Yes, there is a difference between American and Japanese cars

Brent > wrote in
:

> On 2011-06-21, Tegger > wrote:

>>
>> I generally like Lutz's outspokenness, but I'm disappointed in him
>> with his comments in that article.
>
> Actually you picked the one comment that was pretty spot on. The
> others were rather wrong, but no that one.
>
> Japanese companies don't understand a particular irrationality of
> americans. Americans by and large expect something to be done
> immediately.. they don't care about details such as if it fixes the
> problem or not...




But... THERE WAS NOTHING TO FIX. That was Toyota's problem, just like with
Audi in the '80s with their "unintended acceleration": there was NOTHING
WRONG WITH THE CAR.

The one thing that /was/ wrong was the lynch-mentality of the media, and,
in Toyota's case, the lynch-mentality of the government as well.



--
Tegger

Brent > wrote in news:itp8jc$ss9$2@dont-
email.me:

> On 2011-06-21, larry moe 'n curly > wrote:
>
>> He also fails to explain how Chrysler, Ford, or GM would have handled
>> a situation of this magnitude. Toyota paid dealers to work 24 hours a
>> day on the "problem", and the head of one large DC-Virgina dealer of
>> several brands said none of the other manufacturers has ever taken
>> problems as seriously.
>
> Because that stuff is done quietly.



Long before that dumb cop in San Diego died, Toyota did discover a problem
with electronic gas-pedal assemblies made in Canada. A running change was
implemented, the revised assemblies having a white dot painted on one side
of the the housing to indicate the presence of the updated hardware.
Running changes are done /all/ the time in the auto industry, and this was
just one of many.



> If GM did it there would be a TV
> commerical making sure everyone knew they did.



Toyota never did that because it was a routine product revision, of the
sort that are done all the time, even to this very second. And because no
crashes or other serious problems had ever happened to any customers' cars.

The one-and-only incident that was definitively tied to the gas pedal (the
SD cop) was caused by a dealership, which installed incorrect and unsecured
floormats in their loaner Camry, then failed to address the report from the
previous customer that he'd had the mats bunch-up on him and make the gas
pedal stick.

Just like Audi, Toyota was up against a lynch mob. There is no reasoning
with a lynch mob.




--
Tegger

On Mon, 20 Jun 2011 21:54:26 -0700, jim beam > wrote:


>>
>> San Fran bay eyes only see what they can see.
>> Here's the numbers for May,
>> http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/pag...autosales.html
>
>i know the reported sales figures, but truthfully, have you actually
>seen one? i haven't, and not just for the bay area, but sacramento,
>and all the way up to southern oregon. not one. i even asked a friend
>in los angeles [he'd happened to have heard the same npr report], and he
>hasn't seen one either. it's not like l.a. doesn't have many cars.
>

Well, I sat in one a couple weeks ago at the dealership when I was
picking up parts for my Lumina.
The Cruze has 10 air bags. Other than that it has the Ecotec engine.
Don't remember anything else, even much of what it looked like.
It's new, so it'll take a while for the numbers to build.
Since I retired I hardly drive except for my annual trek to Florida.
I do notice what brands are on those roads, as an anti-boredom remedy.
Besides that most of the cheap cars like the Cruze, Civic, Corolla all
look pretty much the same to me, and I was never one to ID cars after
fins went away.
Just never cared much except about my own car.
I'll ask my kid and wife, who drive every day and are more car model
conscious than me, if they've seen a Craze.
Once I have a comfortable ride that I can keep mechanically sound I
pretty much forget about cars for 6-10 years until what I haves rusts
out.
Except for reading about them.
I've not even been in a Toyota in my life. Never.
Had one short lunch ride in a Civic, and one in an Accord.
My point is what cars you see is pretty much local and doesn't tell
the sales story except locally.
A couple years ago GM had 20% of the U.S. market.
But California was less than 13%.
My suburban Chicago neighborhood is skewed toward Toyota/Honda.
But when I get on the interstate outside of Chicago I'm suddenly
seeing a whole bunch of Impalas and Mali bus.
When I get to Tennessee I see more Chromo models in 50 miles than I
saw the entire previous 4-500 miles.
You can believe your eyes or believe sales numbers.

--Vic

On 06/21/2011 05:58 AM, Vic Smith wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Jun 2011 21:54:26 -0700, jim > wrote:
>
>
>>>
>>> San Fran bay eyes only see what they can see.
>>> Here's the numbers for May,
>>> http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/pag...autosales.html
>>
>> i know the reported sales figures, but truthfully, have you actually
>> seen one? i haven't, and not just for the bay area, but sacramento,
>> and all the way up to southern oregon. not one. i even asked a friend
>> in los angeles [he'd happened to have heard the same npr report], and he
>> hasn't seen one either. it's not like l.a. doesn't have many cars.
>>
>
> Well, I sat in one a couple weeks ago at the dealership when I was
> picking up parts for my Lumina.
> The Cruze has 10 air bags. Other than that it has the Ecotec engine.
> Don't remember anything else, even much of what it looked like.
> It's new, so it'll take a while for the numbers to build.

well, if you believe the propaganda, the numbers have already "built".

and you may have sat in one, but you didn't buy one and are not driving
one. and apparently neither is anyone else.


> Since I retired I hardly drive except for my annual trek to Florida.
> I do notice what brands are on those roads, as an anti-boredom remedy.
> Besides that most of the cheap cars like the Cruze, Civic, Corolla all
> look pretty much the same to me, and I was never one to ID cars after
> fins went away.
> Just never cared much except about my own car.
> I'll ask my kid and wife, who drive every day and are more car model
> conscious than me, if they've seen a Craze.
> Once I have a comfortable ride that I can keep mechanically sound I
> pretty much forget about cars for 6-10 years until what I haves rusts
> out.
> Except for reading about them.
> I've not even been in a Toyota in my life. Never.
> Had one short lunch ride in a Civic, and one in an Accord.
> My point is what cars you see is pretty much local and doesn't tell
> the sales story except locally.

right, but you've seen honda and toyota on the road. have you seen a
cruze on the road?


> A couple years ago GM had 20% of the U.S. market.
> But California was less than 13%.
> My suburban Chicago neighborhood is skewed toward Toyota/Honda.
> But when I get on the interstate outside of Chicago I'm suddenly
> seeing a whole bunch of Impalas and Mali bus.
> When I get to Tennessee I see more Chromo models in 50 miles than I
> saw the entire previous 4-500 miles.
> You can believe your eyes or believe sales numbers.

eyes. these much propaganda'd sales numbers are as reliable as official
unemployment statistics.


>
> --Vic


--
nomina rutrum rutrum

On Tue, 21 Jun 2011 07:41:14 -0700, jim beam > wrote:

>On 06/21/2011 05:58 AM, Vic Smith wrote:
>> On Mon, 20 Jun 2011 21:54:26 -0700, jim > wrote:
>>

>>
>> Well, I sat in one a couple weeks ago at the dealership when I was
>> picking up parts for my Lumina.
>> The Cruze has 10 air bags. Other than that it has the Ecotec engine.
>> Don't remember anything else, even much of what it looked like.
>> It's new, so it'll take a while for the numbers to build.
>
>well, if you believe the propaganda, the numbers have already "built".
>

Huh? The car just went on sale in U.S. about 7 months ago.
I posted sales figures for May, about 20k,
There's millions of its competitors running around.
And you're in California.

>and you may have sat in one, but you didn't buy one and are not driving
>one. and apparently neither is anyone else.
>

As I said, I hardly drive. My son said he's seen 3 or 4.
Chevy in front, Corolla in back according to him.
Aerodynamic constraints have cars looking pretty much the same.

>> You can believe your eyes or believe sales numbers.
>
>eyes. these much propaganda'd sales numbers are as reliable as official
>unemployment statistics.
>

Right. In my old Chicago neighborhood Corsicas outnumbered Corollas
5:1. That meant Corollas weren't selling.
The Corolla sales numbers were "'propaganda."

--Vic

On 2011-06-21, Tegger > wrote:
> Brent > wrote in
> :
>
>> On 2011-06-21, Tegger > wrote:
>
>>>
>>> I generally like Lutz's outspokenness, but I'm disappointed in him
>>> with his comments in that article.
>>
>> Actually you picked the one comment that was pretty spot on. The
>> others were rather wrong, but no that one.
>>
>> Japanese companies don't understand a particular irrationality of
>> americans. Americans by and large expect something to be done
>> immediately.. they don't care about details such as if it fixes the
>> problem or not...
>
>
>
>
> But... THERE WAS NOTHING TO FIX. That was Toyota's problem, just like with
> Audi in the '80s with their "unintended acceleration": there was NOTHING
> WRONG WITH THE CAR.

Even if that were true, it is irrelevant to the american irrationality I
was describing. It is functionally impossible to stop people from
boarding aircraft with weapons on the order of box cutters, so in that
sense there was nothing wrong with airline security, but a fix was still
demanded by the irrational bedwetters that now make up "the american
public".

> The one thing that /was/ wrong was the lynch-mentality of the media, and,
> in Toyota's case, the lynch-mentality of the government as well.

It's a fascist (corporatist) system, of course the government that bails
out GM is going to go in like a shark that smells blood.

On 06/21/2011 08:26 AM, Vic Smith wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Jun 2011 07:41:14 -0700, jim > wrote:
>
>> On 06/21/2011 05:58 AM, Vic Smith wrote:
>>> On Mon, 20 Jun 2011 21:54:26 -0700, jim > wrote:
>>>
>
>>>
>>> Well, I sat in one a couple weeks ago at the dealership when I was
>>> picking up parts for my Lumina.
>>> The Cruze has 10 air bags. Other than that it has the Ecotec engine.
>>> Don't remember anything else, even much of what it looked like.
>>> It's new, so it'll take a while for the numbers to build.
>>
>> well, if you believe the propaganda, the numbers have already "built".
>>
>
> Huh? The car just went on sale in U.S. about 7 months ago.
> I posted sales figures for May, about 20k,
> There's millions of its competitors running around.
> And you're in California.
>
>> and you may have sat in one, but you didn't buy one and are not driving
>> one. and apparently neither is anyone else.
>>
>
> As I said, I hardly drive. My son said he's seen 3 or 4.
> Chevy in front, Corolla in back according to him.
> Aerodynamic constraints have cars looking pretty much the same.
>
>>> You can believe your eyes or believe sales numbers.
>>
>> eyes. these much propaganda'd sales numbers are as reliable as official
>> unemployment statistics.
>>
>
> Right. In my old Chicago neighborhood Corsicas outnumbered Corollas
> 5:1. That meant Corollas weren't selling.
> The Corolla sales numbers were "'propaganda."
>
> --Vic

it's not a "california" thing. chevy's aveo is very much in evidence
here [despite only ~2700 per month sold per month in jan and feb], and
i've even seen a number of volts [total of 1800 for jan and feb]. but
cruze? they recon they sold 13,631 in january alone - so where the heck
are they?


--
nomina rutrum rutrum

On 2011-06-21, Tegger > wrote:
> Brent > wrote in news:itp8jc$ss9$2@dont-
> email.me:
>
>> On 2011-06-21, larry moe 'n curly > wrote:
>>
>>> He also fails to explain how Chrysler, Ford, or GM would have handled
>>> a situation of this magnitude. Toyota paid dealers to work 24 hours a
>>> day on the "problem", and the head of one large DC-Virgina dealer of
>>> several brands said none of the other manufacturers has ever taken
>>> problems as seriously.
>>
>> Because that stuff is done quietly.

> Long before that dumb cop in San Diego died, Toyota did discover a problem
> with electronic gas-pedal assemblies made in Canada. A running change was
> implemented, the revised assemblies having a white dot painted on one side
> of the the housing to indicate the presence of the updated hardware.
> Running changes are done /all/ the time in the auto industry, and this was
> just one of many.

They are common in every industry. I have been dealing with Japanese
companies for many years, it's a different engineering/manufacturing
culture. Changes are done, even internally to the same company, quietly.

>> If GM did it there would be a TV
>> commerical making sure everyone knew they did.

> Toyota never did that because it was a routine product revision, of the
> sort that are done all the time, even to this very second. And because no
> crashes or other serious problems had ever happened to any customers' cars.

You seem to be intentionally missing my point. I am not faulting toyota,
I am describing cultural differences. What Toyota did works fine in
Japan. In the US the irrational ignorant bedwetters that have been
driving the culture and media for the last 30 years or so don't like
that. They don't care and don't understand quiet fixes. They don't
understand product development and manufacturing nor are they going to
or even try to. The media fans the flames because the culture eats it
up... this 'unsafe at any speed' rolling over SUV nonsense that just
keeps growing like a cancer in the society. They want fixes and they
want them now. The government exploits this over and over again... hell
their fingerprints are all over creating the problems so that they can
offer the solutions. "Never waste a crisis" is a now famous quote too.

On Tue, 21 Jun 2011 09:31:27 -0700, jim beam > wrote:


>
>it's not a "california" thing. chevy's aveo is very much in evidence
>here [despite only ~2700 per month sold per month in jan and feb], and
>i've even seen a number of volts [total of 1800 for jan and feb]. but
>cruze? they recon they sold 13,631 in january alone - so where the heck
>are they?

Probably in Bakersfield.

--Vic

On 06/21/2011 09:46 AM, Vic Smith wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Jun 2011 09:31:27 -0700, jim > wrote:
>
>
>>
>> it's not a "california" thing. chevy's aveo is very much in evidence
>> here [despite only ~2700 per month sold per month in jan and feb], and
>> i've even seen a number of volts [total of 1800 for jan and feb]. but
>> cruze? they recon they sold 13,631 in january alone - so where the heck
>> are they?
>
> Probably in Bakersfield.
>
> --Vic

lol!


--
nomina rutrum rutrum