protectionist b.s.

I would make sure that it was secured well, but I may just go with a
toggle switch instead.

Thanks,

 

This whole episode sounds like your neighbor's experience, not yours.

It took you exactly two paragraphs to discredit yourself.

Let your neighbor post about his experiences.

Now tell me, how many GM products HAVE you owned????


And if so, how recently??????

Well, actually it HAS been trendy to bash GM for many years, whether
it be in Hollywood, or the media.

And once again, how many GM cars have you owned to give you such
negative fellings?????

How close were you to your neighbor who abused his/her/it's 2001
Impala?

Actually, the Impala has been proven time and time and time again to
be a pretty reliable car.

Once again, thanks to the likes of you.

Of course, in the end, you wind up hurting yourself, as well. whether
you realize it or not.

In some manner all of us will eventually pay for the "my choice"
mentality.

LTD.....Good choice to present in an argument about bad GM products.


How many years has it been since an LTD has been made????


I'll give you credit, though, at least you didn't mention a Corvair,
Pinto, or Vega in your argument.

However:

If you compare the LTD's with cars made in IT'S era, instead of trying
to compare it with a 2008 Honda Accord, your will find the LTD was a
pretty good vehicle.

Not trying to sell you a vehicle.

Just pointing out that the one-sided argument that GM sells junk ain't
so one sided anymore.

You sound like a car salesman.

I hope you are not, because if you are, you are LYING to your
customers.

 

Sounds like YOU are Google-challenged to me.

Once again, this is group about automoblies, not foreign trade (as one
sided, or unfair as it may be)

Opps, please strike the words within the paragragh from the records!

 

This whole statement you made here is simply full of doo-doo.

you use a few factual statments, but mostly biased ones here.

How about using a little logic, instead?????


GM sell, MILLIONS of vehicles world wide, but only 12000 in Japan.

"How are the "needs' of Japan so different from the rest of the world
that, given a fair chance, GM sells millions of vehicles to?

Does ALL of the Japanese people live in the narrow streets of Tokyo,
meaning GM didn/t make a small enough car for them??

And what about this "2000 cc engine size?????

Is there some kind of Japanese law stating engines have to be a
certain (small) size??????

If so, that, in itself, is a govenrment restriction, whether terriffs
are used or not.

Only one in about a thousand examples of how a government can restrict
free-trade even without tariffs.



Now go back, and Google, and Wikipedia a little more and use common
sense the next time you tell me that a country that has a population
of, what, about a 130 million people whom have largly embraced a
Western-civilization lifestyle only buys 12000 GM cars???????


Pretty lame exuse on your part.


Any you insult Japanese people with your generalations.

 

Actually the number is about 8 MILLION recalls in the past year, and
growing.

The number is probably over 20 million if you go back five years.


But, these vechiles are so much better than the Corvar, Pinto, LTD, or
1985 Buick!

 

I will admit, I have not owned 30 GM's like you. Owning more than one a
year is not a good sign at all. How can you gauge reliability when you
swap out your GM's that often?
If you have driven, say 1,000,000 miles, that comes out to just 33,333
miles per GM, assuming that GM's are all that you ever drive. Not a lot
of miles per car.

I do auto work for a lot of friends and family, and sometimes for money.
I have also stripped out quite a few different foreign and domestic cars
for parts resale.

The past 20 years of doing this has exposed me to all sorts of different
vehicles, including a lot of Fords and GM's since, believe it or not,
they tend to require a lot of repairs.

The domestic vehicles are consistently the worst ones. Work on enough
cars and tear down enough of them, and the quality, or lack thereof,
becomes obvious.
It would take a true idiot not to see that the Japanese have just
completely beaten us in the quality department.

How close I am to my neighbor is none of your business, and it is a she,
not a he.
We might be casual friends and I might be sleeping with her, that is
completely irrelevant to the fact that the Impala that she owned was a
complete piece of shit, contrary to your fantasy that it is a good car.

The likes of you supporting them no matter what they make is why the
United States is still laughed at for producing shitty vehicles.

What would really hurt me is to keep repeating the same process of
buying a piece of junk domestic car and hoping for a different result.
That was Einstein's definition of insanity.

I am talking about domestics in general. When you speak of "cities being
ruined economically", are you talking about just GM? I didn't think so.

If you are really going to say that the LTD that my parents owned was a
good car for it's era, then you are completely out of touch with reality.

Not even the biggest Ford fanatic could possibly call that car a "pretty
good vehicle".
There were a lot of better cars out there during that era, they just
weren't made by inept workers, which means that they were imported.

In this newsgroup, I have only seen you defending domestic vehicles,
while several knowledgeable people are pointing out that they are junk.

Some even put it more nicely than that, but if they did not think that
the cars were junk then they would buy them. You put way too much faith
in the power of advertising.

Not a car salesman, just someone who is into cars and likes to help
steer friends and family away from bad buying decisions. You claiming
that the Impala and LTD were anything other than complete garbage, now
that is a lie, as it is certainly not the truth.

 

In message

Although I've never been to Japan, I've done quite a bit of globe
trotting, but your statement indicates that you've never been outside of
the USA and have a very poor grasp of other countries requirements.

 

I remember reading the Mother Jones article on the exploding Pinto
problem. Ford fought for years to prevent the government from
implementing rear impact standards. When the standards finally
passed, the Pinto was the first car tested - and it passed!!! Ford
had added a $3 shield to prevent the bolts on the differential from
ripping open the fuel tank. Ford had paid millions in lobbying costs
and burned 500 customers to death to save $3 per car.

Ah, the good old days.

 

frod lobby to save less than that by sticking to red rear turn signals.
absolutely retarded given that we're no longer driving turnip trucks
at 5mph on empty country roads.

these are the halcyon days - bought political favors are in full force.

 

don't hold back dude - he's a podunk xenophobic hick. he got his
edumacation from paw's leather belt on his ass and he's grateful for it.

 

I have not ever been outside the US (unless you count Canada), and,
yet, you did not answer a simple direct question.



Of course, I have never been to the moon, either, but there are things
I know about it, some through scientific fact, and others, simply
through common sense and reasoning.



My common sense tells me that if the government would truly lift
restrictions the Japanese people would buy a whole helluva lot more
than 12000 GM products a year.


And if they did not buy the American products, the Americans would
lose money, and quit selling there.



Best that I can tell, that scenerio has never happened, as the
Japanese people have never been given a real chance to buy American
autos.



Fact.


Or, are you implying that "other countries requirments" might be
government, and not economically based????????


Just another fancy word for "restrictions."

 

Once again, city boy, your Cyndi Lauper True Colors are shining
through.



Used no reasoning skills what-so-ever.



Even though you never owned an American vehicle, or at least not in
this century, anyway,you continue to trash them.



If I know nothing about Japan and the tastes of Japanese car owners,
you know even LESS about US nameplates.


But, gosh-darned, in debating with you, I learned a new word.



Xenophobic.


Real nice.

I always thought is was some kind of instrument you played.


Something like a skin flute.


You taught me something, now I'll teach you.


Ever hear of a guy named Alvin Dark???



Used to be a baseball manager.



Had a famous saying he liked to use when he brushed someone off who
annoyed him.


Now, I give it to you.


"Take a hike, son"!

 

Actually, it was answered pretty well.

If your knowledge of Japan rivals that of your knowledge of the moon,
then you know far less than you believe.

The restrictions are not there to prevent people from buying US made
cars. If US manufacturers want to sell cars in Japan, they can do so
by following the rules. Even what is considered "rural" in Japan
would not be recognizable as such in the US. It is a LOT of people on
an island, and they are packed very closely together. Cars need to be
small, and emissions need to be tightly controlled. US automakers do
not want to comply with those restrictions, so they don't get to sell
cars there in any large numbers.

That's pretty much exactly what has happened.

Sure they have. They can buy any American car with the steering wheel
on the right, a small width, and a low displacement engine. How many
of those does GM make?

Your idea of a fact is similar to what most people flush down the
toilet after $.99 burrito night...

Requirements are based in both government restrictions and economic
realities.

You don't know any fancy words...

 

Also, not a lot of problems per car, either.

The million mile mile is a best guess on my part, it could be a lot
higher when I count my wife and kids driving.

Also, not all cars I have owned were daily drivers.

I really hate posting again and again again about the GM car's I've
owned that I drove daily, 150 mile round trip, back and forth to my
job, with very little problems.

Have had several cars go well over 200000 miles on them.

My kids, try as they might, could not wear out the Chevy Cavaliers I
bought for them.

I have been blessed to be able to own, or get rid of cars that I
didn't like, (at least most of my life)

But, I have NEVER, gotten rid of a single GM car I have ever owned,
because it was unreliable or "junk"

They all served me well, but some I just didn't like for one reason or
another.


And, I have been fortunate enough to have been able to own more than a
couple of performance cars that I have not put a lot of miles on.

Hit a raw nerve, huh???

All I know, having never owned an Impala myself, is that GM has sold a
few million of them over the past 4 or 5 decades.

They would not have sold that many if they were complete pieces of
shit.

And I have a few "friends" (I don't care to let you know I have not
slept with any of them) whom have owned them and they have performed
wonderfully.

So, based and what I have seen with my own eyes, and what I know for
facts, (Millions of them sold), you'll pardon me if I think the Impala
is a pretty good car.

Still selling very well today, even in the tough economy we are facing
today, wonder why???


And no recalls with sludging engines, sticking accelerators, or bad
brakes.

Not really. The people being laughed at are those who still try to
prove Toyota makes a better car than GM does, in light of any
factually data than can be used to compare the cars, and ESPECIALLY in
light of the millions and millions and millions of Toyota recalls
lately.


If America is making shitty vehicles, then Japan must be making a
whole sewage system.


Please don't tell me you believe in Global warming, as well.

Another definition of insanity would be to keep producing a piece of
junk and telling people how good it is, expecting it to continue to
sell.

And even more insanity would be that some people believe them.

And yet, Millions were sold of these products.

For the humpteenth time, I'll say it again,

If people buy a million of ANYTHING, it can't be junk!!!!


BTW, you never did tell me how your neighbor abused her Impala.

 

Joe, you're wrong here. The restrictions were created, and are worded
very specifically, so that only local products can meet them.
Technically, imports could do so, but the cost would be considerably
more than it is worth. This is by design, and is not (or at least at
one point was not) disputed by the Japanese government.

They do the same thing for many food products, most particularly rice
and beef.

In America, many government contracts are worded so that only the
desired vendor can meet the requirements. That's how it's done (of
course, not always).

Don't get me wrong; I'm not a japan-basher, and I recognize the
decades-long superiority of Japanese cars in most respects. I think if
the import restrictions were lifted, the Japanese would buy a lot more
than 12,000 American cars - but not a very significant percentage. Even
120,000 would be a very small percentage.

But the specifications required to be met to sell a car in Japan are
certainly very carefully and purposefully written to exclude foreign
vehicles.


RFT!!!
Dave Kelsen

 

how does that explain how the japanese out-sell us by significant margin
in global markets? [rhetorical - it doesn't].

fact is, joe is right - we don't /want/ to sell in the japanese market
because we don't want to make small efficient r/h drive cars that would
sell there! any comment to the contrary is either political posturing,
or the repetition of same by some gull that doesn't get it.

 

paw sure did learn you good with that leather belt o' his!

podunk hick.

 

Your logic is analogous to the facetious justification of all sorts of
lemming behavior: "Eat shit, 50 trillion flies can't be wrong."

 

During a discussion/argument on vehicle makes, you mentioned Cyndi
Lauper, a skin flute and you bring up a baseball manager.

Are you inbred, just incredibly stupid or both? Please tell me that your
kids are adopted and that you did not infect following generations with
your genes.

 

Not anymore.

Ed