My experience with cars is the same as jpinpb’s. My family always owned American cars until the late 90s, with the exception of a Volvo (biggest lemon on the planet!) and two VW bugs in the 60s and 70s — and I can’t say enough positive things about those VWs…they’re not built like that anymore, though.
Our American cars have run at least as well as our current Honda, which has had its fair share of problems, BTW.
There were some American cars, especially those made in the 1980s, that had pretty major problems, largely because of planned obsolescence. BTW, while the head sheeple herders try to convince the sheeple that the unions caused the demise of the US automotive industry, the real reason for our downfall was the movement toward a shorter lifespan for durable goods, IMHO. People are willing to pay much more for quality products, but they won’t pay more for junk that breaks down within a few years. Planned obsolescence is bad for our economy and bad for the environment, but the China model (which we are all forced to accept, whether we like it or not) is built around it.
———————
June 06, 1985|By Dick Marlowe of the Sentinel Staff
Remember that old slogan, ”When better automobiles are built, Buick will build them?” There was something really inspiring about that jingle back in the days when cars were built to last.
With quality construction having long since given way to marketing strategies, automakers are now being told that better quality is bad for business.
If American automakers want to compete with the Japanese, they are going to have to give the consumer a worse car. At least that’s the opinion of Philip G. Gott, who works as an automotive engineering consultant for Arthur D. Little Co.
Film maker Michael Moore believes he had foretold the demise of GM in his 1989 film “Roger and Me”.
“It is a sad irony that the company that invented ‘planned obsolescence’ – the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would have to buy a new one – has now made itself obsolete”, he wrote on his blog after GM’s bankruptcy. He cites years of company ineptitude and a disregard for its workers.
“Beginning in the 1980s, when GM was posting record profits, it moved countless jobs to Mexico and elsewhere, thus destroying the lives of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans. The glaring stupidity of this policy was that, when they eliminated the income of so many middle-class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars?”
