Toyota recalls more vehicles than sold in 2006

A nyc liberal will never be conviced by common sence its a foreign thing you live in a diffrent world.

 

I think the proper question should be:

"Why can't an American company make a car like this?"


And please don't label me, cjman. It might just nip ya in the bud.

 

CJ , you're wasting your time , its not that Diego is a liberal , though he speaks like one more often than not , he's a product of "amercia is bad" brainwashing .

 

Diego, get your nose out of the Times! :grin: Manhattan truly is an island unto itself.

I guess it all depends on how you define "crap" and "quality." I remember in the late '70s and early '80s how everyone gushed about Japanese "quality" because the panels were better aligned. Meanwhile, that perfectly aligned steel was so thin it would rust through in half the time of the American cars. Maybe that's not a big deal in California, but in Michigan it sure is. To me, the best indicator of quality is longevity. As far as I'm concerned, nothing the Japs made in the '70s and '80s lasted as long as what was coming out of Detroit, both body and drive train.

I'm 100% for free and equal trade. If foreign manufacturer's were required to meet the same labor and environmental laws as those on US soil, I'd be happy to let them import duty-free. Until then, I'd like to see a duty assessed proportional to their offenses.

As for US manufacturing plants which are foreign-owned, not much we can do about that. It's too bad the profits aren't staying home, but at least the work and associated wages are.

 

John, I think you know me well enough that I think for myself, rather than chirp the usual pap that's on AM radio or some song-and-dance that I was taught by me pappy.:Smarty:

 

I think the best measure of quality is the resale value. American cars always lose on that account. Right or wrong.

There seems to be a massive media blitz to smear Toyota right now, in case you haven't noticed. That usually doesn't happen by accident in our news media.

Wait until one wins at Daytona. Maybe not this year, but they always get better. It's called kaizen.

 

Actually, it's called money.

 

I for one was a nascar fan but their love for money and allowing toyota in has made me change mind.They are purely money driven and I will not waste my time watching foreign cars welcomed in just becuase they paid their way in.I have not watched a truck race since they were allowed in and will never watch another cup race.It was getting way to boring and to full of non race related crap anyway and the reason some of the field was former retired drivers and no names is that they need to have a full 43 car field or they have to give back TV revenue. It was good ,it was exciting now its just way to money driven and pathetic.

 

I'll have to give Toyota credit in being smart enough to target their market...they realize what part of the market they're lagging in, and are going after it (ala NASCAR). They've also started sponsoring high profile muscle car shows, such as the York US30 Reunion...

 

Toyota sponsors the York Reunion ?????????? ou:

 

No question you can't do it without money, but Rob is right. They leave nothing to chance. The difference is Toyota spends their cubic $$$ on the product, not themselves. They never stop trying to improve.

I'd about given up on Nascar until this was just delivered.

KDS-R50XBR1 50" Grand Wega SXRD TV 1080p (awesome)

Maybe now with freeze frame and a magnifying glass, I can actually see what kind of car each one is purporting to be. In primer, they all look identical.

I should be bitch slapped for the way I conned my wife into letting me buy this. :grin:

 

Dave: I hate to sidetrack, but how about you fill me on the research behind your purchase? My wife says we're getting a new flat screen of some type as soon as I finish our house...I'm satisfied with the reliable 27" Admiral that I bought with money I got working over in Springfield one summer in High School...anyway, LCD vs. Plasma, size vs. resolution, etc...I'm a *HUGE* Sony fan myself, and 90% of our electric gizmos are Sonys, so how's the Wega?

 

Toyota & Honda do win when it comes to RESALE value, proven fact. The winners circle in Nextel is also on its way.

All the naysayers can buy American, complain about perception, etc, but the resale simply isn't there. Before the attacks roll in, keep in mind, as the son of a 36 year career GM employee, I've been in the GM camp a lonnnnng time, bought my share of new ones & love my vintage GM muscle.

When we were midsized SUV shopping late last, personally drove quite a few GM's, Jeeps, Honda's, Lexus, Acura's, Toyota's, even a Murano & a Hemi Durango. On the styling of the Honda's is a little staid, esp the Pilot... one of the main reasons we didn't buy one.
In the Toyota camp, The Sequoyas hold their resale very well, as do the 4 Runners. The Highlander is due for a redesign.

Ck out Toyota's 3rd Generation hybrid, no mfg'ers hybrid technology is more advanced. When Toyota introduces a new design Highlander, I'd be very tempted to purchase one as a hybid for my wife. Where else can one get that much fuel economy & really decent power, in midsized SUV pkg? Realize many will knock the hybrids, but in carefully comparing a hybid 2006 Highlander & V6 2wd 4 Runner, the hybrid Highlander would take around 30K miles to pay for the added initial expense over similiar sized but less efficient convential drivetrain 4 Runner. Not that bad, esp if there are state or Fed hybrid rebates. to make them even more affordable.

Got Posi?
:3gears:
Roger

 

double post

Got Posi?
:3gears:
Roger

 

All this reminds me of another story.

Years ago a friend of mine got married in the back yard of his mother in law.

Anyway, she had a Green Peace sticker on her Toyota.

I asked her how she could reconcile her beliefs when, at that time, Japan was by far the largest importer of South American rainforest wood, killer of Whales, slaughterer of Dolphins and importer of poached endangered species.

Kinda like people mindlessly buying from China.

No beliver in human rights, or opposer of abortion should support that.

I guess, the only real connection a lot of people have in the U.S. is to their own wallet. Even though they claim to believe otherwise.

 

Guys I am coming off of owning a brand new 2006 Chevrolet Avalanche that had the following problems within the first year of ownership.....

Rear seat radio wouldnt power up - 4 year old problem Chevrolet has known about since 2002 and I guess decided not to fix it in production.

Loud pop in front suspension upon turning -launching from a stop- service "rigs" are to disassemble -regrease the intermediate steering shaft or place poly spacers all around frame to body mounts. Again its a 3 year old problem they know aboutand have decided not to reengineer or fix properly.

Condensation under front floor mats.

An inside door light that sometimes wouldnt shut off unless I turned the dash dome switch on then off.

Guy I work with has a full sized Tahoe and had to change water pump at 18k because it was leaking ???

I traded in the 2006 Avalanche in for what I owed on it on Dec 26th 2006 and bought a brand new 2006 Tundra (my secondTundra). The first I had for 126k miles and 6 years almost totally trouble free except for an 02 sensor problem which Toyota eventually -finally paid for. Bottom line : I refuse to buy another GM car / truck anytime in the near future unless they start doing continuous product impreovement and fixing discovered -known problems in production...... I do love my Buick-G.s's though ! J.

 

Toyota has more part-time employees than regular hires. It isnot an engineering problem, but who cares attitude.If I only had 90 days to work and no reason to think that I WOULD BE HIRED. It wouldn't matter what went out the door.

 

At least someone understands how things work in America, if not the world. And China has been taking lessons from us, and they have been learning well.

 

Many of those part time employees where I worked didn't want any part of working full time.They couldn't afford the cut in pay, the poor treatment, and don't need the benefits as their spouse has that. Especially if the spouse is in government or education system up here. I had all kinds of regulations and policies on my regular Ford engineers regarding overtime, mandatory training sessions for the touchy feely stuff, and only partial control over their workloads and assignments. Matrix management and "team" building destroyed that years ago. With the contract people, I could work them 12-16 hours a day (if they wanted), send them on trips to the assembly plants without getting a vice president's approval, and control what they worked on 100%. We would get a purchase order for x number of $$$ to a contract engineering company and draw from that. These people actually got the best assignments as only 20% of our work had anything to do with engineering and developing the products in my area so everything took 4 to 5 times as long.

In most of those cases, they got equal or better benefits through their contract company/employer, but that balanced out with how much they made. We just paid for the time.

My experience working in the bowels of Mazda in Hiroshima showed me the same thing. They had many contract people and in fact everybody in the company was in a union either through Mazda or the company that they actually work for.

If you cut out even half of the bullshit that's been added by the bureaucracies in the Big 2, there would be a dramatic increase in the quality of work and would be reflected right into the products. Unfortunately, though when the cutting begins and continues, it's rarely the bureaucratic areas that get cut, only the technicals, be it the guy designing the parts, the guy testing them, or the guy assembling them and installing them on the vehicles. That is measurable whereas bullshit is not.

In Japan, it's true that many of the people are contract people, but they have more faith in their system (which is surprisingly more like ours than you think)

 

Did you all a favor and erased the major epistle I was writing on this.....

You're welcome.