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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joe NYC who wrote (468076)	4/1/2009 11:37:29 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1578452

How's this: GM and F cars have been mostly crap for the last 50 years. Until recently, they have had some of the lowest rankings in consumer reports compared to foreign makes when it comes to repairs and maintenance. Their designs for the most part suck.......you can spot a GM car of the last 3 decades ten miles away and there has been little change until recently. Traditionally, gas mileage on GM and F cars have sucked so that if you wanted good gas mileage, you went to foreign brands. That too is changing. Finally, if you want innovation, you look to foreign brands......after all, it was Toyota that came out with a hybrid not GM. You and I have different experiences. I used to be a (not so) proud owner of a Japanese lemon. After I got rid of it and started renting (foreign and domestic) cars. I have gone through 100s of cars by now, and I can tell you there is almost no difference in quality or a whole host of variable one has for a desirability. Renting a car for a business trip is not the same as owning one. Your experience does not reflect the results found in consumer reports. 50 years ago? I wasn't even alive 50 years ago. IMO, the most dramatic improvements happened in 80s, and from 90s on, there is a rough parity. At one time American cars were designed to fall a part after a certain short period of time. In the 80s the Japanese introduced cars that were better built. It took American cars all of the 80s and most of the 90s to match them in quality. And frankly, they are still not there yet. But the problems of Big 3 worsened as quality of their cars (relative and absolute quality) improved. What gives? Mileage? Are you comparing apples to apples? Or fleet to fleet? Because if you are comparing fleet to fleet, you have to realize that because of unions, US manufacturers are out of business of making small cars. Large cars will never match the mileage of small cars. Japanese sedans get better mileage than American sedans. I don't understand why you are trying to defend the indefensible. American car companies did not get into the mess they are in because their cars were better than those of foreign companies nor because they had to deal with unions. They got into the trouble primarily because of poor mgmt.