In this thread, several people stated that a foreign car like a Toyota might get vandalised or have negative repercussions for its owner in some parts of the States (persumably Michigan etc).
Can this really be true? As a Brit this is incomprehensible to me - and I’ve no cite but I can’t imagine it was true either in the 1960s-70s, even when the UK’s own car industry was being beaten to a pulp by superior foreign models. Though I’d appreciate correction if I’m wrong on this point.
Potentially inflammatory bit ahead
What is it with Americans and losing in a fair contest? Are they really that defensive and liable to lash out?
This, combined with the murmurs of protectionism in the US about China, and things like the US reaction when they lose the Ryder Cup to the Europeans, seems to add up to a pattern. Don’t get me wrong, I generally love the place - but is the US a nation that can dish it out but not take it?
I don’t think it would be a common occurence at all, except in Detroit, Toledo Gary, and their surrounding areas, perhaps. I have heard about this happening ocassionally, but not in a long time. I’m sure it’s more frequent where there are out of work autoworkers. I think anyone who did vandalize a Toyota would be thinking, “Here’s an opportunity for me to vandalize a car, and feel virtuous at teh same time.”
I have never heard of a Volvo or Volkswagen getting vandalized. Most people who are concerned about China are bothered by the low wages and lack of worker and environmental protections which help keep Chinese goods cheap. They feel that the only way for the US to compete “fairly” would be to have those protections stripped away, and no minimum wage.
As far as the Ryder Cup goes, though, you’re absolutely right.
It’s not just “American” versus “non-American” cars.
I grew up in Whitby and Oshawa, Ontario, near the big GM plant. There were rumours of the same thing happening to workers who parked their non-GM cars in the parking lot there. (Remember how strong the Ford/GM rivalry is for some people).
It’s the “buy the cars your neighbours help to build” idea, reflected through too much jingoism. The whole thing is kind of nonsensical these days, considering that half the Chevys I see on the roads these days are made in Korea, and half the Toyotas and Hondas are made in Ontario, but there you are.
If this was true than there sure are a lot of the same people buying said cars. Toyota does excellent here because people like their product and buy it. You’ll find americans bitching about foreign cars as much as domestics. The Ford vs. Chevy (especially pickup trucks) rivalry has been around since time began.
The OP might as well be asking “What’s with all that hype going on in the United States about the Bicentennial?”
Vandalism of imported cars did happen, albeit rarely, in heavily blue-collar areas like Detroit and Flint back in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I haven’t heard any news or rumors of vandalism of foreign branded cars, just because they’re imported, in years.
There were plenty of organized “take a sledgehammer to a junked Toyota for $5” events during that time, but they’re very rare now, if they even still take place.
There is a lot of ignorance about where vehicles are manufactured. A Honda Civic may be made in the US, while a Ford Focus is made in Mexico*, but the “Buy America” crowd will still think the Focus is “more American” than the Civic, even if you tell them where the cars are made.
I’m not really sure it is; I’m just giving a hypothetical example.
Detroit is not representative of the United States as a whole. I would venture an opinion that no single city/region is representative of the US as a whole. We have almost 200 million fewer people than the EU spread over an area twice the size, and many of us feel we have very little in common with someone 1200+ miles away.
Detroit, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, all have different ways of thinking than each other, and even less in common with the Midwest or Mountain states. Oh, sure, we all are fat and superior and wanna bomb them fellers that talk funny, but besides that…
I imagine many of my fellow Americans are taking this Ryder Cup loss you mention about the same as I - “Ryder cup, is that the yacht thing?”
I don’t think it happens much in the U.S. as a whole at all although I have heard of it happening in Michigan. Let’s suppose I heard the same thing about cars getting really vandalized for having paraphernalia of the non-local football team shown on the car in Britain. I have no idea how often that happens there but it probably happens here at the same rate or less with foreign cars here. “Foreign” cars are made here and lots of different groups from grandmothers to gangsters associate with different ones. There aren’t many people left to do the targeting.
I don’t have a cite, but I can’t imagine that there would not be some incidents like this in Britain or anywhere else. People are not that different around in the world.
Back in the 70s, I drove my Subaru to visit my relatives in a suburb of Detroit. My uncle recommended I park it in his driveway, not on the street, because of the possibility of the foreign car being vandalized. It was more like a precaution rather than a necessity.
The seriousness of reactions to sports is a different thing and I won’t get into that. However, be careful about overgeneralizing and ignoring things that don’t fit a pattern.
I think this is one of those things that happened a couple of times in Detroit and got printed in papers across the country and soon everyone thought is was an epidemic. It’s never happened, AFAIK, anyplace that I’ve ever lived.
Re: the Ryder Cup - Actually, we are pretty magnanimous in defeat. It’s when we win that we act like jerks.
Sorry for the driveby - on the train and laptop power running low! Thanks for the responses so far, very interesting.
About generalisations - yes there’s a point to be made that they can be (and are) overused, but I think national characteristics definitely exist. I’ve lived in only 2 countries, the UK and Japan, but I think the following generalisations, for example, can be made:
UK people are more confrontational, there’s greater sexual equality, the public services are pretty poor, and it’s a “rough and ready” place.
Japan feels much safer, people go out of their way to “impress the tourist”, but would be uncomfortable with mass immigration.
Though of course someone from tokyo might have more in common with a Londoner than with someone from deepest Shikoku
It’s incomprehensible to me too, as an Australian. We have our traditional local makes, but you could safely describe Sydney as a Toyota town - and the same goes for the rest of the country. Wannabe cowboys drive Holdens, but the real outback people drive Toyotas because they are more concerned about reliability than brand image.
But basically, you can drive anything and park it anywhere, and it won’t be vandalised out of any sort of xenophobia.
The closest we come to what is described in the OP is a thing called a “Jap Bike Drop” in which knuckle-dragging, redneck, racist bikers will hire a crane and use it to drop Jananese motorcycles onto the ground from a height. Heck, I dunno either, but they seem to like it.
I lived about 8 - 10 blocks from a major Chrysler plant through all of 1978 with my car parked outside the whole time. On one occasion I came out to find a scribbled note under my wipers that said that every foreign car cost 5 American workers their jobs, (a display of a serious lack of economic comprehension on the part of the author since my income was about 1/3 that of the lowest paid auto-worker–I really diod not have the economic power to get five of them fired).
I never had my car vandalized anywhere in the Detroit area. In order to incur vandalism, (which did happen, although rarely), one probably had to park a foreign car in the employee lot of a car company or near a bar around the time of a layoff.
I’ve always driven American made cars, and have had perhaps a half dozen cases of vandalism. Perhaps if I drove foreign cars I might be attributing these events to sore losers??
You really think that? I think you’re wrong. Well not here in the UK, anyway. People get their cars vandalised sometimes, but I’ve never ever heard of them being targeted because they’re foreign.
In Ireland, however, my weird-looking, very obviously British sports car got the shit kicked out of it mercilessly for a year before I removed it from Dublin.