Quote:
Originally Posted by skuttduck
Oh and GM's had partnership with Toyota. Pontiac Vibe/Toyota Matrix, Toyota Corolla/Chevy Prism.
It looks like if you are considering an import vehicle, Toyota is the best of them due to their high american workforce.
|
How committed is Toyota to those workers? Tell us what happened to that plant once Toyota took sole possession of it during the GM bankruptcy?
Quote:
Originally Posted by LOWDOWN
Like all auto manufacturers, Toyota reinvests in North America as well as elsewhere...
4) It is only a matter of time before Chinese-assembled vehicles hit our shores, from various manufacturers...including GM. Those "assembled in China" products do NOT promise new manufacturing jobs in North America for us...but DO guarantee offshore investment profits...
|
I have no problem with GM investing in China to sell in China. That's a net income of money into the US (and is exactly what the Japanese are doing to our own market. However, I will NEVER buy any car from a foreign brand built anywhere, nor will I ever buy an American branded car built outside if N. America.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LOWDOWN
http://www.levelfieldinstitute.org/fact_kit.html
Gee, thanks for the objective tutorial...where they're all happy and smiling about their "Parts" suppliers...including the ones who made Toyota's throttle pedal assemblies right here in good ol' North America...
So "wave the flag" while you can... The slow-boat from China is preparing to leave its home port...and will be FILLED with "domestic" brand names...FACT. What % of North American-sourced parts do you think they'll "wear"?
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by LOWDOWN
Another irony: It took the Governments of two countries (and ignored shareholders/bondholders/suppliers, the same suppliers mentioned in the "website"...) to straighten out GM. And, as we know, "Government" = "efficiency"...
|
You somehow think you can defend the rule buy which Toyota does business by finding cases of the exception in which GM does the same thing, and then bash GM of occasionally doing the things that you defend Toyota for always doing. GM does build some stuff in China and Korea (I wouldn't buy any of it by the way), and Toyota does build some stuff inside the US, but across the whole product line, GM builds more in the US.
Rather than defending the global nature of the car business (which I recognize exists) you seem to merely have the classic knee-jerk reaction of America=inferior in all cases for all reasons. (Toyota's throttle problem was because an American company supplied the part, really?) And while I by no means defend the bailout (I'm very much against it) to pretend that the Japanese government hasn't been subsidizing Toyota in various way for years is very disingenuous. I'm not defending GM. I'm merely pointing out how illogical it is to use GM's business as an example of why Toyota should get a pass for the way they do business. Two wrongs never make a right.
Quote:
Originally Posted by a_Username
They have the ABSOLUTE BEST marketing team in the world lol. Any corporation who can go through government investigations, ~10 million vehicle recall, among multiple other hints at their failures and still manage to turn a profit it pretty impressive to say the least.
|
This thread has been very educational. Username, you were more right that you knew when you posted that, and the other posts to this thread have proven it. Toyota's marketing team is beyond the absolute best. Though there has not been a quality gap for years, and despite years of recalls, years of selling people rolling coffins, and years of covering it all up, more people than ever are giving them a pass, buying and defending their Toyotas as if they were built by some divine providence, and not by the imperfect hands of man. Toyota's marketers have done nothing less than take a reputation of Toyota superiority and GM inferiority out of the 1970s (deserved at the time I admit), and turn it into a quasi-religion.