"Denny" wrote in message
ups.com...
Then, they sold people on "SUVs" that may be the least practical
vehicles in urban environments. Today, they're left with an inventory
that
they can't give away, and Toyota et al are eating their lunch.

Neil- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Toyota has become an american corporation with overseas owners - in a
big part because labor in Japan is just too damned expensive picture
evil grin...

Back in the early 80's, the American auto industry was railing about how
Japanese cars cost less because their workers made less $$$ (or, yen, as it
were).

A study showed the American auto worker made something like $20.50 and hour,
and his Japanese counterpart made around $24 an hour.

Over the past couple of years their quality is slipping JD Powers
based on buyer complaints - must be those lazy american workers - or
maybe it is because Toyota's management is being pressed to improve
the profit margin because the Japanese bank/market monolith is
teetering on the edge of a huge meltdown...

Not anymore. It did lead to the NIKKEI collapsing back around '91, but
they're (slowly) coming out of it. The Japanese central bank did,
essentially, what the Federal Reserve did in the late 1920's in the US.


The american car companies do 'get it' for the most part... Their
curse is the legacy of having been big and the contracts they agreed
to in the past are now eating them... That is temporary and being
changed as fast as the laws will let them...


I have people I talk to daily who are GM employees / executives, and
those who are suppliers to GM... The suppliers are frantically moving
production from the USA to Mexico as is GM itself... Delphi Chassis
Saginaw is rapidly transferring its disc brake production south of the
border because congress continues to roll over for the UAW and refuses
to give the employer a fair shake...

IF you want to know who is to blame for jobs leaving the country just
look at the congress critter you voted in... The buck stops there as
the bucks continue to flee the country

In part...but also thank OSHA, EPA, and a dozen other alphabet soup
bureaucracies.

(and please don't anyone give me that strawman crap about what would happen
without the alphabet soup nonsense: if the 55MPH speed limit was to save
lives and gas, the equivalent would be to make the limit 15MPH).