Did terrible cars bring down Detroit's automakers?

The Big 3 Automakers are idiots! If you you at any of the car linups and compare them to their competitors - the big three fail in so many areas. Look at the simple use of a few amenities already standard in "foreign" cars that American cars lack: Full sized spare tire, locking gas door, full sized glovebox - the list can go on.

My point is the big three tried to let namesake carry a poor lineup, a failed strategy. Not only is the quality not there but the Big 3 are beholden to the UNIONS and the unions are what did them in. Toyota, Honda and Nissan did it right by not letting their shops become union shops. Far too many labor laws exist these days to make unions anything more than a relic of days gone by.

The high cost base that domestic auto makers have carried for years eventually brought them down. When the Japanese came here, they had a cost model that was superior. Lame management and union leaders could never accept the fact the party was going to be over if the cost model was not reworked. Now the party is over, and everyone is shocked?

Are you kidding? Detroit had winners too while the European and Japanese manufacturers had classic losers. The difference is that the Europeans (excluding Yugo, Fiat, Citroen, and Alfa Romero who bowed out of the USA market), and Japanese fought back more aggressively than Detroit with product and marketing improvements.

I think that USA manufacturers lost the market when they (a) chose the path of using lobbyists to ignore the massive petroleum supply complexities, (b) allowed the pox of "USA Midwestern mentality" to make manufacturing/marketing decisions, and ( c) made serious management errors related to paying for retiree benefits.

Many dealers also had problems keeping up with a plethora of differing models, often to the point of incompetent service and poor value.

I viewed each of the looser slides online and was bombarded by Toyota and Audi advertisements. THAT WAS IN REALY IN POOR TASTE! Guess where I won't look for my next vehicle purchase!

I have owned many cars and trucks over the years, both domestic and foreign (3 Volvos and 1 Toyota) and feel that my 1996 2-door Tahoe with 191,000 miles (original engine and remanufactured transmission at 175K miles) is the best one yet. On a recent 2200 mile road trip to the CO mountains, it achieved a consistent 19.4 + mpg. Yes, I drove with a light foot, allowing the lead foots pass as they wished.

I challenge the writers to do another e-story on the Foreign Bombs and run Chevrolet and Ford advertisements while the e-reader views the slides.   

If anyone's interested in a good parallel to the Detroit auto crisis, they should look up a documentary called "Who killed the British Motor Industry" by Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear.  It's all about the downfall of British Layland in the 70's, at the time one of the biggest car manufactures in the world after the Detroit Big Three.  The simularities are uncanny...crappy products, over powerful unions, ineffective managment, too many divisions, too many shared platforms across divisions....starting to sound familier? 

It's funny how history has a way of repeating itself, and even funnier how quickly we forget past mistakes.

To Jeff Nichols...I totally agree with you!! However, good luck in convincing these buffoons. You'll never get it through their goofy minds that buying American... and with it, the zillions of middle class paying jobs... are actually beneficial to THEM...and their country. Nope, they sit here and watch their 401's collapse, their house values plummet, true unemployment near 20%, most states bleeding red ink, the federal deficit approaching 12 TRILLION $$...and these idiots cannot connect the dots. For decades now,foreign govt's. have been playing games with currency valuations, subsidizing THEIR industries with socialized medicine, while maintaining barriers to insure they only EXPORT(the Koreans are great at it)...and far toooo many Americans have taken the bait!! We ALL are paying for this short-sightedness!! Our massive monthly trade deficits for the past 35 years should have been a wakeup call by now, you would think.

To that rocket scientist talking about how we as a nation have "EVOLVED" to information...well I've got some info for you...if we don't take back and rebuild OUR industrial base and start making things again...and SOON...we will collapse from within. It's started already, only the blind and the naive refuse to see it.WAKE THE HELL UP PEOPLE!! WHAT LEVEL DOES THIS HAVE TO REACH B4 IT CLICKS IN YOUR BRAIN??? If this was'nt so serious, it'd be laughable!!

P.S. Yes, Honda and other foreign car makers assemble some vehicles here, but many of their parts come from Japan. The bottom line is this....your $$ is leaving this country and going into the pockets of a foreign company which ultimately benefits the people and govt. of that foreign country...not YOUR country!!

To sell a new car, the idea behind having dealerships,cars must wear out and look out of date. Design and tooling are exremely expensive. Rebadging cars for different corporate lines is not new. Check out the 60's GM A,B,and X body platforms. In fact, Nova(chevy),Omega(olds)Ventura(pontiac)Apollo(buick). The 1st letter of each spells, you guessed it--NOVA!!!

its really ridiculous to say that the Jeep Cherokee and Ford Taurus brought down Detroit... these vehicles were a HUGE success.....IN THEIR DAY... the thing that killed Detroit was that they developed some great cars and then tried to sell the same exact car for 15 years.... Honda and Toyota can credit much of their success to making the incremental improvements to the Taurus and Cherokee...

Then there's the UAW... lets just say that not too many of thier upper managment are going to see the pearly gates...

I recently rode to Pittsburgh in the back seat of an H3; worst designed vehicle I have ever been in! My F150 Supercrew rides better, appears to get better gas mileage, has tons more interior room and then there is getting into the back seat. I am 6' and 200 lbs and unless you have much longer legs than I do, there is a piece of plastic by the rear seat that goes into your "seat" everytime you get in or out of the back seat! How could any company go ahead and make this junk.? Didn't anybody notice that the back seat was only good for storage (unless you like plastic wedged-up your crack)? The front window has almost no slope, so you hit every bug flying at that time and the SUV is as aerodynamic as a brick. Maybe the Chinese will make a better H3 than GM was able to (couldn't be much worse)!

I have always owned a gm product of some kind, but mostly chevy's. I have never had a problem with any of them, I would say that Detroit in a whole did stay on a design to long, and didn't listen to what people wanted, but i would say with the new mustang and camaro,and challenger designs they are doing better, but not everyone wants a sports car.

And first of all it is not the unions fault for poor designs, maybe some greed, but that happens to all working people you always want more. and if the company gives it to them. but i would also hate to say i have worked in non-union places and it is the same, the americans got their butts kicked because of crapy management who wouldn't listen to the guy putting their product together, management not getting rid of the bad apples.

but i will never buy a foreign companys car, never had anything i ever thought looked good, their designs are as bad as everyone's else. I'd rather have the 57 chevy, or 68 camaro, or 69 dodge charger, than some upside down bathtub with wheels.

maybe if we get an electric car we can have a body style of what ever car you like, that would be nice.

It has to do with value for the money. I've owned imports almost exclusively, mainly because their frequency of repair numbers as reported by Consumers Union were invariably (at least for the ones I bought) much better than average while comparable US brands were much worse than average. When I buy a car, I want it to run well for a very long time, without it costing me a fortune to maintain. I don't mind paying a bit more up front for it since I expect to have it almost forever, so I better really like it initially. Once I have a good experience with a particular brand I'm likely to buy another when I'm eventually done with the first. My impression is that the US automakers spent years making cars look different every year instead of making them more reliable. In fact, if it was a piece of junk it was even better since that would get the buyer coming back for a new one sooner. That may work if you have no significant competition, but it left the market open for German, Japanese and Korean competition. Now the chickens are coming home to roost.

There's not a Damn thing wrong with American Built Cars, except that American Built Cars have to compete with the Foreign Trash Cars that are imported into this country without there being anyTariffs & Taxes imposed upon these Foreign Trash Cars!

Seriously People, how can American Built Cars compete when Foreign Trash Cars are shipped 6000miles over the ocean in these big Container Ships and they are being sold cheaper than American Built Cars made in the Great USA?

I actually own one of the 10 cars that supposedly brought down the Auto-Makers, a Jeep Cherokee and it's one of the finest cars I own! How it made the top ten list of terrible cars I'll never know being that they never really said why the Jeep Cherokee was such a Terrible Car!

Bad management is a pretty big umbrella. It accounts for brands that don't really serve a unique purpose but squander resources that should be extended on new platforms. It accounts for a massively deep management pyramid. It accounts for committee watered down vehicle design that is so inoffensive, it doesn't get anyone's blood pumping. It accounts for accountants over engineers running model lines. It accounts for outdated factories used for far too long, putting quality slop into the assembly process onto the heads of workers pressured to work faster than the quality could be maintained without the precision equipment they needed. It covers everything from the first drawing of a new car to rolling it out of the dealership.

There was simply too much management, an expensive waste of resources when you consider that you can get two or more engineers for the price of one manager.

But I'd argue that GM built and builds cars that people want. Chevy still beats Toyota in sales, even in this economy. Getting down to the four brands is a good step to where they need to be, and I'd argue they could have gotten rid of Buick, but are keeping it because the Chinese market for it is so large. The more recent models released like the lastest Malibu and Camaro are excellent cars, well thought out and well executed.

And I know people who are fanatical about their Cobalts, HHRs and the imported Aveo.Owners of the current Malibu are equally fanatical (but not of the previous version).

I'll agree with the people who say it like it is: The big 3 all hold on to their models without significant upgrades or redesigns for too long. By their EOL, the models are jokes. I'd even say that they should introduce, upgrade at three years, and retire every model name every 6 years. Then introduce something all new in the class, rinse and repeat. Then bring back the retired model name out of retirement 6 years later with an all new redesign (like the newest Camaro, which is backordered beyond all sense or even GMs most optimistic expectations).

How did the Honda Accord not make this list? You made a list of cars that hurt Detroit and didn't include a single foreign entry? How about the effect that the popularization of foreign cars had on Detroit?

Basically all 3 US automakers got fat and stupid selling SUVs.

I had a professor in college who made a required reading assignment regarding this exact thing. It was about a guy named Demming who helped Americans during the war with building airplanes. He had a business plan that dealt mostly with how to manage people which I do not know much about. The other part of his business plan is what really counted. He figured that if you built quality into every single part instead of making one that would work, but not for long, you would have a much better car. He said that Detroit built parts and then inspected them, throwing back the ones that were bad. He took his idea to Detroit and their response was that they didn't need to change because they had the market. He took his idea to Japan whose people were very humble after the war, and they listened. That is why, for the most part, Japanese cars have power locks & windows, cruise control, air conditioning and other parts like that still work after 300,000 miles. Also, the transmissions hold up and a set of Honda struts are still working well at 250,000 miles. The only reason I changed mine at that point was because I thought a thump I heard was from them which turned out to be a couple of rubber gromets holding the bar that goes between the two front wheels. Not sure if that is a sway bar or what they call it. I had one that got rear ended, a 1987 Civic with about 126,000 miles on it. The insurance company for the other driver paid me extra for low mileage.

I don't think Detroit has the idea they make the best cars anymore and probably wish those who went before them with the big egos would have listened to Deming. His actual name is W. Edwards Deming, and he founded the W. Edwards Deming Institute® which carries on what he started. I don't know if they still teach exactly what the Dr. taught, but it is a non profit organization. Maybe the American auto makers should go to them with the same humble manner that the Japanese listened to him. General MacAuthor was sent to Japan by our government to help them rebuild after WWII.

When I typed in "Detroit scoffs at Deming" using Bing search engine, I came up with one that tells of what I am saying. That site is for anyone who would like to read more. I am glad my professor made the book on Dr. Deming required reading, I learned a lot back then. That was 15 years ago that I read the book.

My first car was a Pinto, followed by a Chevette then a Monza. All crappy cars, bought because I couldn't afford anything better, until I stumbled into a Toyota dealership 25 years ago. I've driven a lot of Detroit iron since then (every single time I travel and rent a car), but have yet to find anything I would want to replace what I had each time. I have no problem buying from a useless union or not. The price and quality will make the decision for me, and as long as bean counters who fear the uaw are in charge in Detroit, I'll stick with my Toys and Hondas.

So the Taurus and the Explorer eh? Two very successful designs that helped KEEP their manufacturer in the game...

The Cherokee was also a success for quite some time.

While many of those designs were terrible and unsuccessful...the three listed above did quite well.

Obviously there aren't too many people avoiding Explorers because of that infamous rollover issue...considering they are ubiquitous.

Poor management and the UAW is what killed Detroit.

I feel for all my fellow MOPAR fans.

The Pontiac Sunbird was a horrible design - a failed $10 heat sensor would lead to a boiled over engine, resulting in thousands of dollars of repairs. The Chevy AstroVan was a horrible design. Replacement of any components under the hood involved hundreds of dollar's worth of labor to take it apart and reassemble, and this could happen often as the vehicle aged. The Chevy Baretta required you to pull the engine to change the spark plugs. And so on, and so on... lately, GM's cars have become 'bloat-mobiles' too big and too expensive - if they don't turn this around, they're dead.

Horrible designs - cars that incur thousands of dollars of damage when a $10 heat sensor fails - cars that cost hundreds of dollars to change a starter motor - cars that cost $800 to replace each of 6 fuel injectors - lately, GM's cars have become 'bloat mobiles' - too big and too expensive. Chrysler doesn't know how to build an air conditioner - I've never seen one last much beyond 100,000 miles , indeed, I believe Chrysler cars are designed to last about 60,000 miles. Bad, bad, bad design - constantly seeking ways to cheapen the product to increase profits. That's bad, bad, bad management...

The worst decision management did was to cave to the union demands, though caving in to blackmailers is rather tough.

Notice that ths socialists taking the poll left out union as a third choice. I'm SURE it was just an oversight! :<)