Should americans buy just american made car/trucks????

Question

i think its strange that i see american and foreign people drive foreign cars but i never see foreign people drive american cars??? I think if your in the USA then drive american made cars not foreign. maybe that would help the auto industry, after all didnt an american invent the vehicle. why should we help support the foreign auto market i would pay higher cost knowing that a fellow american made my car and so should you

Answer 1

First off, an American did not invent the automobile.  Henry Ford invened the assembly line process for manufacturing autmobiles, but they ahd been around for 40 yrs before that innovation.

Second, tell me what an "American" car is.  Is it the Chevy Aveo, made by Daewoo in Korea?  Or is it the Toyota Camry built in Kentucky?  Is it the Ford Ranger, built by Mazda?  Is it the BMW Built in USA?  If you want to buy a car made by one of your "fellow Americans" you can get a BMW, Toyota, Lexus, mercedes, Nissan, Mazda or many other "foreign" cars.  Or, you can get a Chevy made by Koreans....

Point being, the globalization of the economy means there is no such thing as a 'one country' car.  Even looking at Lamborghini, made in Italy, there are components made in Germany, Japan, USA, and England.  

And, we live in an open market.  People are free to purchase whatever they want.  There are some who would never buy anything but a Ford.  Then there are some who swear they would never buy an American car.  

You can't close the borders of trade at this point.  It was the open boundaries that forced American car manufacturers to improve their quality.  Before Toyota and Nissan began making serious dents in the marketplace, the quality of US cars was dismal at best.  Remember the Pinto?  Chevette?  AMC Pacers and Gremlins?  

I am glad we have the choice.  I can vote with my dollars for the vehicle manufacturer that I feel give me the best value, the best features, and the best all-around car.  When we do that, and there is a noticeable difference in sales between Brand A and Brand B - Brand B will change its way of doing business to keep up with the market.

Answer 2

Maybe you should try searching google before you share your ignorance with the world.

many American car companies don't even assemble their cars in America, while foreign companies like Toyota do.

Buying an American car wouldn't help the auto industry much. There is a reason why American cars don't sell like hotcakes. In the world where gas cost above 4 dollars a gallon, no one can afford their gas guzzlers. Yes, they have smaller cars, but have you looked at your used car listings? theres a reason why theres a million and one cobalts, PT cruisers, Focus's and Aveos for sale, they're cheaply made and unreliable.

And who gave you the idea that foreign people don't drive American cars? YES THEY DO.

Chrysler is big in countries like Korea, where they are actually considered a higher end car brand.

So the end question is

"why should we help support the foreign auto maket?

Well, knowing that a fellow american assembled it a few states away, knowing that it'll last me forever, knowing that it'll have good resale value- thats why i buy.

Answer 3

Yes,  I think that Americans should support the American economy.

Now before anybody slams me & says that the Foreign manufacturers are supporting our economy by building a few plants here, I'd like to allow you to read this copy of an article taken from "The Car Connection" last year:

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At Witz’ End: What’s an American Car?

Where it’s assembled is irrelevant.

by Gary Witzenburg      (2007-02-27)  

So what is an "American" car?

If it is simply one built in America, as most foreign makers and U.S. media would have you believe, then vehicles built in Canada are Canadian, those assembled in Mexico are Mexican and Porsches built in Finland are Finnish.



But we know intuitively that's not the case. And yet in this global age of autos, some people insist on sticking to the idea of purely "American," or "German," or "Japanese" cars - when in many cases, today's vehicles are polyglots, products of the same global industry.



But that doesn't change the political nature of the question.



Say General Motors decides to build Chevrolets in Japan . If the cars are competitive (could happen), that might make sense to escape expensive barriers the Japanese government puts in the way of imported vehicles to protect its own automakers.



So GM buys some land outside Nagoya , builds a plant and hires some local workers and managers to run it. Say it builds a GM Powertrain plant next door, hires more locals and - since it would be cheaper to source parts and components locally than import them - sources most of them with Japanese suppliers. Say it starts cranking out enough appealing and carefully assembled cars to put a meaningful dent in the Japanese market.



This would be good for the local economy in and around Nagoya. However, assuming that the Japanese new-car market was not growing, it would displace sales of cars built by weaker Japanese makers and hurt employment elsewhere in Japan. And as those companies' sales and shares declined, the jobs displaced would not be limited to factories; a lot of better, higher-paying headquarters jobs would be lost as well, most of them in and around Tokyo.



Would the Japanese people and media see this displacement, and net loss, as okay because "home-built Chevrolets are as Japanese as anything from our own makers"? Would they see profits from increasingly popular Japan-built Chevys going back eastward across the Pacific as okay for their own (currently struggling) economy? What do you think? MORE--



Protection or barrier?



Let's carry this scenario a few steps further: Say GM's success with its first Japanese plant and its growing penetration of the Japanese market leads it to build more plants there. Say Ford and Chrysler Group follow, and their American suppliers are encouraged to build parts plants there to support them…and to win business away from Japanese suppliers.



Japan 's highly protective government, of course, would never allow any of this to happen. And even if it did, few highly nationalistic Japanese would buy American-brand vehicles at the expense of their own coveted makers regardless of where they were built.



But say, just for a moment, that they would. Would those Japan-built cars and trucks - most designed and developed in North America -- qualify as "Japanese?" Would those parts built in American-owned Japanese plants be considered "Japanese?" Would the assembly and sales of those vehicles in Japan be perceived as good for Japanese jobs and the Japanese economy? Could their U.S. makers get away with advertising them as such? Would the Japanese media endorse and recommend them as such? What do you think?



So why has exactly this scenario evolved in the U.S.A., where nearly every Japanese automaker and some Europeans and Koreans assemble cars and trucks for the American market and beyond? Because, once import vehicle makers began achieving serious penetration of this market during the fuel-crisis 1970s, our government essentially forced them into it by imposing quotas on imported vehicles. Because our domestic makers during the 1980s and '90s were not especially worthy of protection. Because enlightened off-shore makers saw huge PR and some business benefits in building vehicles here despite our much higher business costs. And because our governments (federal and especially state and local) and most media encouraged, enabled and welcomed them here as job "creators." MORE--

  

Job creation - or job death

What they did not see, or chose to ignore, is that "creation" of a few thousand plant jobs here and there would eventually destroy many more and better jobs elsewhere. So while some (mostly southern) states continue to battle each other with big incentives to attract new foreign-maker plants to gain two or three thousand jobs, other (mostly northern) states lose tens of thousands. While import companies will "create" about 3000 U.S. jobs in 2007, raising their total to 106,000, U.S. automakers will lose nearly 43,000 this year, falling to about 378,000, according to Jim Doyle, president of the Washington, DC-based Level Field Institute, which tracks and reports auto-company U.S. employment.



Doyle further predicts that U.S. industry-job losses will total some 95,000 (from 2005 employment) by 2010, and even then the three U.S.-based companies will employ 71 percent of all American auto workers - four times more per car sold than Hyundai, 2.5 times more than Toyota, and nearly twice as many as Honda. "Reporters tend to focus on plant jobs and miss the headquarters jobs," Doyle asserts.



"Foreign automakers spend millions around the country promoting their new plants and U.S. investment," he says. "We welcome their investment, but Americans should know that each Ford, GM, or Chrysler Group purchase supports nearly 2.5 times the number of U.S. jobs of foreign automakers, on average."



What's more American?

Some say a Japanese car bolted together in America with a fair amount of U.S. content is more "American" than a U.S.-brand car assembled in Canada or Mexico with some foreign-sourced parts. Nonsense! Ask yourself, again, where are the bulk of the better jobs and where do the profits go? DaimlerChrysler's Chrysler Group, by the way, still qualifies as "American" because it is an entire self-contained car company based in America and employing tens of thousands of Americans at all levels that happens to be owned by a German company, just as Opel is a self-contained German company owned by General Motors.



"Toyota spends huge sums of money promoting the idea that they 'support' 368,000 U.S. jobs," Doyle says, "but those include supplier, dealership and other peripheral jobs. Using the same multiplier, GM supports 1.9 million U.S. jobs and Ford 1.2 million. Toyota also says it builds here most of the vehicles it sells here. That may be its eventual intent, but Automotive News reported that 48 percent of the vehicles Toyota sold here in 2006 were imported.



"Is it more important to the U.S. economy for someone to buy a Ford Fusion, although it's built in Mexico, from a company that employs 105,000 Americans," Doyle asks, "than a Honda built in Ohio from a company that employs 27,000? Domestic makers also purchase nearly 80 percent of the parts made here, and domestic vehicles average 76 percent U.S. content vs. 48 percent for U.S.-built imports. That represents billions of dollars in spending."



No, an "American" car or truck is one built by a U.S.-based company that supports primarily U.S. jobs and the U.S. economy, regardless of its parts content and especially its point of assembly.



And should Americans buy "American" out of patriotism. No, but they should carefully consider U.S.-brand vehicles - now that most are competitive or better in design, engineering, quality, and fuel economy - out of their own economic self-interest. Because whatever business they are in, every time "Detroit" and its struggling U.S. auto suppliers shed another 10,000, or 20,000, or 30,000 American workers, that multiplies to hundreds of thousands who can no longer afford whatever goods or services their own employers sell.



Think about it.

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So yea...I thought about that , especially when my Brother (a hard working American & Vietnam War Veteran) got laid off (due to downsizing)  from his building  maintenance job (in Tennessee) at a Japanese owned company that supplies parts to American Auto manufacturers.

His entire lifestyle was altered.

He had to sell his home & move to a smaller one that was more affordable & within his new lesser income bracket.

And his wife went back to work instead of staying home to raise their adopted daughter.

Answer 4

Americans don't buy American cars because they're not American anymore

and they're all a piece of [profane]

Ford Fusion--MEXICAN

Hummer H2 restore your manhood--MEXICAN

Chevrolet Aveo--KOREAN

Dodge Ram--MEXICAN

Toyota Camry--AMERICAN

Honda Accord--AMERICAN

Mazda6--AMERICAN

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Ironically, the MZ6 and Fusion are built on the same platform, but the

FOREIGN BRAND is an AMERICAN CAR, and the AMERICAN BRAND is a MEXICAN CAR

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go figure

others

Saturn Astra--BELGIAN

BMW X5--AMERICAN

VW Jetta--MEXICAN

Toyota is a FORWARD LOOKING company

The Japanese look at LONG-TERM

Americans only see the next quarter

GM's myopic business "strategy" is DESTROYING THE COUNTRY!!

American cars don't suck

MEXICAN CARS SUCK

Answer 5

There are very few cars, if any, that are truly American. Buy the best car for the money. THAT is the American way.

Answer 6

Asian made cars are more efficient, safer, more dependable and better made. I really care less about supporting Americans and more about getting the most for my money.

Just look at car commercials. For years, commercials for Asian made cars discussed their safety, affordability, and reliance. Commercials for American made cars have been about how much fun it is to drive a "Ford"!

Now, when gas is over $4.00 a gallon, American auto makers are caught with less efficient vehicles, so they offer you guaranteed gas payments for 3 years. If they had been making better cars all along, and not SUVs that get 12 miles to the gallon, we wouldn't be where we are today!

Also, even though I am an American, and a military veteran, I am also a human being, just like the people who make foreign cars. So even though I don't own American made cars, I do own human made cars.

Answer 7

I notice the same, usually asians in Toyota's, especially the old Avalon. German's usually buy Audi's or VW's. I guess they are just bringing some part of their home to the US.

Answer 8

The US is a capitalist society, and capitalism in based on consumers buying the best product for the lowest price.  GM, Ford and Chrysler have had their heads in the sand WAY too long and Toyota, Honda, and other foreign makers have surpassed them.  Also, GM, and I'm sure Ford & Chrysler, are very much global companies.  Many of the vehicles GM makes aren't made in America anymore.  Check your VIN number, if it begins with a 2 (Monte Carlos) your car was made in Canada and if it begins with a 3 (large SUV's), it was made in Mexico.  "American" doesn't mean what it used to.  If American car makers were more loyal to americans then maybe we'd be more loyal to them.  I think Toyota makes more cars in the US now than GM does.

Answer 9

The answer to the question is relatively simple. How do you feel about Unions. The American 3 -Chrysler Daimler is history now--Ford and G,M. all survive with the 800 lb. gorilla of the UAW on their back, None of the Foreign manufacturers do so they set up plants in U.S. cities with sweetheart tax deals and no Union retirement package to fund or the threat of  strikes when a contract expires.

So who is REALLY doing the better job the WALMART manufacturers who come in and build cheap and take advantage of struggling communities. If the Japanese are truly that GREAT let them put their next plant in Flint and try and get a non union work force. I 'd wish them luck maybe they can bust the UAW it is the biggest killer to the modern American auto maker.

Answer 10

At this point in time it doesn't matter. Daimler-Chrysler (Dodge) is owned by Mercedes-Benz, Ford along with GM (Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC, Hummer, Pontiac, Saab, and Saturn) are both owned by a variety of Japanese companies and Ferrari. But they are built in America, by Americans. Acura and Toyota are Japanese autos that are also built in America due to their high demand here in the US.

Your effect on the economy is the same so lonf as you by one of these makes. However GM and Ford have the highest manufacuring cost and best benefits for their workers, so those would be the best buys for the economy. But if you're buying used it doesn't matter.

P.S. Karl Benz a German invented the first gasoline powered automobile.