[quote=Hobie]Sure there were problems with labor costs but in the mid-late ’80’s Toyota Celica had a ‘betty’ to announce if your door was a-jar. No American car had this. The wow factor coupled with a affordable price point garnered consumerism attention and money.
Market forces prevail and the cool factor of the hip, airplane cockpit gauges took hold. Detroit countered with the Pinto and Gremlin. or K car even. C-mon. The Japanese skunked us. We did not learn and they took, and continue, to take huge market share.
Simply put, with or without unions, Detroit had viable competition that is winning by delivering a better product.
Relax the enviro constrictions on manufacturing and relax the constraints of energy production and Motor City will return as we will always need lots of new cars/trucks.[/quote]
Man… As much as I like to bash unions… Hobie is completely correct. Unions were just the “knob turners” that put the product together. The management and marketing staff refused to understand thier markets and the companies suffered for it. Unions merely compounded the problem. Let’s distribute the blame correctly here.
If McNamara had continued to head Ford the Japanese and Germans may have been ran out of North America. He understood what forgein product represented to the consumers and moved quickly to match it.
Detroit with be an interesting experiment in urban reconstruction.
