times as old with 3 times the mileage on it. Purchasing and driving a Honda has turned out to be something that was in MY best interest, the darn thing runs, runs cheaply and probably won't die until the body rusts away.
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Today's Featured Article - History of the Nuffield Tractor - by Anthony West. The Nuffield tractor story started in early 1945. The British government still reeling from the effects of the war on the economy, approached the Nuffield organization to see if they would design and build an "ALL NEW" British built wheeled tractor, suitable for both British and world farming.
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