More on the bailout

It will be great for consumers of american cars in Europe now when us
taxpayers will be paying for american made cars.
Hopefully the cars will be both improved and cheaper.
That might even reflect on our own European made cars as well.
Please ask your kind president to give them a lot of money.

 

Dear Curmudgeon,

'Tis you who needs to wake up! I'm not sure where you plucked the year 1965
from as a "quality" benchmark for Toyota, but I used to work on my
ex-girlfriend's 1981 Toyota Corolla, and I can assure you it was no better
and no worse than my 1981 Escort in the number of repairs needed. They were
just different repairs. The Toyota was a rust bucket of the highest order -
so much so that I had to make repairs out of sheet metal and bondo all over
that vehicle. When it needed repair, the imported parts were much more
expensive than the US sourced parts. It was finally replaced with an '89
Escort that was FAR better than the Toyota had been. It needed fewer
repairs, didn't rust, was less expensive to insure and operate, and repair
cost less.

So why didn't you go to another dealer (who still has to honor the factory
warranty), or contact the GM representative? Bad dealers are everywhere,
and they aren't just US brand dealers.

The Toyota dealer in my former hometown was CONVICTED of stealing
rustproofing from the Chrysler Corporation right about that time when it
needed the government loan. Nice guys, eh? When I was getting service for
the '81 Corolla mentioned above, that same local dealer was incredibly
arrogant about dealing with customers. Did Toyota revoke their dealership?
Nope, they still are in business today, even with a felony conviction and
bad service to customers.

Derek

 

I picked 1965 because I had a teacher that had a '65 Crown, that by the time
I saw it, was already 10 years old and had well over 100,000 miles on it.
60's American cars wouldn't do over 100,000, at least not any of the ones we
owned.

Between the various members of our family, we had a 77, a 79, two 80's, an
81 and an 82 Corolla. The only problem we had was the 81 had been abused by
the previous owner (run really low on oil) and we had to get a rebuilt 3 TC
engine for it. That is one weakness of Toyotas. Keep the oil between low
and full and change it regularly, and you'll get a lot of miles out of it.

Most dealers have NBH (Not Bought Here) syndrome. I had a 79 that I
purchased at one dealership. I got moved a couple hundred miles, and took
it to the local dealership for regular maintenance. They wanted me to drive
it back to the OTHER dealership for maintenance. I moved again before the
next regular maintenance. That dealer, too, thought I ought to drive it all
the way back to the dealer I bought it from, by that time some 300 miles
distant.

As for the Chevy, the next nearest dealer was owned by the same people in
the next town. The next dealer after that was 40 miles away.

I like Toyotas, but I've learned not to trust dealers.

We had a dealer in this town in the South that got his franchise pulled.
I'd taken my car in there to have the valves adjusted (one of the last of
the mechanical lifter 3K-C engines) He told me I needed a ring job at
48,000 miles. He submitted no proof, no compression test, nothing. The
reason I was using oil is that I'd been to 3 dealers in the previous 2
years, and NONE of them would adjust the valves or even check them, despite
the fact the recommended maintenance interval was 15,000 miles. I told him
to adjust the valves and if he did anything else without my approval, he
could pay for it out of his own pocket. I wasn't the only person he'd
pulled this sort of stuff on. But he started out as a GM stealer and added
Toyota later. That's how a lot of them started in this part of the country,
and they carry over the old GM attitudes in a lot of cases.

The only Ford I'd ever want to own is a Model T or a Model A. Nothing
newer. I'd never own a FartEscort. My dad's old 77 Corolla, by the time we
got rid of it in 1999, still looked better than most of the 10 year old
FartEscorts I've seen. And by then it was 22 years old. And it could still
get up and go. And it had been charged by a deer, literally about a decade
before that, and we'd had it repaired and it still ran.

I still swear most of the Detroit 3 test for winter in Southern California
and for summer in Gander Bay, Newfoundland.

My sister-in-law used to drive a FartEscort. I've seen the car and driven
it once. She now drives Toyotas. And with all the trouble she had with it,
she dumped it, like I dumped my S-10.

Sir Charles the Curmudgeon

 

So if I say the same thing about a crappy Toyota and Mazda that family
members owned that didnt hold what exactly does that tell you especially
when I have an American car that runs and looks great going on 146k miles,
or a 82 Dodge I had that I put 180k miles on with regular maintenance? It
lasted a lot longer than the 83 Toyota Camery.

 

I had a 69 Plymouth RoadRunner, at 130k miles I could still leave a patch of
rubber 15feet long.

 

Since you cannot even spell Camry, I doubt you owned one. But if you like
Toyota's, that fine, don't buy one. Just don't tread on those who don't
agree with you.

 

How much gas do you use for that stunt? How much petroleum (used to make
tires) do you just waste?

If the Big3 go out of business, you will get exactly what you deserve.

 

Correction,

But if you don't like Toyota's, that fine, don't buy one.

 

Toyota's what?

 

78 gallons through the carburator, and thirty two barrels off the tires.
But it sure was fun in those days...

Yeah - all of us guys that were around back then, burning rubber off our
tires and guzzeling up gas for the fun of feeling real power and
acceleration - we now must face the realization that we are the fundamental
downfall of the US auto industry.

 

If Jap vehicles are so good why are the owners trading them on domestics?
Look on the GM and Ford dealers lots and you will plenty of Jap cars and
trucks that were traded on GM and Ford vehicles.

If Jap vehicles are so good where are all of the old Jap cars? If you go
to old car shows you will hardly ever see and old Jap car.

Finally if GM vehicles are so bad, why is GM still selling more of them than
ANY of the Japs?

 

Don't you wish you still owned it? Restored 69 Plymouth Road Runners are
selling for over $100,000 at auctions. Ever see ANY Jap car being offered
at old car auctions?

 

Gas was what, 39C a gallon and a tire we $39? LOL

 

What an idiotic statement!

Where did you get the insane notion that people never switch from
owning an import to owning a domestic and visa versa?

 

Simply supply and demand. Most of the RRers stopped operating decades
ago and are quite rare. Who the **** would pay $100,000 for a honda
civic when there are still millions of them still on the roads?

 

THAT was an insane notion. If the vehicle you owned was a good one, WHY
would you?

 

Perhaps, but not ANY 69s LOL

 

The grammar/punctuation flame is a very slippery slope. For example,
that sentence fragment that you posted...

 

So the lots you drove by are now a statistically valid sample? Post
some valid statistics showing that more foreign buyers are moving to
domestics than vice-versa.

FYI - most dealers will wholesale out any trades that don't match
their expected clientele. So, the Toyota dealer will get rid of any
domestics he takes in. Since you are seeing "Jap cars" on the GM lots,
that tells us that GM believes their buyers want foreign vehicles.

That's nonsense and based on the shows you attend. Once again, your
limited experience does not reflect the world.

GM asked for $13B in handouts or "we'll be out of business by March".
Is the irony in your statement that difficult for you to see?

 

You would if you were capable of understanding that automakers make
more than one model.

Somebody owning a honda civic might very well trade it in on a GM truck
if they were interested in hauling a big ass boat.

Or they might trade it in on a honking big SUV if they had a tiny penis like
you.

That same person might trade their honking big SUV for a toyota tercel
two years later when they noticed that gas was $4/gallon.

It goes both ways.

Look in ANY car lot and you'll see both domestic and imported cars.