# What's wrong with the American auto industry? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 13, 2007, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-the-american-auto-industry/399951 "2007-04-13T14:06:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Operation\_Ripper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/34f0e0/32.png) [@Operation\_Ripper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Operation_Ripper)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2007, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-the-american-auto-industry/399951/61 "2007-04-14T22:54:39Z")
Without reading the balance of the OP or any of the above posts, the answer is unambiguously UNIONS. When unskilled and uneducated peeps start running the show, Toyota happens, suckas. To explain, would be a 6-week course. Save up and go to college. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2007, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-the-american-auto-industry/399951/62 "2007-04-14T23:39:00Z")
[QUOTE=Operation Ripper] Without reading the balance of the OP or any of the above posts, the answer is unambiguously UNIONS. When unskilled and uneducated peeps start running the show, Toyota happens, suckas. To explain, would be a 6-week course. Save up and go to college. [/QUOTE] Maybe next time you SHOULD read the above posts first. The answer is NOT unambigiously UNIONS. That is a grossly simplistic explanation. I’d explain why, but that would be a 6-week course. :rolleyes: By the way, stomping into a thread and declaring the answer while telling the rest of the participants that they are too stupid and/or uneducated to understand it is pretty damned rude. Especially when your ‘answer’ indicates that you don’t really know what you are talking about. IF you bothered to read the thread, you’d find that there are some participants here who have pretty good educations on these subjects. BTW, I’m no fan of unions. I’m a hard-core capitalist. Unions played a part in the downfall of the American auto industry, but only a part. It’s a big, complex problem. ---
**Author:** ![Merkwurdigliebe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/74df32/32.png) [@Merkwurdigliebe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merkwurdigliebe)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2007, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-the-american-auto-industry/399951/63 "2007-04-14T23:40:32Z")
[QUOTE=Operation Ripper] Without reading the balance of the OP or any of the above posts, the answer is unambiguously UNIONS. When unskilled and uneducated peeps start running the show, Toyota happens, suckas. To explain, would be a 6-week course. Save up and go to college. [/QUOTE] If you had bothered to read anything else in the rest of the thread you’d realize what an ass that comment makes you look like. ---
**Author:** ![DanBlather](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f4b2a3/32.png) [@DanBlather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DanBlather)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2007, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-the-american-auto-industry/399951/64 "2007-04-15T04:30:45Z")
[QUOTE=Least Original User Name Ever] Wait, what? I can completely understand if you say there’s a problem that they don’t understand your demographic, but to say they should get out of Detroit/Michigan just for your demographic and because it magically makes everything better? Like they don’t have the Internet, conferencing, email, or even phones to keep up on these trends? With this being said, I’m with you, but certainly not for your reasons. Design is virtually gone as far as I’m concerned, and not just as a vocation. Take Ford, for example. They are copying the same basic styling for every car (Focus, Fusion, 300) and SUV (Escape, Expedition, Explorer, Edge). You can make the argument that they’re ALL the same design, just pulled and stretched to different extremes. The Mustang is a retro car, and those simply don’t count because they’re an appeal to Baby Boomers and wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for some retro styling. Besides, Michigan is doing badly enough as it is. The auto companies puling up show and relocating to other states would turn the state into Wyoming. Nobody wants this (except whatever state would get these companies). Saying that the biggest and brightest engineers are in the west coast is a bit of a misnomer. You’ve got a lot there because, well, you’ve got a lot of people over there. The law of averages dictates you’re going to have a crapload of engineers (which we don’t have NEARLY enough of, according to the industry). Michigan has the University of Michigan, which is one of the better engineering schools in the country. Are we sure that the stricter California emissions and proximity to the Orient don’t play into the popularity of imports on your coast? [/QUOTE] I’m not suggesting moving the assembly plants, Michigan and the surrounding areas have tons of good, trained workers. I’d like to see the design departments and much of the management get out of Detroit however. When I visit my relatives back there (my brother-in-law works on the line at GM) you see almost all American cars. The executives and senior people drive cars made at their company as well. I just don’t think that is the right environment for innovation. And it’s not just apealing to my demographic that I want, it’s looking into the future and seeing the trends. Gas is more expensive almost every place else in the world, so when gas prices went up the imports became more attractive. You think Detroit would have learned from that, but instead they started building SUVs. California air quality standards will start to become more wide spread as states like Oregon look at adopting them. Likewise, cities on the coasts and in other countries are much denser than midwest cities, so having smaller cars that make more efficient use of space and have tight turning radii are more important as well. It’s a case of shooting ahead of the duck rather than trying to convince the govt to reduce the speed of birds. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2007, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-the-american-auto-industry/399951/65 "2007-04-15T04:51:31Z")
> [@](#): > > If you had bothered to read anything else in the rest of the thread you’d realize what an ass that comment makes you look like. The only way you can maintain that lvel of certainty in your opinions is to be willing to ignore any facts to the contrary. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2007, 11:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-the-american-auto-industry/399951/66 "2007-04-15T11:13:56Z")
Well, my personal observation is this: GM and FORD executives are too insulated from the real world. Which is odd, because both firms make and sell excellent small cars in Europe and South America. Take GM: its German (OPEL) division has good small cars. One was the luxury model Opel “Senator” GM brought it over to sell as the Cadillac “Catera”. What did they do? They took this good design, and changed the suspension (from a crisp, German-style suspension), to a mush, marshmallow-style. Then they added 450 lbs of junk (extra body claddings, insulation, etc.). Then they modified the transmission, so the engine would shift at lower RPMs-they thought the German shift points were too crisp. So they wound up butchering a good design. The Chevrolet made in Brazil (Opel Vectra-bsed) is excellent-you can get it with a good 6-speed transmission and a 1.8 liter high-revving 4 cylinder engine-it gets 36 MPG on the highway-why don’t they sell the same car here? 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Merkwurdigliebe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/74df32/32.png) [@Merkwurdigliebe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merkwurdigliebe)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2007, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-the-american-auto-industry/399951/67 "2007-04-15T12:57:25Z")
[QUOTE=Little Nemo] The only way you can maintain that lvel of certainty in your opinions is to be willing to ignore any facts to the contrary. [/QUOTE] Hey, what the fuck is YOUR problem? I’ve been interested in reading this thread. It’s been very enlightening, and then all of a sudden some jackass comes along and tries to shit all over it without having read the well-thought input from the rest of the posters? I don’t have an opinion about whose fault it is, but I sure as hell know that it’s worth reading the contents of this thread before posting. Look, sometimes you can barge into a thread and post without having read anything. This is not such a thread. I’m only certain in my opinion insofar as I know he’s a dumbass for coming in here and saying that he hasn’t read anything, yet already has his answer for us. It’s a totally useless post and does make him look like an ass. About the state of that American auto industry I don’t pretend to know. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2007, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-the-american-auto-industry/399951/68 "2007-04-15T16:55:36Z")
Sorry for the misunderstanding. I was referring to Operation Ripper’s post not yours. The fact that he said he didn’t even bother reading the entire OP was particularly telling. I wonder how many words he needed before he knew the answer? _“Cars…”_ “Okay, the subject is cars. I know this.” _“…are…”_ “Focus. Wait for it.” _“…too…”_ “Too big? Too small? Too metallic?” _“…expensive.”_ “UNIONS!!! THE ANSWER IS UNIONS!!!” ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2007, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-the-american-auto-industry/399951/69 "2007-04-15T17:25:27Z")
It is everything wrong. They have huge union contracts. They have always overpaid their executives. They have a dealership network that has been an insult to buyers. Getting a car fixed at a dealer has been a nightmare for decades. Arrogance ,to blindly go ahead with large cars when the small car trend was clear to everybody else, has been repeated in the past. To stop electric cars, turbine cars and fight increases in mileage is the hallmark of ivory tower executives. They have fought safety standards, mileage standards and pollution standards. They have exemplified the uncaring selfish arrogant corporation for half a century. ---
**Author:** ![Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e480ec/32.png) [@Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Least_Original_User_Name_Ever)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2007, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-the-american-auto-industry/399951/70 "2007-04-16T00:17:44Z")
[QUOTE=DanBlather] I’m not suggesting moving the assembly plants, Michigan and the surrounding areas have tons of good, trained workers. I’d like to see the design departments and much of the management get out of Detroit however. When I visit my relatives back there (my brother-in-law works on the line at GM) you see almost all American cars. The executives and senior people drive cars made at their company as well. I just don’t think that is the right environment for innovation. And it’s not just apealing to my demographic that I want, it’s looking into the future and seeing the trends. Gas is more expensive almost every place else in the world, so when gas prices went up the imports became more attractive. **You think Detroit would have learned from that, but instead they started building SUVs**. California air quality standards will start to become more wide spread as states like Oregon look at adopting them. Likewise, cities on the coasts and in other countries are much denser than midwest cities, so having smaller cars that make more efficient use of space and have tight turning radii are more important as well. It’s a case of shooting ahead of the duck rather than trying to convince the govt to reduce the speed of birds. [/QUOTE] Bolding mine. They did it for short-term profits, pure and simple. Thanks for clearing it up, though. ---
**Author:** ![ASAKMOTSD](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/919ad9/32.png) [@ASAKMOTSD](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASAKMOTSD)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2007, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-the-american-auto-industry/399951/71 "2007-04-16T01:11:11Z")
[QUOTE=Little Nemo] The only way you can maintain that lvel of certainty in your opinions is to be willing to ignore any facts to the contrary. [/QUOTE] and THAT sounds like an accurate description of a US Auto company! :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Rocketeer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rocketeer/32/4437_2.png) [@Rocketeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rocketeer)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2007, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-the-american-auto-industry/399951/72 "2007-04-16T18:10:12Z")
[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train] Not a woosh, and I think you answered your own question, here. I’m morally certain that other car companies besides the Detroit Three have similar processes and waste, but not on the same magnitude of scale as Detroit. Stranger [/QUOTE] As an employee of The World’s Second-Best-Selling Commercial Jet Airplane Company, I have no trouble whatsoever believing the story. The amount of time it takes to get even the most trivial things done in a large corporation is simply staggering. ---
**Author:** ![DanBlather](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f4b2a3/32.png) [@DanBlather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DanBlather)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2007, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-the-american-auto-industry/399951/73 "2007-04-16T18:22:06Z")
[QUOTE=Least Original User Name Ever] Bolding mine. They did it for short-term profits, pure and simple. [/QUOTE] Sometimes I think the president should have gathered the US auto company CEOs together in private and said: “In 18 months I’m going to propose new, strict CAFE standards and emissions controls. I’m letting you know this without telling the foreign auto companies, so get ready”. I know it’s probably illegal, but it might have helped save the industry. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2007, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-the-american-auto-industry/399951/74 "2007-04-16T19:05:20Z")
[QUOTE=DanBlather] Sometimes I think the president should have gathered the US auto company CEOs together in private and said: “In 18 months I’m going to propose new, strict CAFE standards and emissions controls. I’m letting you know this without telling the foreign auto companies, so get ready”. I know it’s probably illegal, but it might have helped save the industry. [/QUOTE] The notion that CAFE and emissions standards killed Detroit is a fallacy. Any industry that produces a consumer product has to be flexible enough to accomodate changing customer demand, safety standards, style trends, et cetera. The Japanese were (mostly) capably of doing this with aplumb. Certainly they had something of an advantage when it came to fuel economy, having traditionally built small, economical cars due to their domestic market and cost of fuel, but the American automakers lumbered on for years after 1973 producing outmoded, inefficient, low quality, poor handling vehicles. Even the fact that Japanese (and other import) cars were small, funny looking, and had limited ammenities didn’t prevent Toyota, Nissan, Honda, and the other Japanese automakers from making a killing filling an increasing niche that Detroit was too pugnacious and apathetic to make more than facile gestures toward. The attitude of the American companies is that there was no significant market in small, efficient automobiles or in advances in safety, despite the success of compact vehicles like the Ford Falcon back in the 'Sixties when there was no pressure of a gas crisis. The American automakers are a victim of their own “faith-based community” of concepts on what the market wanted. “They can have it in any color, as long as they want it in black” was a deeply entrenched philosophy, while other automakers were offering what the market really wanted. And even by the time they got around to realizing that they were coming up short, they were so wrapped up in their on mispreceptions that they thought they could stick a few Cadillac badges on a Cavilier and sell it for $5000 more. 18 months of foreknowledge would have just given them more time to spin webs of self-delusion. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2007, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-the-american-auto-industry/399951/75 "2007-04-17T03:33:41Z")
You could actually argue that CAFE standards helped American companies, because CAFE had the effect of killing the station wagon and creating the SUV. Station wagons are classified as cars; SUVs as light trucks with a higher CAFE standard. The Station wagon had to have less power and/or smaller size to meet the standards, giving SUVs the advantage. And the domestic manufacturers owned the SUV market for a long time, and made fabulous profits. ---
**Author:** ![Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e480ec/32.png) [@Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Least_Original_User_Name_Ever)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2007, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-the-american-auto-industry/399951/76 "2007-04-17T04:10:06Z")
[QUOTE=Sam Stone] You could actually argue that CAFE standards helped American companies, because CAFE had the effect of killing the station wagon and creating the SUV. Station wagons are classified as cars; SUVs as light trucks with a higher CAFE standard. The Station wagon had to have less power and/or smaller size to meet the standards, giving SUVs the advantage. And the domestic manufacturers owned the SUV market for a long time, and made fabulous profits. [/QUOTE] Interesting point, but whether or not it helped (because of the birth and death of the SUV) is debatable. ---
**Author:** ![DanBlather](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f4b2a3/32.png) [@DanBlather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DanBlather)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2007, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-the-american-auto-industry/399951/77 "2007-04-17T05:17:26Z")
[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train] The notion that CAFE and emissions standards killed Detroit is a fallacy. [/QUOTE] I agree, I was just suggesting that a little “inside information” could convince the US auto industry to do something that they might not do by themselves. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-the-american-auto-industry/399951.md?page=3)