Cars that killed Detroit....

I realize this topic is past being stale, but this morning Yahoo has/had an "Article" on the cars that are largely responsible for puitting Detroit in it's current mess.

Ford and Ford-branded cars seem to lead the list with 4 or 5 "candidates". One of the cars mentioned was, of all things....the Jaguar X-type. The Pinto, I sort of understand, even if the one I owned was actually pretty reliable and well built...tho 23 mpg out of a small, economy car is laughable. The Taurus and Explorer were "blamed" for being TOO SUCCESSFUL, and therefore Ford was remiss in building millions of these vehicles....even tho folks bought every one produced.

If I read another one of these ill-conceived articles....someone come to my house and slap me upside the head.

Pretty ironic to have most of the cars listed from Ford when they aren't asking any bailout money.

What, really, are the "cars Americans don't want"? Shouldn't it be the "cars Americans can't afford"?

When Iacocca was running Chrysler he wanted to put a sticker on all the new cars describing all the federal mandated stuff and the cost.

BTW, my daughter voted for the no-bailout company...bought a new Focus.

I found it laughable that they picked the Pinto yet completely ignored the Vega, which was a horrible car. Aspen/Volare? Pacer? The Cavalier was a mediocre car but sold in the hundreds of thousands, yet the Cimarron only gets an honorable mention? Chevy diesel? Cadillac V-8-6-4? That article was beyond stupid.

link?

The Edsel was the first survey what would you like to see in a car build and it failed. Corvairs have the death car stigma thanks to Nader. Azteks look like those cool cars I built with LEGOS when I was 5.

Lets make our own list. We can do better.

Build an actual, honest-to-goodness, no excuses, real deal Civic/Corolla beater.

Make a Taurus that will sell as well as the original Taurus did. Make it with the same actual, honest-to-goodness, no excuses, real deal quality/reliablity of a Camry/Accord.

Back OT--the Ford Five Hundred was an exercise in pointlessness.

BTW, the Cavalier was mentioned, since like the Taurus, it was put into prodution, and then given only minor tweaking over it's (too long) production cycle.

After I posted this, I realized that it WASN'T really any particular car or cars that "killed Detroit", but a mindset. A mindset most Americans seem to share: do just enough and no more than the job calls for, then bitch that you didn't get paid enough for your work. This mindset includes not just everyone at the car companies in Detroit, but many major atheletes, and corporate CEOs. Just my $0.02.

I think Detroit was buried during the gas shortages of the 70's. Economical Japanese cars became attractive, and people saw that they were good cars. Detroit did not adapt.

Yea well the Japanese are going the way of the Americans....building bigger, heavier, more complicated cars. Today at work they had me doing real tech stuff....my first job: Replace Fuse Box in 08 V6 Accord. Says to myself "Ok this should be easy, just unbolt, unplug, plug in new box, bolt back in, done." Nope, a new Fuse box in these cars requires you to replace the whole harness as well, into the firewall and dash, engine, etc. These cars are also way heavier than the CD5s and previous gens, nothing like they used to be. The same goes for Toyota, Sh*tsubishi, etc. Even the Civics are nothing of what they used to be....and this new "integrated" exhaust manifold on the Civic and Fit motors is retarded.

Yup, look at the size and specs of Civic vs. Fit...you don't get as much power with the Fit but you get a lot more space, versatility, and interior neatness for less money.

But I was comparing thigns to previous generations of cars. The base model Civic today vs. the one of 1995 may have more goodies, but it isn't an evolution of the econobox it was meant to be. Plus the engine design pretty much limits what you can do with these new single cam motors (as stated before integrated exhaust manifold/head design) then the complexities of the newer cars to work on. Not just electronics, but the actual mechanics and engineering of certain parts and pieces just baffles my mind.

Japan worked really hard to build a better passenger car. And they did. They proved they could build a better passenger car than America. They set themselves up as the people to beat. Even though that was a while ago, America has yet to prove absolutely that they can build a better passenger car. So people keep buying Japanese cars because no one has proven they can build something better.

If anyone upsets the Japanese, it's going to be those Kooky Koreans.

The Pinto? pardon?

That was the car that saved Ford. Reliable, well-built, good economy. The fire thing is as big a myth as the saddle-tank chevy pickup fires. When is my Fiero going to burn up?

What's killing auto makers is building vehicles no-one needs, then trying to convince customers that they want to buy them. Making the same vehicle for several brands, hanging different badges on them and thinking that consumers are too stupid to notice.

They need to build economy cars again, true economy cars. Quit pawning off hybrids with 32mpg as being fuel efficient. My 25-year-old Corolla gets that mileage. My 40-year old truck gets the same mileage my 10 year-old truck gets and the old truck has a bigger engine and worse gearing.

modern auto design and manufacturing = open ass, insert head.

Read Lee Iacoccas biography if you want to learn how truly berkeleyed up the auto manufacturing industry was and still is. He doesn't just go after Ford and Chrysler either.

As for the comment about the workers etc being lazy and only doing the minimum. It's everywhere man! People have a E36 M3ty work ethic nowadays. Do just enough to not get fired. I get a performance bonus at my workplace and I bust my ass to get as much of it as I can. If the company makes more cash, I make more cash. If you ask me, all salaries should be based on performance, not whether you're standing upright or not.

Shawn

Trans_Maro wrote: All salaries should be based on performance, not whether you're standing upright or not. Shawn

you sir have correctly solved 99.62345% of americas economic problem.

Modern Unions=money blackhole/Economy murder suspect

"Give me 48$ out of every paycheck you get, and convince all your work buddies do the same, and I will force your employer to pay you more, and guarantee you will have to do less work, all while getting you better benefits than war vets. And as an added bonus, if you ever slack off completely and do ZERO work for an entire week, I will make sure your boss can not fire you for it"

...its all fun and games until a nations economy loses an eye

Could this be the link?

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/flowchart/2008/11/14/10-cars-that-sank-detroit.html

I'm sure we could churn out some much better lists than a guy who actually asks "what's a sebring, anyway?"

Here's how I'd start the list.

1. Chevy Cavalier. It was OK when it first came out, but when Japanese compacts tend to get major updates every five years, updating the platform once in its ~25 year production run wasn't such a good idea.

2. Buick Rendezvous. The Aztec was a questionable choice but could be an example of risk taking gone wrong. But how could GM possibly have justified giving the Aztec a sequel?

3. Dodge Caravans with the automatic transmission. They seem to have fixed the problem by the mid '90s, but the combination of a passenger car transaxle, a need for specialized transmission fluid, and failure to adequately warn owners gave Mopar a bad reputation there. Too bad they couldn't have built a FWD version of the A727.

4. Pontiac Trans Sport / Montana. While on the subject of minivans, this is one I haven't heard of having reliability problems. But still, who ever thought it would be a good idea to both make Pontiac GM's "excitement division" and give it a minivan? Brand management at its worst.

4cylndrfury wrote: all while getting you better benefits than war vets .

Not hard to do!!!

And I don't get the Pinto thing either. I've had 2 of them (1-hatchback w/2.0 & 1-sedan w/1.6). Thought both were good cars, I bought the hatch for $250, put another $250 into it (fixing po issues/abuse), drove it for 40,000 miles and sold it for more than I had into it.

Salanis wrote: Japan worked really hard to build a better passenger car. And they did. They proved they could build a better passenger car than America. They set themselves up as the people to beat. Even though that was a while ago, America has yet to prove absolutely that they can build a better passenger car. So people keep buying Japanese cars because no one has proven they can build something better. If anyone upsets the Japanese, it's going to be those Kooky Koreans.

Proved that in the 80s/90s, but now the Jap manufacturers are getting complacent, just like the American car companies did.

somebody needs to grab the execs, bring them into a room with stripper examples of a Suzuki Swift and a Swift GT.

Tell them to make one that goes at least five years before starting to squeak, rattle, and otherwise fall apart.

DirtyBird222 wrote: Proved that in the 80s/90s, but now the Jap manufacturers are getting complacent, just like the American car companies did.

I don't know if they are complacent.. I will say they did stretch themselves to go at the rapid rate that they did and overextended their resources. They do not have as many of the old guard running the place and have pushed for returning to their old ideas. Atleast thats what I hear from my buddies inside Toyoduh.

I'm going to go with:

The Ford Explorer

4cylndrfury wrote: Modern Unions=money blackhole/Economy murder suspect

Unions aren't the problem, at least not the only problem.

I used to work for a company that makes electrical metering equipment. The 5 factories they own are union. At one point, they looked into taking all of their production overseas. They came to the conclusion that they could do that, or for the same price (or less) they could redesign their entire product line. They could consolidate overlap, purge obsoletes from their catalog, and create uniformity in production and component sharing.

Most importantly, they discovered that the big difference between making something in China vs. anywhere else in the world was the cost of labor. Commodities and materials cost about the same everywhere (at least in industrial quantities). If you can significantly cut the intensity of labor you need for a product, you can build it for about the same cost anywhere.

So that's what they did. They designed products with dramatically fewer components that can be assembled mostly by hand, and quite quickly.

They also redesigned production lines. After redesign, one line took up half the physical space, used half the people it originally did, and made only 3 fewer units a day than before. Half the employees were reassigned to other lines.

The Toyota Way was pretty much mandatory reading for executives and engineers. This is all stuff that the Big 3 could do, even with unions, if they could overcome poor management and their deeply rooted arrogance. GM in particular has operated under the philosophy that marketing and branding can mask any problem, instead of doing the difficult work of solving their problems.

I do not know about the unions elsewhere.. but anybody who bad mouths one is welcome to work alongside me for a day.

And I do get the idea about the list: We grew complacent selling the "same old stuff" year in and year out with little to no updates or revisions.

While several European makers seem to the do the same, all their models go through a mid-life makeover to change their looks and make them fresh again.

Koreans seem to design whole new cars every 5 years... I agree, they are the ones to watch. It will not take long for Hyundai to be one of the top three

Why does everyone dis the X type? It got good reviews and they sold well even though they weren't cheap. I see them on the road all the time. I kind of like the wagon. Maybe not a class leader but they aren't exactly trash either.

My buddy and I were talking today, we think that the Genesis coupe will be a badass car to own in 5 years when the new ones are cheaper. Especially the base model 2.0T ones, I'm thinking they'll be the next 240SX/DSM kind of car. Well we'll see what the potential of that motor is with a bigger turbo and so on.