Holy crap. A loaded diesel Ranger goes for $39k US in South Africa.
http://www.ford.co.za/servlet/ContentServer?cid=1132648512118&pagename=FMCSA%2FDFYPage%2FDefault&c=DFYPage
[quote=“BaD AZz Z/28,post:76,topic:31915"”]
The facts are what they are. There are more domestic trucks sold than import ones, domestic vehicles use more domestic parts and labor than import ones, and domestic manufacturers employ more US workers and keep more money on our own soil. Believing otherwise is a matter of being uninformed.
In terms of quality, the Big 3 have been building trucks for 100 years, they know what they are doing. Personally, I think its yet to be proven if the import companies can do the same over the course of time. I suspect they can to some extent, although their trucks seem more like passenger cars than actual trucks to me. Either way, there will be people who like their features and people who buy into their hype, but that doesnt mean the domestics arent making excellent trucks too.
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Do you have and sort of evidence to back that claim up?
[quote=“BikerFry,post:78,topic:31915"”]
I was pretty intrigued by the turbo-diesel Ford Rangers I saw when I was in Uruguay. It’d be interesting to see someone offer a diesel small truck here.
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Chevy’s still got the s-10 in Brazil
Its powered by a 2.8L turbocharged diesel making 120hp and 240 lb/ft :eekdance:… Thats as much torque as the American 4.3L
[quote=“The_Russian,post:19,topic:31915"”]
The only japanese truck that is decent is the Titan.
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:wiggle: YEP!!!
whats funny is that the tundras trannys and engines are going bad already… they already have a camshaft recall hahahahaha
[quote=“93dx–hatch,post:82,topic:31915"”]
Do you have and sort of evidence to back that claim up?
[/quote]
I dont have time to do a research paper for you, but the data is out there. This article explained it well enough:
Pittsburgh Post
Roger Simmermaker
Dec. 19, 2006
Ford and General Motors have taken turns besting the Toyota Camry in quality surveys for the past two years, but if you talk to many Americans – especially the ones who would never consider supporting home-based auto companies – you’d never know it.
Last year, the Chevrolet Impala beat the Camry in initial quality, according to J.D. Power & Associates. And Consumer Reports just announced that both the Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan scored higher than both the Camry and the Honda Accord this year.
Even as GM and Ford have accumulated award after award on vehicle quality, you’d almost never know about such quality gains made by American companies.
There’s also the mythical perception that foreign automakers produce the most fuel efficient cars and that Detroit only makes gas-guzzlers when the truth is that all automakers – including Toyota, Honda and Hyundai-Kia alike – have allowed fuel economy to slide in the past 20 years since they all now sell bigger trucks and more SUVs.
Perhaps the biggest perception problem is that American automobile companies GM and Ford – Chrysler is now German-owned – squander all their money on plants overseas and foreign automakers build their factories in the United States. Foreign car lovers will surely point to Kia’s plans to build its first-ever U.S. plant in Georgia, but they probably won’t mention that they received $400 million in tax giveaways to do it, which translates into $160,000 per job.
Among the many benefits for the foreign-owned company, your tax dollars are going to be used for road improvements surrounding the complex, complete with flower beds and other beautification features. Hey, as long as we’re going to allow states to bid for private jobs with our public tax dollars, we might as well make it look good, right?
And the foreign car lovers will probably also not tell you (or maybe they just don’t know or don’t want you to know) that GM and Ford pour more money into existing American facilities than foreign automakers spend on new plants, usually with little or no tax breaks. GM has already spent more than $500 million upgrading two transmission plants this year, and has spent nearly a billion dollars over the last decade, for example, for facility upgrades in Texas.
And what do GM and Ford get for making their existing plants more efficient? It isn’t tax breaks. Instead, they get accusations of not being “competitive” enough! Maybe here I should also mention that the average domestic parts content for Kia is 3 percent, while the average domestic parts content of Ford and GM is 78 percent and 74 percent, respectively. This means that buying a U.S.-assembled (or even foreign-assembled, for that matter) GM or Ford supports more American jobs than a U.S.-assembled car or truck with a foreign nameplate.
Fortunately for our benefit, the United States remains the overall global leader in research and development, and a big reason for that is that American automakers. According to the Level Field Institute, U.S. car companies invest $16 billion in research and development annually, outpacing any other industry one could name.
Admittedly, the Level Field Institute counts German-owned DaimlerChrysler as an American automaker, so Ford and GM’s combined R&D contribution to America is closer to around $12 billion. But who’s counting, right? Certainly not the American auto-bashing media.
Japanese companies do employ 3,600 American workers in R&D, but that still leaves the foreign competition behind in the dust staring at American rear bumpers – 3,600 sounds like a big number until you realize that 65,000 Americans work in R&D facilities in the state of Michigan alone. In fact, two of the top four R&D spending companies in America as reported by the Wall Street Journal are – you guessed it – Ford and GM. The other two are also American companies: Pfizer and Microsoft.
Ford has recently made headlines as the American automaker with the most challenges to its future, but these challenges certainly are not because they “aren’t making cars people want to buy.” Toyota did outsell Ford in July, but since then, Ford has reclaimed the No. 2 spot.
GM has the highest market share, increasing over 2 percentage points from a year ago, so it apparently can’t be accused of not making cars people want to buy either. Ford sales also are up in Europe, and Ford doubled its sales in China, where GM has the highest market share of any automaker.
GM also reported a 3.9 percent rise in August vehicle sales despite high gas prices and a supposedly slowing economy. And even though Toyota reported record sales that month, it couldn’t match the non-record setting sales volume of Ford. GM’s sales rose 17 percent in October from the year-ago month and Ford sales rose 8 percent the same period.
And for all the talk about the lack of fuel efficiency of American automakers, it seems three-fourths of all automakers failed to meet Europe’s improved fuel-efficiency standards intended to cut carbon-dioxide emissions. Japanese and German automakers topped the list of the study’s worst performers, but according to an environmental group’s study, GM’s Opel division and Ford both “come out well.”
In closing, I’ll leave some encouraging numbers for those of us who actually like to root for and support the home team. The J.D. Power 2006 Vehicle Dependability Survey reports that Mercury, Buick and Cadillac (in that order) grabbed the No. 2, 3 and 4 spots to beat Toyota, Honda, Nissan, BMW and everyone else (except Lexus) in having the least number of problems per 100 vehicles.
Perhaps someday the American media will give GM and Ford the credit they deserve. And once they do, perception among the majority of the American public will rightfully change. GM and Ford aren’t only doing what they should to make gains in the American market to deserve American consumer loyalty; they’re also doing what they should to make gains in the markets of China, Europe and across most of the rest of the globe.
^lol a fucking article by Roger Simmermaker you think its just a little biased, I can pull out random facts out of the blue and tell you all the downfalls of Ford and GM.
I have always been a chevy truck fan. Worked construction for awhile and the company had all ford f350’s with 7.3 diesels(best motor ford built in my opinion). Which truck weather american or import is better built is hard to say. I can say this…I know someone who bought a brand new chevy duramax and the thing was the bigest pile of shit i ever seen…nothing but problems and always had to put up a fight with the dealer to get anything taken care of. Ive seen the v8 triton motor on the fords not even make it 100k and the truck was maintained very well and was moreless a daily driver then a work horse…pretty sad if you ask me. I worked as a tech for an independent shop and i can not tell you how many gm motors and trannys i changed. Dont get me wrong alot had to do with how people treated their cars but its still pretty bad when i could tell what was wrong on a car before it ever came through the door just going by how many miles were on it. The one thing i will give yota is that customer service is #1 to them…They dont try to screw you into paying for something that should be covered under warrenty. My mother bought a lexus suv and anything i ever even questioned was taken care of with no hassle what so ever. That right there would make me buy a yota or a lex over a chevy,ford,dodge. Well thats my opinion…but you know what they say opinions…they are like a$$holes…we all have one!!
Caddy takes very good care of their customers
[quote=“Nikuk,post:68,topic:31915"”]
mazda isnt actually foreign.
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It may be owned by Ford, but it was designed in Japan. Along with the Fusion.
[quote=“HYBOOST,post:89,topic:31915"”]
It may be owned by Ford, but it was designed in Japan. Along with the Fusion.
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hmm, so everything on the GMs Zeta platform is foreign? seeing as it comes from Holden?
[quote=“HYBOOST,post:89,topic:31915"”]
It may be owned by Ford, but it was designed in Japan. Along with the Fusion.
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Fusion what a great American car, oh wait its made in Mexico…
I have been an American only person for the first 25 year of life until I drove a Nissan Titan. I’m the type of person that researches everything before spending a Dollar. I test drove everything out there, and if anyone here can do that, and not agree that the Titan is the best thing going , I’d be very surprised. I still have my 1995 F350 super duty with over 160k that runs well. As far as half ton trucks, there is some really good competition, and I hope the Japanese make the Americans step up to the plate. Oh wait, the Titan was dreamed, engineered, designed, drafted, and manufactured in the US. I am by no means saying that Forign is better than domestic or the other way around.
Man, you people are easy to set off!
[quote=“The_Russian,post:88,topic:31915"”]
Caddy takes very good care of their customers
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and i bet they have to with the northstar essentially being an 8-cylinder oil leak
[quote=“ultradriver10000,post:72,topic:31915"”]
Second off, I’ve owned my vette for just over 2 years, putting on about 7,000 hard driven miles. I’ve gone threw 3 sets of rear tires and knock on wood only 2 things have broke. One being a little plastic door trim piece someone broke off costing me 2.50 from the dealer. The second thing that “broke” where my front rotors. The car had the original brakes on it and the one front rotor cracked. I mean maybe it was because they where 10 years old and had 35K miles on them, or maybe its the 150 to 50 mph stops I do almost daily or maybe its because its a chevy? :roll2:
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oh. well, I’ve put 16K on mine from 63K to 79K. anyone who knows me knows that I beat on my cars to some degree - but religiously maintain them. Always been like that 
the column lock block issues are sometimes enough to make people sell their c5s. I personally would Never get another, just for that reason. Scary shit. If anyone on here’s wondering what I’m talking about, see:
aside from that, i’ve had issues with broken headlight motors, power windows, Badly oxidizing paint on the hood, oxidized targa top, water pump gaskets, my clutch fluid (and pretty much anyone else with the M6 on corvetteforum) is consistenly BLACK no matter how much it’s flushed, water leaks that will cost a small fortune to attempt to fix (and likely would never be solved - Not even talking about weatherstripping, i’m talking about the seals under the rear quarters, into the interior).
the leather seats are shit. the rocking in the seats, due to the melted washers, yeah - that was fun to fix. the console lid - who designed that hinge, an alien?!
These aren’t just issues my car is having. With the exception of the oxidizing hood paint, the majority of c5 owners have had these issues within 75K. If they haven’t happened yet, they will.
everything. inside & out. on these cars. is shit. You could not pay me enough to own another. yes, it was fast. sure, they’re expensive to maintain - any sports car will be. but the issues and complaints i’ve had while owning it (and driving it over 2x as many miles as you, with about 2x as much miles on it)… damn, man.
And these are just the issues that i can think of off the top of my head. There’s several more, that I’ve yet to experience - but very likely would in miles to come. There was a moment, months ago, when I was trying to adjust my sun visors. It popped right out in my hand.
I went in the house, found an article on how to remove it, and put it back in… I was doing it correctly. It was just a shit part with no engineering behind it.
I left the visors next to my computer desk and started looking up info on Acuras. I’d had enough, and can’t wait til this transporter comes this Thursday to pick up this beautiful looking car that I get madd compliments on - daily. Sold it to a guy in CA, about 75 people total called about it. I know it’s junk, and it’s just a matter of time before everyone else realizes that this American flagship is a slap in the face to the unknowing consumer that thinks these issues are normal & acceptable.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed the car when it was working properly. I would love to buy American, if I had faith in American build quality. If the quality improves, I’d consider it - flapping targa panels aside, I’m impressed with the c6, from what I’ve seen. I hope you have the best of luck with your car and get a lot of fun miles out of it However, just some info from personal experience of a former c5 owner to take into account.
ok i’ve read enough, i’ll tell a few of my stories
old tacoma, guy came in to buy a new one, asked him if he was trading in his old one, he said hell no i’m keeping it. ased him a few more questions, his tacoma had 476K on it sitting right in front of me, original engine, never took it apart, he said only work done to itwas replaced the water pummp once, and he was on his 4th clutch.
another guy with an older camry, 353K on it , V6 5-speed, said he replaced the o2 sensor once, other than that, changed the oil every 5K and a couple clutches
i dunno …in selling cars for 2.5 years, I NEVER saw a domestic come in the lot or on trade that was in 1/4 as good of shape either of these two were, and had even 120K on it lol
that being said, i’ve never owned, and probably never will own a domestic car
Sorry to hear that about your vette, since I plan on keeping mine for, say the rest of my life, i’ll let you know how she holds up!
[quote=“KPTRYN,post:87,topic:31915"”]
I have always been a chevy truck fan. Worked construction for awhile and the company had all ford f350’s with 7.3 diesels(best motor ford built in my opinion).
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They didn’t build it. Navistar did.
Time will tell how well the Tundras and Titans hold up. I expect they’ll do fine. If Toyota made a pickup with Cummins power I’d be on it like stink on a monkey.
For the uneducated domestic fans…if you only knew how much Chinese and Indian stuff was in your “American” vehicle. Many aren’t even assembled here. Most rams and I think all Cummins Rams are assembled in Saltillo. Many GM trucks are assembled in Silao.
and many nissans are assembled in guatalahara.
[quote=“Nikuk,post:90,topic:31915"”]
hmm, so everything on the GMs Zeta platform is foreign? seeing as it comes from Holden?
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I see your point, but wouldnt you call my Nissan Or A Tundra foreign although it was built here with American workers? Even though Ford owns Mazda, I still consider it foreign. (imho)