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Old 04-24-2017, 02:03 PM   #29
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I thought it was common knowledge about many "asian" cars now being built in the U.S.?
And many, many more countries. In fact in some cases like Honda they build almost nothing in Japan or even Asia now.


All those Civic coupes that have been raced and riced (while screaming "JDM YO") since 1986 were built in Canada. The sedans are built in the US but even their engines came from Canada.


All those that are indeed still built in Japan use design teams from around the world. The MX5 ND which is still made in Japan shows the lead designer as having the highly Asian name of Derek Jenkins.


I have been in the Tier One auto parts manufacturing business for almost 30 years and laugh my ass off every time somebody tells me how much better Japanese cars are than all the rest. I have news for you guys. Many of the parts in a Chevy are made in the same place as the parts in a Toyota, usually at the same time. The manufacturing processes used by the Japanese to gain a lead in the 80s have been copied by everybody else and you would not know if you were in a Ford plant or a Subaru one if I dropped you in the middle of it.
Do people truly believe that the NA manufactures just sat on their hands and did nothing when the Japanese plants started to blow them away?


I get that the people on this forum think that Japanese cars are the greatest things ever (or they wouldn't be here) but you head over to a Ford or Chrysler forum and they will be talking about how all Asian company cars are junk.
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Old 04-24-2017, 02:03 PM   #30
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I remember when Ford and GM were regarded as the best in the world.

What has changed? Is it our education system? The number of students who completed Algebra has declined severely over the years. Yet it increases in Asian countries.

So what if there are tons of resources online like Math.com or StudyPug. There needs to be a fundamental change in our education system from the ground up or we'll continue to slip. It's getting kind of scary guys. What can we do to start innovating like North Americans use to.
I never lived in a time when Ford or GM were ranked higher than Toyota/Honda.

Education is a good start and America is slipping very hard right now, it's a huge issue that needs to be taken seriously, but the biggest hurdles imo are cultural. Countries hungry for wealth and success go to great lengths to get there. Americans aren't hungry, and no cracking of the whip will change that, but I don't think that means the country is doomed, it just explains the rise of Asian countries recently, just like how USA rose in the early part of the 20th century to challenge the technological lead Europe had.

IMO modern Western business practices of chewing up and spitting out any warm body that doesn't have a business degree is unsustainable. Worker wages have stagnated as industries are lead by people who's only interest is maximizing their payout in 3-5 years at the expense of all else. That mentality flows all the way down the chain to just about anyone with skilled labor not in a union, it's weird to NOT have 3+ jobs by the time you're 30. I see very few companies visibly making meaningful efforts at long term sustainability, it's all talk about growth and market share, overhyped product launches and claiming "innovation". Some days it seems like 'employee retention' is synonymous with 'laziness' as beloved CEO's brag about high turnover.

I think that's one of the strengths of Japanese manufacturers, it's still normal for employees to work their entire career for one company like Sony or Toyota, but they have other cultural problems that stifle meaningful improvements in their product. Hell Honda had to flop HARD with the Civic to get a wake up call even though there were probably early warning signs during development.

It's so common to see big projects steered into "uncharted waters" that were actually charted years if not decades ago, if you had kept that pensioners phone number instead of laying him off at 55 you would have a 2 page list of all the pitfalls within an hour. But nope, cut the fat and cook the books, "look how deep in the black we are and our projected savings over the next 2 years!"



Brilliant people are being born everyday, a shitty school system won't stop them, but having no tools at all to do something great is an insurmountable problem, there are no fewer genius being born per capita in rural Africa than the heart of Silicon Valley.
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Old 04-24-2017, 02:19 PM   #31
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Glad you've had good experience with them. But first impressions mean everything in this instance. Chevy & Ford failed dramatically in that respect, Toyota won me over plain & simple.

Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice...... don't think so lol
My first real girlfriend was Japanese. She was an absolute sweetheart, very intelligent, very attractive, talented ballet dancer and musician... pretty much perfect. It didn't work out; I was young and didn't know enough to treat her as she deserved to be treated. I've been married to a woman of primarily Hungarian/East European descent for the last 35 years, and it's great... gonna last forever. I guess women of Hungarian/East European derivation are better than Japanese women, eh?

You can form an opinion based upon one initial experience if you wish, I guess, but if that "means everything," well... that's a hard way to go through life. You'll miss a LOT of truly great experiences.
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Old 04-24-2017, 02:47 PM   #32
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My first real girlfriend was Japanese. She was an absolute sweetheart, very intelligent, very attractive, talented ballet dancer and musician... pretty much perfect. It didn't work out; I was young and didn't know enough to treat her as she deserved to be treated. I've been married to a woman of primarily Hungarian/East European descent for the last 35 years, and it's great... gonna last forever. I guess women of Hungarian/East European derivation are better than Japanese women, eh?

You can form an opinion based upon one initial experience if you wish, I guess, but if that "means everything," well... that's a hard way to go through life. You'll miss a LOT of truly great experiences.
I don't mind experimenting when it comes to girls.

When it comes to cars, I stick with what's treated me good. American cars haven't.. Japanese cars have.
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Old 04-24-2017, 02:52 PM   #33
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I don't mind experimenting when it comes to girls.

When it comes to cars, I stick with what's treated me good. American cars haven't.. Japanese cars have.
I have had good luck with American cars about as much as I have had bad luck with Japanese ones. Pretty much a 50/50 split actually.


That being said there was a period through the late 70s to mid 80s where American car quality totally tanked. They got over that but the perception persists with some.


Took me a while to convince myself to buy a Japanese car because the ones that I had experience with in the 70s were truly pieces of crap. They also got over it.
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Old 04-24-2017, 02:58 PM   #34
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"rugged American off-roader" and "kitschy urban Italian city car" being produced on the same line with "Japanese" techniques with "Chinese" parts. In one factory North America, Europe, Asia builds two distinctly different cars for two wholly different markets.

Production of what would have been politically impossible when most of our parents were born.

Cars who's performance (size, comfort, fuel economy, reliability) and manufacturing process would have been science fiction to the engineers at the time. This is modern anything manufactured these days. More machines and fewer people. A culmination of a planet's worth of shared knowledge and materials over a century's span.

What's incredible about this to me is that factories like this have become dime a dozen these days.

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7mhfPxN1QU"]CAR FACTORIES : 2016 Jeep Renegade & Fiat 500X assembly / FCA Melfi Plant - YouTube[/ame]

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Old 04-24-2017, 03:12 PM   #35
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YES you get it!


I can look out my office window right now and see brake rotors being made for some small sports coupes, a car that really needs them so it doesn't kill everybody at cars and coffee meets, a vehicle used to haul kids around and something used when you have big heavy loads (but more commonly used to get groceries). Only two of those vehicles are made by the same company yet we are pumping out 4 million parts a year. The day of car companies actually making their own parts went away a long time ago and if the parts are all made by a half dozen major players then it doesn't matter what brands roll down the assembly lines next to each other since their stock is sourced from the same places anyway.
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Old 04-24-2017, 03:33 PM   #36
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I'm personally really annoyed when people use the terms 'Asian' or 'Far East' for products. It's 9 times out of 10 some piece of shit Chinese-made garbage trying to hope some idiot associates it with a high quality Japanese product.

Japan is on a whole different level with their quality compared to the other major manufacturers on Asia (China, Korea, Taiwan).

And more and more cheap stuff is going to be coming from Thailand and Vietnam, as manufacturers pull out of China due to rising costs but still shit quality.
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Old 04-24-2017, 03:49 PM   #37
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I'm personally really annoyed when people use the terms 'Asian' or 'Far East' for products. It's 9 times out of 10 some piece of shit Chinese-made garbage trying to hope some idiot associates it with a high quality Japanese product.

Japan is on a whole different level with their quality compared to the other major manufacturers on Asia (China, Korea, Taiwan).

And more and more cheap stuff is going to be coming from Thailand and Vietnam, as manufacturers pull out of China due to rising costs but still shit quality.


"Quality" might be changing though. Generally speaking, and you don't need to read a Harvard Business Review to get it, but it is always nice to have a production chain or backbone where everybody does what they are told and doesn't cause a scene or something obscene. That is why,here, it is foreign to me and I don't like it.


My issue is that for the first time in recent memory, Japanese men are actually participating in public protest and demonstrations over some pretty serious stuff. I'm on nobodies side, but it may be the sign of the times.


I was talking to an Asian bartendress(they don't even need certificate nowadays) one time while she was doing hand work on a barstool. I jokingly alerted her the boss was coming! Her pace actually slowed down!


Mr. Impreza? I, sort of like him, because I want a full out hand-made machine made exclusively in Japan, America, or even France. It is going to bust my back though, I'm afraid.
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Old 04-24-2017, 04:05 PM   #38
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I was talking to an Asian bartendress(they don't even need certificate nowadays) one time while she was doing hand work on a barstool. I jokingly alerted her the boss was coming! Her pace actually slowed down!
.

Dude! That wasn't a bar.


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Old 04-24-2017, 04:42 PM   #39
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Dude! That wasn't a bar.
Dude! That wasn't a lady!
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Old 04-24-2017, 04:57 PM   #40
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I have had good luck with American cars about as much as I have had bad luck with Japanese ones. Pretty much a 50/50 split actually.

That being said there was a period through the late 70s to mid 80s where American car quality totally tanked. They got over that but the perception persists with some.

Took me a while to convince myself to buy a Japanese car because the ones that I had experience with in the 70s were truly pieces of crap. They also got over it.
Yea just the luck of the draw I guess. I woulda stuck with American cars if they hadn't been so crappy back in the 80s & 90s. As fate would have it, Toyota converted me. It's gonna take A LOT to get me back into an American car dealership... as in, decades of producing a product that's convincingly BETTER than the Japanese brands. They're getting there, just haven't convinced me yet.
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Old 04-24-2017, 05:08 PM   #41
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Dude! That wasn't a lady!

USA USA USA!


er... wait...

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Old 04-24-2017, 05:40 PM   #42
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Yea just the luck of the draw I guess. I woulda stuck with American cars if they hadn't been so crappy back in the 80s & 90s. As fate would have it, Toyota converted me. It's gonna take A LOT to get me back into an American car dealership... as in, decades of producing a product that's convincingly BETTER than the Japanese brands. They're getting there, just haven't convinced me yet.
If that's the case, you've probably been "buying American" for a lot longer than you've known.

Toyota
Model - Parts % frm US - Plant Location for US bound cars - Design Location
Camry 80% - Georgetown KY, Lafayette IN - Ann Arbor MI
Sequoia 80% - Princeton IN - Tokyo JP
Tundra 80% - San Antonio TX - Newport Beach, CA
Sienna 75% - Princeton IN - Ann Arbor MI
Venza 75% - Georgetown KY - Newport Beach, CA
Avalon 70% - Georgetown KY - Ann Arbor, MI
Tacoma 70% - Freemont, CA - Tokyo JP
Highlander 70% - Princeton, IN - Newport Beach, CA
RAV4 60% - Woodstock, Ontario - Ann Arbor, MI
Corolla 35% - Blue Springs, MS - Tokyo JP
Prius 0% - Aichi, Toyota JP - Newport Beach, CA

In most of these cases, American's designed the cars, built the parts, the plants, and the cars using Toyota's specifications and process. Making a decision about what to buy based on the manufacturer's country of origin is a paradigm that shifted long ago. Now "Toyota" represents a brand more than an island thousands of miles away.
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