1200custom

Harley Davidson almost went out under the similar situation the US car makers are facing. Maybe history should be thier guide. Harley made it back, and now the foreign bikes are trying to be Harleys.

incomingRPG

Quote:

Originally posted by kevinb120@January 25, 2006, 12:08 AM
I hear all this proclamations about this car has 200k, 300k, whatever. Who the HECK wants a car with over 150000 miles of human 'butt' time? If you can't get another car by the time that it hits 150k, why do you even go to work? I have seen tons of all kinds of cars break the 200k mark. But who wants to own one? Yuck.

Quoted post

<!--QuoteBegin-1200custom@January 25, 2006, 3:09 AM
Harley Davidson almost went out under the similar situation the US car makers are facing. Maybe history should be thier guide. Harley made it back, and now the foreign bikes are trying to be Harleys.

Quoted post

[/quote]

darn straight, it's a Honda! If I could go back to 1995, I'd buy the same car. How many Taurus, Lumina or Intrepid owners would say that? When was the last time you saw a Taurus or Lumina from that year? When was the last time you even saw an Intrepid for that matter? If you look at some of the first posts, I believe that we have the same opinion of those cars.

Yuck????? Can't come up with a better word than Yuck? (Maybe it's the language filters). What you fail to recognize is that Honda has not lost the edge in quality, nor is their hold on mileage claims fleeting... The competition is FINALLY getting better. :worship: If it was not for the Japanese entering the US market, we would all still be driving the same crap they put out in the 70's. Competition by a superior product has forced them to do it, unfortunately that wasn't enough, they needed to get bloodied by years of losing market share. When it comes to Honda being an afterthought, you couldn't be more wrong, but I wrote it down and I'll be glad to check back with you in 2009. As for style, even today, that 95 Accord looks way better than any of those other cars from back then. Whether you get it or not, more buyers agree with me, and you can't argue with the sales numbers.

As for not being able to afford another car, my uncle told me when I was young that "Cash is your best friend"... and I've got plenty of friends! It took a few years of hard work and sacrifices, but I am doing real well thank you very much!

But I'll let you in on a dirty little secret, I need you! I need you to buy that Taurus, that Lumina, that Intrepid, if you didn't, I'd have to pay more for my Honda. I like being on this side of the relationship.

Just like you need me. You need me to buy that superior product, if I didn't buy it, they would not be forced to improve upon the products they offer to you. That is what finally brought Harley Davidson to the point of producing the awesome bikes they produce today, versus the crap the put out into the late 80's. It was produce an awesome product or die.

You and I both want Ford and every other manufacturer to do this, because in the end, we both win! We just see it a little differently, and that is all right with me.

arc05

I didn't have time to read every comment in this topic but I think a lot of you are missing the ball. I've read some that nail it though. Ford needs reliability. Not more power. There's rumors flying around about SVT becoming nixed after this Shelby. There's rumors going around that Ford will eventually become a Trucks only company within 20-30 years, at least in the US.

I'd love to see a pepped up Focus, or a 245 hp Fusion. But face it, they don't need that. This isn't a muscle car war. No one besides us gear heads care about that stuff. Women (as a majority, not all of course) could care less how much hp they have and whether they can beat that Camaro in 0-60. They want reliability, they want to know for a fact that their car will not break down on I-294 at 12:30 in the morning. Look at the cars that are selling: the Camry, the Civic, the Accord, etc. Do they have styling? heck no. They're just not 'ugly'. They have nothing to them. But they last. I had a 1988 Nissan Maxima. Nothing was ever done to that car, in fact it seemed that in the past everything was done to make sure it died. But that engine kept running. Never one problem, even when the oil was never changed and by rights that thing should have gone. You cannot say that about a Taurus, or even the 500 (too young at this point). That's why the Taurus died while everything else grew.

Ford was stupid in America. Plain and simple. They weren't alone, GM was probably even more stupid. But the fact is, right now, I'm in England studying abroad for Mechanical Engineering. You look around here and you know what you see? Cars Europeans WANT. 90% of these cars probably don't have any more power than 180 (and that's giving a lot of them some credit). Gas prices are AWFUL here and you know what's being built? Cars that can get 45 mpg. Cars that don't crash a month after your 3 year warranty. Cars that people know and trust. You know what was the best selling car? The FORD FOCUS. A plain, run of the mill, Focus. I see more Fords here than I do in America. And you know why? Because they're reliable here. They always have been. Ford has come out with the Mondeo (a 500/Fusion combo type car), and the Ford Ka (a mini-Focus... yes Mini Focus). Ford has been giving these people what they want. And do you know why? Because they have to TRY here. They don't have their name to run on here. They actually have to come up with products that people want because no one can give a darn if Ford has been around in America since the beginning.

I'm a die hard Ford fan and I really hope that Ford follows through with all it's been saying but it's really hard to trust them after they've led us so far astray completely ignoring anything the public has ever wanted. At least they know it now but this will take years to recover from.

And another thing, Unions may be hurting sales and such. But think about the national aspects of both Ford and GM laying off over 90,000 people total? What about those towns that were only alive because of the factories in them? I mean it's a harsh reality to come to these people that because Ford wasn't able to think of the public and what would happen to the little people if they didn't change their image around and fast. I'm not supporting the exploitation that the Unions were doing but closing that many factories and losing that many jobs does not help the American economy. This is what it's all about right? We don't want to be beat by the Japanese, the Chinese, etc. The heads of the corporation are willing to cut 60k jobs at GM but when told that some of them should just take a salary cut they freaked and said they could never do that and how could that possibly help.

Maybe this is all good. Maybe it will come with a Darwin effect and only the strongest will survive. Maybe all those idiots running the show will realize how they've screwed their company, their people, and their country. But some how I'm still doubting it. I pray and hope that Ford will not follow the suit of GM and still be ignorant in the face of defeat but at this point who really knows? I'll gain optimism back when I see the 4 hybrid vehicles on the road in 2010; I'll gain it back when I see a cargo space in the F150 like the Ridgeline; I'll gain it back when they actually are building cars that the people want, not what's easiest for them; I'll gain it back when they actually become efficient in their car plants and make more than one model at one spot. But for now I'm sitting in limbo, preparing for the worst, and to buy a VW.

scottie1113

Kevin, it's because you like a car enough to keep it. I had a 77 BMW 320i I bought in in 80 with 40K on the clock and kept it for 14 years and another 300,000+ miles on the odometer. It was a great car and was almost maintenance free.

Later I bought an 84 Alfa Romeo Spider with about 70K miles and kept it for 7 years, putting another 80K on the clock. Of all the cars I've owned, it is the one I like the best.

It's not about affordabilty. It's because you bought the right car when you were looking and you made a good choice and because the car of your choice at the time served the need or want you were looking for at the time. My current ride is old but it does what I want and need, so why buy a new car?

There's a guy who has a Volvo P1800 with more than 1,000,000 miles on it, and there's a guy in my town who is the original owner of a 65 Mustang. He must like it and feels no need to trade it for anything. It works for him.

I don't change cars like people change socks and I know that's bad for folks who sell cars, but the reality is that depreciation is not my friend and a car manufacturer has to do a lot to get me to part with my cash.

The European Focus has my attention now, but we'll never see it here.

In the last year several people where I work I purchased new--for them-cars, and all were used and all were foreign. Guess what. They're happy with them. All of them considered new domestic cars and they all came away with the thought that what was available wasn't either interesting enough or wasn't worth the price.

It's a rapidly changing world. I hope Ford adapts to it, and I think they will.