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I was watching this live video podcast tonight. The podcasters were leaving a restaurant and taking a cab home. The topic came up of foreign automobile superiority. They were lambasting ford for their high performance cars and saying basically they don't know what Ford is thinking. One guy said that when he goes on trips he gets offered the SUV at the cheapest price and was wondering what that said about what people wanted to rent.

One guy said that when he goes on trips he gets offered the SUV at the cheapest price and was wondering what that said about what people wanted to rent.

Them sneaky @#$*%!($! It's thigs like this where they try to come up with the old, "These are the kind of vehicles that are popular..." kind of thing. As for American companies, especially Ford, if they don't get their act together there may not be a company for the foreign cars to be superior to.:angry:

It's hard to consider any of our companies domestic anymore. No company is 100% built in USA are they?

http://autos.aol.com/article/general/v2/_a/domestic-or-import/20060630140209990001

Car companies are transnational conglomerates. They don't give a crap about this country or that country. They care about profit, they have a fiduciary responsibility to increase shareholder value, as a first priority. Their relationship with their workers in every country is an adversarial one - they exploit them as much as possible.

In the case of Ford/GM, they exploit your patriotism about "buying American" for the purpose of selling you cars or trucks. But many of the vehicles they sell are built elsewhere. Go to a different country, the commercials focus on that country, and those people's patriotism to their country.

I don't care where the headquarters of a company is, or who their CEO is. I only care where the factory that built my car is. But even that is inadequate, because cars are built from parts, and parts of parts... And where are THEY built?

I'm not interested in helping to prop up companies that don't understand how to build good cars, or how to compete. I personally think, that if everyone buys the best car that they can find, for a certain value, that the companies will tend to build to that - and head in that direction. Whatever "best" means.

You have to have your head pretty far up your butt, to be in the business of selling gasoline powered vehicles, and NOT hear SOMEwhere that oil is going to be costing more soon. And not understand how that might affect your business. And not prepare for that by building good efficient cars. Hell, some of them are just too ugly to buy...

And in the case of Ford. I will NEVER buy a Ford. If the exploding Pinto wasn't enough - they had to be publically embarrassed before they took action. They had the same basic problem with the Crown Victorias. Exploding gas tanks. I'm no expert, but from what I've read, all they had to do, was install a metal shield, and the gas tanks wouldn't get ripped open into the passenger compartments. All they had to do was that, and instead they just kept buying off the victims. For years. Yes, Crown Victorias - that means police officers. 12 of them. And many others. Oh, and the doors would stick, trapping the victims. A neighbor of mine was one.
http://www.crownvictoriasafetyalert.com/designproblem.html
google this guy:
Jason Schechterle (AZ police officer)

And I will not be lectured to, by a CEO that makes tens of millions of dollars every year, or his marketing departments, while complaining about the nature of the market, While not fixing things like this. While not building good efficient cars. I'm not running a charity here... Build a decent car, and I'll buy it.

I care to some degree about workers, about where the car is built. My NAH was built in Tennessee. It was some part of my decision.

-Gren

Ford also had those mustangs (64'-70') that, if hit in the rear, would pour gasoline into the interior and then burst into flames.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/1999/05/17/60II/main47539.shtml

Long ago I wanted to get a classic mustang, but stories like these made me never want to buy a Ford.

Basically the same thing with the Explorer and rollovers. Instead of widening the wheel base to make the thing more stable, they figured out that it would be cheaper just so quietly settle lawsuits. They finally got around to widening the wheel base in '02 I think, but only because they started building a bigger F150, which the explorer is based on.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/rollover/

Didn't that have to do with the Firestone tires that they used? I remember the Explorers had poor quality tires that would blow out and cause roll overs and Ford didn't do anything about it. They blamed Firestone, but they still got sued for using them in the first place. So ontop of the problem of potential rollovers they also had tires that added to it.

Firestone got screwed, if you ask me. Even if a tire blows out, and I don't recall it was ever determined that those tires failed more than average, it should NEVER cause a vehicle to roll over. Yeah, ford probably chose the wrong tire for that vehicle. But the end user can put any cheap piece of rubberized plastic on that they want, and doing so shouldn't put them at serious risk of death. The design of the vehicle was severely flawed.

Agreed to bad tire match to vehicle that already has a higher rollover risk. Want to add to that it's more likely a driver is going to overturn if they have only one arm on the wheel....yeah I know about dwelling on that but there is a bunch of it, including one bozo with only the inside of his elbow on the wheel on the freeway.

Is this the "pick on Ford thread?" what about GM and the corvair or their mid 70's pickups that would explode if you hit them in the side? And how about mopar and their current ads that tout "Our most fuel efficent line up of vehicles ever" ha ha ha ha ha .......just my 2 cents.


Yes I will admit that I used to like Fords.....to bad they build nothing worth a crap except for the mustang now.

Is this the "pick on Ford thread?" what about GM and the corvair or their mid 70's pickups that would explode if you hit them in the side? And how about mopar and their current ads that tout "Our most fuel efficent line up of vehicles ever" ha ha ha ha ha .......just my 2 cents.


Yes I will admit that I used to like Fords.....to bad they build nothing worth a crap except for the mustang now.

In the interest of being an equal opportunity offender :p, I'll mention the car I grew up in.
http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/506/tb05.jpg

A 61' Corvair had something worse - a spin-of-the-highway-rear-first hazard. :eek: It's because it steered as easy as a bike, but 60% of the weight was in the rear. Nader claimed in his book 50-60 drivers that turned too fast at highway speeds were killed that way. Bad suspension did not help either....and the gas tank was right infront of the driver. Like other cars of it's day, it had no seat belts, safety glass, or padding on the dash (it was all metal). Heating was piped directly from it's air-cooled engine (which sometimes leaked and carbon-monoxide poisioned some).

As unsafe as it was, it could seat six and get 20mpg - remarkable FE for 1961.

I think ford is being picked on because they were specificaly mentioned by the people I was talking about. Also, when ford is asked about what they plan to do about their lagging technology and they reply they are going to put more money into marketing, there is a major problem with the company.

Ford has to wake up. And if we don't keep pointing out to them where they are flawed they aren't going to change. They need a ground swelling of people to shout at them or they won't hear us.

If anyone wants to save the domestic automakers I say to them "don't buy american" These companies need to see that the path they are going down is not profitable for them. Sure, they will hurt in the short run, but at least now toyota and honda and the foriengs only have a small lead on them. Better to have them try to play catch up now than in 10 years when the lead is much larger.

I don't think anyone is being picked on - Ford or others. Certain companies pay hush money for years, while more people die, instead of fixing design flaws. Commenting on that, is not picking on them, it's holding them to account.

And in only a teeny-tiny way. People should be in prison for some of these decisions.

-Gren

Didn't that have to do with the Firestone tires that they used? I remember the Explorers had poor quality tires that would blow out and cause roll overs and Ford didn't do anything about it. They blamed Firestone, but they still got sued for using them in the first place. So ontop of the problem of potential rollovers they also had tires that added to it.


I don't think it was the tire as much as it was the inflation that Ford reccomended. IIRC, they reccomended some rediculously low psi like mid to upper 20's psi. Customers were complaining some about the fact that the Explorer had too much of a truck-like ride so, instead of re-designing the truck-like suspension, they took the cheap route and lowered the reccomended tire psi.

I don't think it was the tire as much as it was the inflation that Ford reccomended. IIRC, they reccomended some rediculously low psi like mid to upper 20's psi. Customers were complaining some about the fact that the Explorer had too much of a truck-like ride so, instead of re-designing the truck-like suspension, they took the cheap route and lowered the reccomended tire psi.

And then when people started dying, they kept paying hush money, instead of just telling people to inflate their tires. And so other people died...

It's not the design flaw that I object to. It's the coverups.

-Gren