isnt it kinda sad when even government officials advise to buy import cars?

It's even sadder that the Democrats couldn't agree to pass a modest increase in the US fuel economy standards, which are very old.

Of course the Bush administration is hardly blameless:

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/...

The US car industry seems bent on self destruction, and our politicians are enablers.

As strange as it may sound, many of the foreign branded cars are made in America, while many of the American branded cars aren't. I currently drive an American-branded SUV that averages 23 mpg. (21 city, 29 highway - mostly city driving)

This SUV was manufactured in Mexico. A few years ago, I had a Mitsubishi Eclipse. It was assembled in America with an engine and transmission made in Canada, the unibody, upholstery and glass made in the USA, electronics made in Mexico from American made parts, and a litle bit of plastic interior trim panels that were made in Japan.

This multinationalism is the Corporations maximizing profits by taking advantage of international exchange rates to keep labor expenses down.

Japanese Automakers favor American workshipmanship because they believe the quality is better than countries where labor is cheaper and the exchange rates between the dollar and the yen favor this.

American automakers favor offshore manufacturing in South America, and Mexico because of the exchange rates. They, however, think it is possible to get good quality from a workforce has not developed a technical cultural attitude.

The Japanese corporations pull a few dirty tricks in the auto industry.

Remember the Eagle talon, Mitsubishi Eclipse, and the Plymouth Laser? Except for cosmetic differences they wre identical cars made in the same factory using the same workforce and built from the same parts. Yet the slick car magazines constantly gave high ratings to the Eclipse, while giving low ratings to the American branded versions of the same car.

Why was this? Maybe because magazines that failed to praise a Japanese car over an American car would lose all advertising by Japanese companies. And usually the Japanese companies would buy the lions share of advertising in a magazine.

BTW, the best gas mileage I ever got in a car was in a Ford Escort. Over a period of several months, due to a vacuum leak that caused the transmission to upshift at lower than normal speeds, the car actually got 60 mpg!

It is indeed very sad. Back when Clinton was president, he came to an agreement with the Big 3 US automakers to support hybrid R&D. The idiotic American car companies payed lip service to the technology and basically ignored it, while the Japanese car companies thought they were serious and so developed the technology themselves. As a result, they got a 7 year head start on hybrid technology.

GM is finally starting to wake up, and the Chevy Volt will make them competetive in the hybrid market. It will likely be the most environmentally friendly car produced by a big manufacturer when it comes out (although a few electric vehicles will beat it). However, Toyota practically has a fleet of hybrids while GM is just barely getting into the market.

It's a combination of American politicians, car makers, and public which is driving the US automakers into the ground. And to think, if they'd taken their agreement with Clinton seriously, the US automakers could be leading the way in cleaner cars right now.

Wow... you are all idiots. Give me as many thumbs down you want, but you still don't know crap about cars or the automotive industry.

Do you really think the US government puts any thought into what cars to get? They just listen to what they see on the news like everyone else. American cars are just as efficient, and in a lot of cases more efficient than the Asian brands. Hybrids like the Prius, Camry Hybrid, and Accord Hybrid are more efficient than gas only American cars... but you know what? Hybrids come at a huge premium. A premium that will never pay itself off for most people. The Prius STARTS at $20,000. The $15,000 Civic has better performance, a better ride, better handling, a nicer interior, and nicer exterior while getting efficiency that is on par with the Prius.

The Chevy Impala V6 is more efficient than the smaller Camry V6. The Chevy Tahoe is way more efficient and powerful than the smaller Toyota Sequoia.

Asian brands are all hype. A cultural trend if you will. American made cars may have been poor in the past, but things are completely different now. If you want to spend a huge premium to get AT BEST slightly better fuel efficiency... then go right ahead. If you're dumb enough to make the purchase you deserve to get ripped off.

EDIT: Oh and No. Asian cars are still no where near as American as the Big 3. GM Hires 110,000 Americans, where as Toyota Hires 40,000. Plus GM pays their employees WAY more and the highest paying jobs involved with vehicle design are kept in America.

Everything sad about America if you ask me .Either your going to be filthy rich from selling all that china lead base toys and everything ells to Americans or dirt poor working at a fast food restaurant . Every ones so damn blind hear though .Look how many people are loosing there homes .More and more homeless everyday the shelters are full in some arias . We keep going the way that we are going its going to blow up in our faces most are going to loose the shirts off there backs .

As far as the government officials are concerned there selling us out period. Why do you think nothings made in the u.s. anymore open your eyes good lord .

You in America have to have 4 and 5 liter vehicles.

I live in the UK and drive a 1.6 liter car and that is among the larger engined cars in this country

So you figure it out

Mind you petrol in the UK works out at about $7.50 a gallon Most of which is Tax

it is what's marvelous.... a million. human beings shouldn't experience undesirable approximately or be stopped for doing what they suspect is ultimate for them. Many, a lot of human beings began procuring eastern automobiles because of the fact they only have been given bored to death with American producers. they did no longer see the factor in persevering with to speculate in a motor vehicle that wasn't sturdy to them. they discovered some thing that became better, greater stable and wasn't ingesting away at their wallet with depreciation, gas intake and/or costly maintenance costs. i do no longer see what's so incorrect approximately that. 2. most of the main familiar import automobiles offered interior the U. S. are additionally countless the main stable and have countless the utmost American areas content textile contained obtainable. and don't tell me all that money is going outdoors of the rustic to distant places companies, Billions stay right here with problematic working American workers and native economies. yet now many American automobiles and automobiles are unquestionably made in distant places international locations utilizing aspects that are shared with automobiles designed and outfitted purchase distant places companies taking American money and somewhat some jobs faraway from us. E: The Ford Fusion is assembled in Sonora Mexico utilizing Mazda6 aspects from a eastern automobile form. most of the super 3 supporters will inform you the way impressive, exciting topersistent, stable the Fusion is and how it rather is going to help your us of a. yet once you come to a decision to purchase a Mazda6 that became unquestionably outfitted in Flat Rock, Michigan, usa with that exact same CD3 platform because of the fact the Fusion, they're going to attack you for procuring eastern. lots of the money from Mazda6 sales nonetheless is going to Ford MoCo. and surely American workers!!! How does procuring a Mazda6 make you any much less of an American? IT would not!!! i'm carried out.

It would be better if government officals and politicians followed their own advise and used quiter, cleaner, higher efficiency vehicles

eg http://www.electrifyingtimes.com/kaz.html

The whole world needs to work together to make human culture sustainable;

and if the oil funded US whitehouse and their global car corp frinds don't want to join in then we have to leave them behind.

There are US companies that can deliver electric vehicles eg http://phoenixmotorcars.com./ but the regulations, funding & subsidies support GM & Ford etc over those with vision trying to get into the US market

At least the government is smarter than the general public which is the reason U S Car manufacturers keep putting out the gas hogs.

Don't believe the lib hype. Manufacturer's build what the masses (Sheople) want, not what the government or oil companies want. To believe otherwise is just silly and contrary to facts.

Not too many people know a lot about the auto industry. I've worked directly or indirectly with most all of the major auto companies. The foreign car makers can call themselves more fuel efficient because they don't make as many trucks as the American car companies do. When the Japanese car companies started becoming prominent in the US they started working their way into the car segment that they were more used to and avoided the truck segment. The Big Three didn't mind a whole lot because their big money makers were the trucks and SUVs. And of course trucks and SUVs are not going to be efficient as cars no matter how well you try to design them.

Japanese cars are slightly more efficient than American cars, but GM puts out more cars that get over 30 mpg or more than any other car company. GM along with several other companies is also working on a transmission that should come out soon called a two-mode hybrid that will increase the efficiency of it's trucks and SUV's. Several other companies are working on the project with GM with GM as the lead company. I think one thing that also gets overlooked is that the Big Three have produced basically all of the E85 biofuel compatible vehicles in the US. None of the foreign car companies have introduced a single E85 compatible vehicle as far as I know. The Big Three have been making them since 2000 and there are alread millions of them on the road. GM is also leading the way in hydrogen and plug-in technology. GM plans on making the Chevy Volt, which according to their schedule for production would make it the very first plug-in car available to the public. The idea behind the car would allow the car to run 40 miles on nothing but electricity and a gasoline engine could generate electricity to power the car for trips of up to 300 miles. The idea is that most round trip commutes to work and back are less than 40 miles. This could greatly reduce the amount of fuel for daily travel on a car like that. The car is supposed to hit production in one or two years. And for the 2008 and 2009 model years GM is supposed to start releasing several hybrid cars, catching up to the Japanese carmakers in that area.

For the European car fans, don't be too proud. The European cars have more problems per vehicle (PPV's) than American cars or even Korean cars. And their exhaust is much more polluting that American carmakers. In fact many of them do not even meet US pollution standards, to get around this fact they buy enviromental points from other companies to have the cars accepted. The environmental points system allows companies that are bad as far as environmental standards to buy points from companies that are really good as far as environmental standards in order to pass regulations. The good companies then reinvest that money into increasing their standards, etc.

And as far as the foreign car companies claiming that their cars are American made, there is a slight bit of false advertising there and there is some history behind that. Back in the 1990's, the governmental rules between the US and Japan made it somewhat easy for Japan to sell cars here in the US but hard for American car companies to sell cars in Japan. The rules are still against US car companies as far as selling cars in Japan, but President Clinton made a request to counteract the government advantage that the Japanese carmakers had. And that was to require the Japanese to assemble more of their cars here in the US. Toyota and Honda started off the trend of assembling cars in the US. Toyota became the smartest at it. Toyota looked at where the concentrated sales regions were for certain types of cars. Then they built car assembly plants in those regions and pretty much tried wrapping the American flag around their cars saying, "Hey look! This car is made in your own home state. Support your state and local workers and buy our cars." That's the main reason why they built a truck plant in Texas. Texas buys more trucks than any other state. The cars may be assembled in the state, but people don't really think or consider where the parts for the cars come from. That is what really affects the auto industry, not the car assembly plants, but the part manufacturing plants. Each Big Three assembly plant job supports about 10 part manufacturing jobs. And those 10 part manufacturing jobs is where the US job losses really occur and here's why. The percentage of US parts in the cars:

Big Three cars: ~ 80% of parts come from the US

Japanese cars: ~ 33% of parts come from the US

European cars: ~ 5% of parts come from the US

Korean cars: ~ 1-2% of parts come from the US

When a person doesn't buy American cars it hurts the parts suppliers jobs WAY more than it does the Big Three. Of course the Big Three also have cars that are not assembled in the US such as the Chevy Aveo which is made in Korea. So the US car companies have their flaws too. But the more foreign cars are bought, the more the Big Three have to go to producing their cars in other countries and producing their parts in other countries to compete and make profits and keep their cars at competitive prices with Korean carmakers and Japanese carmakers that don't have pensions of workers that have worked 30 years at the plant to worry about. For the Big Three probably 80% of their workers or so have 25-30 years or more and are close to retiring. That means tons of health care costs and tons of pension costs that the Japanese and Korean car companies don't have to deal with or pay out. That is a significant advantage to the foreign car companies.