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What's amazing to me, is I think the quality gap is much smaller than people tend to think but the American companies just let that image get created. Regardle
by Nelson69 18y ago
What's amazing to me, is I think the quality gap is much smaller than people tend to think but the American companies just let that image get created. Regardless of how the actual quality compares, people think American cars are lower quality. It didn't happen over night either. I can't imagine what went through their minds as they just let it happen; there was probably a lot of corporate thought control and it was un-PC to actually drive a Japanese car or say anything good about one for decades. You know you contrast that to like MS and their approach to Linux, MS is on top because they fear EVERYBODY and give them some respect. I just can't imagine letting my company develop and image of creating lower quality products than my competitors, for years and years.
Now the bigger difference is when you buy an inexpensive, smaller Toyota or Honda, they are radically different than an inexpensive, smaller Ford or GM car. The styling choices are different. For years Americans associated big and heavy with quality, they always thought the Japanese cars are tinny and flimsy. It really seems like when you buy an inexpensive American car, you get a cheap car but when you buy an inexpensive Japanese car you get a cost reduced version of their nicer cars.
- Xichekolas 18y agoWell it probably took years to bring the quality up to par, so in the meantime, there wasn't much else they could do to fight that perception. Now they suffer from a branding issue (on top of their other problems). It's like when the original AT&T was split up, and one of the companies to come out of it was GTE. GTE had horrible service and customers hated it. It perennially ranked at the bottom of the baby bells for customer satisfaction, etc. So GTE went and rebuilt it's whole network and suddenly had the best service and support. But when people heard 'GTE' they still thought 'crappy and unreliable'. The solution? They changed their name to Verizon. So building high quality cars that are stylish and true technical leaders might not be enough. (Especially now that the public associates 'GM' and 'Chrysler' with 'bailout'.) In all this bailing out they might have to change their brand name as well.
- philwelch 18y agoAccording to Wikipedia, GTE was independent even during the AT&T monopoly. It wasn't until the Bell Atlantic merger that they changed names to Verizon.
- donw 18y agoYou're very correct about the corporate thought control -- for years, GM employees were forbidden to buy anything but a GM car, and foreign cars were often vandalized in Detroit. There's still a mantra that 'Americans don't buy small cars.', even with the success of the Miata, the Mini, the Civic, and so on.