Well I look at it a different way.
As much as I complain about the car companies here in Detroit, I want them to be top in the world.
The car companies that remain are trying to survive in an industry that they themselves could have controlled but were too arrogant to do so. They were warned in the 50’s when the first import craze came ashore by the very same people who taught the Japanese their manufacturing techniques.
But today we don’t have a big three; we have a sort of big two with the third a foreign owned subsidiary. Out of ten (if I counted correctly) post war companies we have only two left, sad.
In today’s Detroit paper, it had front page splashed about the ominous signs that Ford may not be part of the big two soon, which worries me a lot. Not because of my expediting career but rather the more changes that will take place of my family member’s jobs. Ford has employed someone in my family since 1920. Ford is struggling and needs people to buy their cars and trucks. (Sorry for the plug)
I do agree with ATeam there is more investment in the factories today from foreign car companies, but even though the jobs are here, the money still leaves this country. They build these plants for several reasons, as ATeam said one is transportation, but the other is marketing and a third is tax reasons. I won’t go into those, but I have to add one more, the unions, especially for Mercedes and BMW. It is far cheaper to build a Merc or BMW here than in Germany. Yes the Japanese have unions over there but there is a different culture which promotes business not makes it an adversary.
As for quality control, I think that the American car companies still have a long way to go before they can turn out a defect free or near defect free product. OK so they instituted a lot of quality assurance crap and they are now hiring college grads for the assembly line, but it still takes good engineering and a good marketing department that will listen to the public to build a good car. My van has had the A/C condenser replaced three times at a cost of $1200 each time. My pick up’s evaporator need replacing because pine needles corrode the tubing and cause it to leak. I can’t afford to fix it. My sister’s Honda, never an A/C problem even though the car is almost 20.
The Japanese cars on the other hand have slipped in their quality control to the point that there products are now having more recalls than ever before. I feel that the reason for this slip or rather plan in reducing quality is that the American public no longer wants the quality as they did in the past due to the lease mentality that we have in the market place today. A lot of people don’t buy cars, they lease them and reduce the buying cycle from 3 or 4 years down to 2 so turn over is huge and the manufactures numbers are somewhat inflated.
One story I want to share is this; I have a cousin who worked for Nippondenso, which supplies a lot of A/C and heater parts all the car companies. About ten years ago he and his team had to go to Florida with special equipment to check the entire shipment of Hondas that were sitting on the dock. They had a charter flight and top accommodations. This was all because an audio engineer detected a whistle in an air conditioning duct in one of the production models during a test in Japan. Out of something like 400 cars they found three of them with this problem which was not detectable by a human ear. Now a days I have yet to hear Honda or Toyota doing anything close to what they used to do for quality and their recall notices are growing.
Well that is my 25¢ worth