Wow, this is going to take a minute. leaving out race cars, here’s the best I can do in sort of an order.
Studebaker
International (like this in case you never heard of them:
VW
Plymouth
Dodge
VW
Chevrolet
Oldsmobile
Dodge
Mistubishi (Dodge Colt)x2 (replacement)
Porsche
Jaguar
Chevrolet
Alfa Romeo
Chevrolet*
Pontiac
Subaru
Fordx2 (replacement)
Subarux2 (replacement)*
Chevrolet*
you can actually see in this thread how the domestic companies lost a chunk of their market share to the japanese and europeans. almost everyones first few cars were domestic and alot of us currently drive an import.
Yeah, good point. I noticed it as well. But don’t get me started on the social and economic implications of this. You might ruin my sunny disposition I started with used domestics and went on to new imports, then came back to domestics. My list includes some recent Subarus, but I consider those to be my wife’s. MY cars have been domestic since the mid eighties and I AM proud of it. When I saw the harm being done to our economy and social fabric by massive trade deficits, I vowed to do what I could to “buy American”. And I have been faithful to that. The Chinese really scare me, so I make a special effort to avoid their products. It can almost impossible though.
The Free Trade argument is very flawed, IMHO. Imagine a mythical country with 10 wage earners. To an economist, if one had a $1,000,000 annual income and the rest were unemployed, he’d say “things are great, the average income for those folks is $100K, what are they bitching about?” He would say that county is much better off than a country with 10 wage earners taking home $50K a piece. After all, the first country has double the average annual income of the second. But which would you rather live in?
If Free Trade is allowed to continue unfettered, we will end up with maybe 2-3% of the population being VERY rich, a very small middle class, and huge numbers of people working at either shit service jobs, on welfare, or working for the government. It will not be a pleasant place to live, even for the 2-3% on top. Crime will skyrocket, civil liberties will shrink, upward mobility will be drastically reduced, politics will become even more corrupt, etc. Mark my words, it is coming and it will not be nice.
There is no doubt that the global market responsible for making this country rich is now working against us. unfortunatly…the one thing our products had that made em worth the extra money, superior quality, has gone right out the window. Being a supervisor at a local machine shop i can see the beginnings of the changes this country is going to have to make in order to survive in this increasingly competative market. the gravy train is over, we either have to work harder for less while improving the overall quality of our product or we let automation replace the need for a workforce. The problem is people dont want to accept the inevitable and are gunna try to ride the train till they bankrupt this country (just look at Delphi). even the workforce im resposible for at a non-union shop is very resistant to the changes we are trying to make just to keep us in buisness. I just wish everyone would ask their parents how it was when they were young. 16 year olds didnt have their own cars…there wernt 5 or more tv’s in a household…families didnt have multiple vehicles. we can all survive just fine on alot less and are gunna have to inorder not to bankrupt ourselves.
Ford (taurus…long gone)
Subaru (WRX…owner after me totalled it…gone)
Nissan (240sx…sold and is now a drift competition car)
Subaru (I currently have 4 Legacy Turbos)