I was watching the news and they were saying that GM is in a bind because the Japanese automakers are taking alot of their buisness. They are saying in a matter of time that Toyota could be the #1 Automaker.

I think the big three are having a hard time making a product that can compete with the quility and reliability of the Japanese cars. I also think that a big part of the increase of Japanese auto sales is from the high cost of fuel and the increase of the young "ricer" crowd.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7846600/

 

Nice Avatar! I do think that the current state of affairs in the American automotive industry is certainly a wake-up call... GM and Ford have been resting on their Laurels for quite a while.. I have faith that we can make a comeback.

Speaking of the "ricer" crowd.. funniest damn thing I've heard in a while.. a customer / friend of mine (we are an IT services / security firm) has a full service auto shop, and had a kid come in with a Dodge Neon, with the loud, annoying muffler, those ridiculous lights, etc... it was equipped with a stock automatic. Funny thing was, he had an addtional, HUGE tachometer mounted in there (no engine mods either), WITH a SHIFT LIGHT... and it was Programmed! When the boy genius was asked about why he needed a shift light on a stock automatic, he sheepishly replied, "it looks cool"...

Kids nowadays!

 

Typical ricer. I have faith that they can turn it all around too. Its just too bad they were not on top of this alot sooner.

Thanks for the comment about the avatar I used it to get a few laughs.

 

This thread officially sponsored by:


Tyrone Biggums, and the Number 5.

 

Found ONline: (the sixth one down is one of my favorites!)











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• You have more exhaust decibels than your engine has horsepower.
• You have aftermarket FRONT wheels for racing but stock rear wheels.
• Your engine makes twice as much horsepower as torque.
• 17" rims up front, 13" out back on your FWD.
• You ever painted your wheels to match the same color of your car.
• You put your automatic car in neutral at every stoplight in order to roll it back and try to fool other people into thinking you have a manual transmission
• DuPont gave up trying to figure out the shade you were asking for.
• Your mod list includes stereo equipment, shifter handle, MOMO steering wheel, PIA driving lights, exhaust tip, but no REAL engine parts.
• A chameleon lizard undergoes fewer shade changes than your custom paint scheme.
• Your rims and tires are so large, that you have to install the tire / wheel from underneath the car because it simply won't fit in the wheel well going in from the side.
• The dealer laughs when you bring your car back in for service under warranty, and you've only had it 6 months...
• Your tires / rims stick out from the lip of your car by more than 1."
• Your paint job is from the WRONG end of the color spectrum.
• You installed spacers on your STOCK wheels and tires to get them to stick out past the fender.
• You see cars like yours in a Shriner's Parade for Children and clowns are driving them.
• You bring an empty Maxwell House coffee can with you to compare size when you shop for an aftermarket exhaust system.
• Your Eclipse GS-T hardtop has a "SPYDER" emblem on the rear...
• Your sum knowledge of suspension is: "the more negative camber, the better the handling."
• You push your car through the staging lanes. That way, maybe you can break into the 16s by keeping the motor cool between runs.
• You add a super tall rear wing, and a hundred pounds of aftermarket ground effects, neon and stereo yet you gut the interior and yank out the rear seat for weight savings.
• Your rear wing AND your rear window have a third mount brake light...
• The back lighting in the gauges in your A-pillar gauge pod work long before the actual gauges are hooked up.
• You cut 4 coil springs and scrape the chassis on the ground. Sparks are cool when you corner at normal traffic speeds!
• You have to find a way to drive AROUND speed bumps in a parking lot.
• You install clear corner and brake lights.
• You install colored bulbs in your aftermarket clear lenses.
• You ever put neon on the bottom of your car, and then busted it on the first speed bump you went over.
• You painted the UNDERBODY of your car to match
• If your rear spoiler is taller then you are.
• You have more stereo WATTS than engine TORQUE!
• If your tailpipe extension is the most expensive mod you’ve done to your engine yet.
• Your tailpipe extension fell off during a quarter mile race and you went three tenths of a second faster due to weight savings.
• EVERY car in your class has a turbo pushing double digits worth of boost.
• You spent $5,000 on the engine and you can not out run a stock Camaro, Firebird, or Mustang
• You want the 'wastegate' sound, but don't want to install a turbocharger system.
• You think Nitrous Oxide on your Hyundai Sonata puts you in the same performance league as the Chevy Corvette.
• The automatic version of your car runs 2 seconds slower in the 1/4mile.
• If the 1970 Plymouth Daytona Superbird has a smaller spoiler than your car does.
• You think the Del Sol is a sports car...
• A torque converter does NOTHING for your car.
• You think a deep farty noise = the sound of high performance
• If you think that horsepower is far more important than torque
• If you have ever claimed that switching to a cone filter has given you more than 5 HP.
• If you have ever considered installing more than one set of fog / driving lights.
• If you claim that the aftermarket cold air intake system you just installed doubled your horsepower or took 2 or more seconds off of your E/T.
• Your baseball cap is always on backwards when you drive (the first sign of mental retardation, wearing your clothes backwards... BE).
• You spent all night on the Internet trying to find a company that makes a turbocharger system for your Hyundai...
• If you removed your side view mirrors and put them at the TOP of the door / window frame.
• If you think the Fugees are 'speed' music.
• MOMO is 'absolutely required' to go fast.
• Your four cylinder has a dual exhaust system installed.
• Your four cylinder has four exhaust pipes ("Hey, one for each cylinder!")
• The color of your interior upholstery hurts the cones and rods in other people's eyes.
• If you cannot drive your car in snow as the ground effects create a plow effect.
• If you have installed driving lights to compensate for headlight blackouts / tape.
• If you think that 180 horsepower and 185 lb/ft of torque are impressive for a ‘mildly’ modified engine.
• If you have stickers on your car for parts that you could not point out if asked where those parts are installed.
• You think pushrods are a bad thing…
• Your car has more decals than you do the quarter in seconds.
• Every Honda you EVER owned, all the way back to your 1978 Accord was either a V-Tec or a TYPE-R.
• You took your rear seat out and gutted your interior for weight savings but you installed 400 pounds of electronics, neon, DVD, Sony, etc.
• If you gutted the interior to save weight on a car that you will never take to the track…
• You lean your seat so far back when you are driving, that every time you hit a bump, its your back and not your butt that hurts.
• You have hydraulics and sixteen switches on a car you claim runs low 10s on the street and corners better than a Porsche.
• If you can estimate that your car makes more than 250 HP without ever running it at the track or getting a dyno reading.
• You claim that you can get a titanium block for your engine.
• If you have ever thought Hyundai and "performance" went hand in hand
• If you've ever gone to a parts shop or speed warehouse and asked for a 1" to 6" exhaust adapter...
• If you've ever contemplated adding "TYPE-R" stickers to your Sonata…
• If you've removed more than 1/2 of the coils from your springs by cutting them yourself ...
• If you have more neon lights on your car than a strip club...
• You put Kanji on your Ford ZX2, Ford Probe, or Mercury Cougar ...
• You own a "TYPE-R" Hyundai or Mazda.
• You couldn't afford headlight masking, so you just painted them with flat black Krylon and it's peeling. Badly.
• You claim that polishing your intake gave you 5hp.
• You own a V-TEC Hyundai or Mazda (especially a V-TEC rotary engined Mazda RX-7)
• You have neon INSIDE your car or in your ENGINE compartment
• You ever claimed that high gas mileage made your car superior in performance to V8s.
• If it takes you 8000rpm to reach 30mph from a dead stop at WOT.
• You think yellow plastic interior trim makes your car cool
• You spend $500 for a giant hand welded tube for a muffler with the weld marks extremely visible
• If you paint your drum brakes to simulate Hi-po calipers

 

I'm so tired of hearing about Toyota's alleged "quality" that I could barf. If I was rich, I'd buy a Toyota, Ford, Dodge, and GM truck equally equipped and subject them all to the rigors of construction use for a year. Then we'd see how much "quality" goes into those Japanese products...if the Toyota would even survive for a year under extreme use like that.

 

I have to say, Toyota's drivetrains used to be indestructible---but in the past 8 years or so, I've seen a lot of Toyota Cars and Trucks with seized engines, etc... but they still have that public image of being the best...

 

me too. I have never seen it for myself.

 

I own a titan, but I'll tell you Toyota would kick all our Admin note: see our guidelines about language Learn from the competition, don't be defensive.

 

http://www.fordvehicles.com/trucks/f150/truth/index.asp?bannerid='R_F150VHPTTAT_FV.com_20060127'


Proff that Ford is better!

 

I have experienced it. My old t-100 4 cylinder was a dog, but it would take the abuse i put it through. i've over loaded it many times and it never had failed me. my drivers suck too. its been in 7 accidents and the body is banged up, but it always ran good with over 270,000 hard miles. my new f-250 is a lot more powerful, but i don't abuse it as much as the toyota.

although ford trucks are as good as they are, that site is biased. of course the manufacturer is gonna talk good about their own product. i'm just being a realist here

 

[QUOTE=Al Bundy]I have experienced it. My old t-100 4 cylinder was a dog, but it would take the abuse i put it through. i've over loaded it many times and it never had failed me. my drivers suck too. its been in 7 accidents and the body is banged up, but it always ran good with over 270,000 hard miles. my new f-250 is a lot more powerful, but i don't abuse it as much as the toyota....



everybody has storys like these, i've got a 82 f100 with the 4.9 that has 227.000 miles, its takin all my abuse.

when everybody remembers how great a cirtan vehicle was its always years after they quit making them.

for what they lack in guts old trucks make up for with dependability and the ease of matinance.

theres no comparison between older and modern fords and toyotas, their from completely differnt worlds. old trucks were trucks, primative, simple, and some what power lacking, but they last forever. new trucks may have more power and modern accessories, but thats just more junk to break.

how will the new trucks do? only time will tell.

what im really saying is take your old toyota 4 cylinder and compair it to a new one, the new one will make more power, but the old one will live longer.
samething when compairing a old ford inline six to a new ford v6.

 

[QUOTE=jimbo beam]I think everything changes for the better. Imagine what was going on in the minds of people with older cars and trucks when it was the 1990's. Probably thinking the same as you. Advancements today make vehicles run more efficent, while pumping out more power. The only thing I don't like is people using their trucks as vans to carry people.

 

ya gottal love that old inline-6 (Ford) ... tough engine.

 

That last statement hit the nail on the head. It will take about the same amount of time for "public perception" to change on Toyota's supreme quality as it will the negative media on the big 3 from 70-90's (Unscientific range for *****s and giggles). For the masses who don't "know", the media drives all perception. Same with the economy. Unless you research and have hands on experience, the masses will generally take the media's word. I see very little "quality" difference between any of the big auto makers. I see some auto makers have a product that caters to a certain niche, but not necessarily quality.

If you want to get from A to B with no soul and 30 mpg, by all means buy a Honda Civic. If you're an outdoorsman, work your vehicle and actually tow and haul, stay outta the Ridgeline lot.

As for the media, who wants sloppy seconds? Consumer Reports and the like have been in bed with the Asian autos for years. Let's just be honest here: I'm not knocking the Ridgeline, probably a very decent vehicle, but Truck of the Year!!!??? It's a scaled down, less functional and less powerful Avalanche.

I'm a CPA, but I own a construction company. I need a real truck. It's a Ford. I like to do some real off-roading, don't want a shift on the fly dash button and IFS. I have a Jeep. I ride bikes. It's about a 12K miles a year luxury, not a necessity. I want something with soul and personality. It's a Harley. Not saying my three are better than anyone else's, they suit MY needs and I have no quality issues. I do my OWN maintenance 'cause no one cares about my vehics like I do.

If I listened to the media I wouldn't dare own a Found On Road Dead, I'd kill my Tacoma pulling my trailer. I'd be scared to death of rolling my Jeep and go rock crawling in a Subaru Outback. Those Harleys leak oil and I'd be looking thru a four page catalog to customize my Kawazukiha.

Sorry so long, I got on a roll and couldn't stop!

Brad