Buying Domestic, Good or Bad

[Unit 5302]

Just saw the argument that buying from domestic auto manufacturers keeps more Americans employed in a thread.

True? False? Considerations?

I believe wholehartedly that attitude is why Ford/GM are in massive trouble right now. US consumers have allowed the domestic auto manufacturers to produce junk for the past 20 years, all the while, the import manufacturers have increased quality by leaps and bounds. Ford and GM relied on the "US consumers will buy whatever we sell them because of patriotism" concept because it was partially true. I look at the domestic Focus and it's European counterpart. Night and day difference in quality. While the US Focus spent about 1/2 it's usable life in the garage having recalls performed, the Euro Focus didn't have the same issues. Why?

While foreign manufacturers from Asia and Europe have moved many large scale production efforts to the United States, domestic manufacturers have moved more and more out of the country to Mexico. Ford's looking to close down dozens of US plants in order to increase profitability, and they will likely follow suit with the airline companies and sue to erase pensions that their employees were basing retirement on. GM is in the same boat.

How many years has it been now that the US auto makers have completely ignored the real problem? That they build junk compared to a lot of foreign makers? How many model names has Ford dumped because they had such a bad reputation that the cars could no longer be sold? Tempo, Escort, Contour, Probe, Taurus, etc. I have my doubts that the Focus nameplate will remain around much longer. Have they learned? No. Will they learn? My guess is that at least one of the domestics will fold or nearly fold before they might be able to turn things around. We'll have to see how the latest generation of vehicles looks 3-5 years from now. Unfortunately, that may be too late at this point.

The bottom line for me? I'm not going to buy junk, just because a US manufacturer built it, albeit they probably shipped the actual manufacturing to Mexico anyway. I can buy a made in the USA car from Honda, Toyota, BMW, Daimler Chrysler, Hyundai, etc. A car that was actually built here. While I realize the executives and a lot of the money for the sale of the cars built by foreign owned manufacturers goes overseas to their corporate offices, their CEO's on average make at least 10x LESS than their American CEO counterparts.

US auto makers have screwed their consumers and workers, and tarnished the reputation of the "Made in the USA" slogan domestically all while lavishing huge pay increases onto the executives. The only reason they've been able to do so is because they were able to take advantage of the pride and patriotism in this country.