Heh.  Makes me feel better, a bit, for owning a Sienna.

That said, there’s a huge number of foreign automakers who have plants (manufacturing and/or assembly) plants in the US.  And lots of US automakers who farm out their manufacturing and/or assembly to foreign plants.

Of course, the profits from Toyota flow to Japan, not the US.  But as far as that goes, lots of US institutional funds have investments in those companies, too, if they’re making money and performing well.  So that money flows back to us ...

It’s a global economy, man.

Toyotas have seemed like American vehicles to me for awhile now.  I got a new Camry in 1992 that was made in Kentucky.  One has to make a special effort to get a car made in Japan, at least according to my local Toyota dealer.  It also depends upon what you think of as a Japanese car.  I think of one as being made in Japan, more than whether or not the parts are made there.

If thay are allowed to run in Nascar, they MUST be an american company.

While I would love for the American auto industry to make the best cars in the world, it just isn’t so.  Being regrettably poor, I bought the best car I could after my previous car was totaled in a collision, namely a ‘93 Toyota Tercel.  It’s got 166k on it now, passes emissions tests with no difficulty and gets about 25-32 mpg.  The only bad parts are the cheap seat upholstery is torn and the clearcoat has peeled off in big chunks.  Last summer I had a temp job that had me drive from Atlanta to Nashville, Memphis, Kansas City, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Buffalo and all through New York state and City, as well as Long Island and northern New Jersey.  The only repairs I needed were a CV joint and an oxygen sensor.

I doubt that there are many 13 year old American cars that have aged as well as the Tercels have.  I see lots of Tercels and other Japanese cars on the road still, but very few Escorts, Tempos, original Saturns, etc.

It’s a global economy, man.

Sad, but true:

Don’t think it all that sad. America is a mid-level salary nation (I’d like to say high-level, but that doesn’t generally apply anymore), right? So if companies stay there or actually expand their production there (or in any similar / western country), that means that apparently not ALL of the worlds manufacturing HAS to go to China or India (or tommorrow’s China and India, once the wages get too high there).

You know, one of the more hopeful scenarios is that some day capitalism might go through one of its better phases again, but globally? Not through the altruism of CEOs, but capitalism has been tamed before, especially in the mid and later stages of a (long-term) economic cycle. Meaning that workers actually got rights AND jobs both, and that wealth was spread wider than it is now, when we are driving forward to ever stronger concentration.

There might be something to it that eventually (probbably not in our lifetime) you could stabilize capitalism worldwide for a time (not forever though, all balancing acts fail eventually, the china drops and breaks, and then you start over - but thats history for you).

Okay, semi-coherent economic rant over.

Fred Barkley, president of the Bluegrass Mustang Club of Lexington, Ky. (owner of 3 Mustangs), ... says “I wouldn’t buy a Sienna ... I don’t like them because they are foreign.”

I thought he was gonna come up with something intelligent and less xenophobic.
About 30 years ago a bloke I know said he’d never buy a Japanese car.
Five years ago he bought one. I didn’t say a thing.

I’ve been banging on this drum for years now. Since I grew up in the home of a life long GM employee who was also a union member I was encouraged to always buy an American car (preferrably GM of course) and support the unions. I have always done both.

Since GM is more foreign than American, both in parts and labor, they no longer qualify as an American car company in my mind. I support the American worker because I am one, this has nothing to do with any kind of moronic nationalist zeal.