No sale!
Cars are most people's main form of transportation, so I suppose they are as good a topic as any for this forum.
So, Chevrolet will initiate a patriotic marketing campaign with the slogan "An American Revoution." I'd like to enjoy American cars, I really would, but there's one big problem and it's not that I'm a lilly-livered defeatist commie liberal weenie.
As much as it pains me to say so about an industry that built large swaths of my country, American cars are mostly butt-ugly, inefficient, badly designed and noisy. I had the (dis)pleasure of riding in a Ford Focus last night, and my experience only fortified my belief that the only way to sell these things is to appeal to something other than consumers' desire for quality. The cupholders were hidden below the stereo, which was hard to use and read. The seats were uncomfortable and the glove compartment jutted out too far. From the outside, the car is a giant-fly-like monstrosity. The country that brought the world the GTO now makes the aformentioned Focus and the Pontiac Aztek.
In fact, the only reason I'm complaining now is because it's been so long since I rode in an American car that wasn't a taxi (and it's been a while since I was in a taxi as well). All of my friends drive imports - they're young and don't make that much money, so things like reliability and fuel efficiency trump concerns like sticking it to the Krauts and Japs.
Maybe if Chevy and Ford stopped relying on jingoism and xenophobia to sell cars, they might actualy produce something worth purchasing. Their shameless performance after 9/11 leads me to believe they won't any time soon.
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rj3 | 9:21 AM |
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The irony is that the Honda Civic (maybe Accord) is the most American-made car, if you're talking about where the labor is actually done. The Toyota Camry is also made here. "American" cars are more likely to be built in Mexico.
