They told me they wanted an "American" car, so they bought a Dart....

Global manufacturing = global parts bin.

Why set up to manufacture a duplicate part when there's one across the pond or border.

What state what the US automobiles be in if people blindly bought American without concern for what the quality is?

You'd get the current state of Hollywood. They churn out whatever crap they feel like because they know tickets will be sold, especially if it's a remake/reboot/sequel of something that once was good.

Knurled wrote: What state what the US automobiles be in if people blindly bought American without concern for what the quality is?

They called that "The 1970s"

My F-I-Law gets the UAW magazine and they used to publish which cars they support. I do remember them backing the Mazda 3 made in Detroit.

Trans_Maro wrote:

Knurled wrote: What state what the US automobiles be in if people blindly bought American without concern for what the quality is?

They called that "The 1970s"

Yeah, and some of you nutjobs actually like those cars!

Speaking of Dodge Darts...

I was reading about tunes for the 1.4L cars today. People are getting damn near 200hp at the wheels and even more torque from a Stage 1 reflash. That's pretty cool. All I remember about these from the reviews of the 1.4L is that they were gutless down low. They are also very, very cheap now, with some examples well below $10k. Would one of these with a tune be a scrappy, cheap daily driver that you could track?

Tom_Spangler wrote:

Trans_Maro wrote:

Knurled wrote: What state what the US automobiles be in if people blindly bought American without concern for what the quality is?

They called that "The 1970s"

Yeah, and some of you nutjobs actually like those cars!

The ones that SURVIVED.

Very few people wax nostalgic for 5000+lb cars with engines well over 7l that made less than 200hp because the attitude towards emissions controls was "fark it, just make less power". Or engines in the 5l range that made 120-130hp. Think about that in 2016 terms...

Or compact cars and that were complete and utter crapboxes, and midsizes that were slightly less crapboxes (ever drive a '74-77 A-body with an oddfire six?) because if you wanted something nice you'd get a big car. Which was the same crap, just $40 more steel, and maybe leather interior.

"Give 'em leather interiors. They can smell that." - some Detroit exec shooting down the idea of high quality compact cars. Might have been John Z. or Iacocca, it's all a bit fuzzy, but that there was the attitude.

I tend to buy American whenever practical. All the cars I bought for myself were either GMs or Fords built in the states with UAW stickers in the window. in the grand scheme of things it may not matter but I do like knowing that the majority of my money is going to my fellow Americans at least in theory. The lone exception is the wife's Fiat of convoluted parentage but she has a history of questionable decisions anyway.

Of course, the city where the car is "made" is just the location of the body, trim, chassis, and final assembly line. Where did all the parts come from? Hard to build an all-American or all-German or all-Korean car when you can get some of the crash-safety-critical parts only from the Canadian Tier-1 supplier I work for! If the foundry is in China, the extrusion plant is in Canada, the stamping plant is in Kentucky, the cradle is assembled in Ohio, and it goes onto the car in Michigan, where is it from? Where was the engineering, design, and development work done, and how was it split OEM/supplier for that car?

I mean, look at the list for the Takata airbag recall. Pretty much every major automaker from every nation is on that list, and all of them were using Takata airbags.

How many cars use Bosch fuel injection? Practically all of them that aren't Toyota.

I have an outlier, it uses Siemens injection (same country)... and the car is "Swedish", built in the Netherlands, designed largely by Japanese engineers, under American ownership.

I still want to get me one of them Brazilian-American engined German-owned English cars, because it reminds me so much of the American-built German car that I used to own.

Thanks to this thread, I discovered that Mack Trucks is part of the Volvo Group, which does not include Volvo cars anymore and hasn't for some time.

UAW Vehicle Guide

In reply to Knurled:

Mack was owned by Renault Trucks since I think the early 80s which was then bought from Renault by Volvo Trucks.