Made in America, Revisited

I was born in the USA. I lived for a while elsewhere and I know that America is, for me at least, "the" place to live.

I was very much a "Buy America" flag waver.

But I just traded in an "assembled-in-the-USA" SUV for a 90% made-in-Asia car.

I have, over the years, owned a number of Ford and GM vehicles; even a great Rambler Rebel wagon, c 1967, the brief period Rambler wore the American Motors logo.

So, why did ol' Red, White, and Blue look west for the current transportation?

Quality.

Warranty.

The SUV I turned in was a '99. I had to replace the transmission before 100,000 miles.

That would not have been so bad, but in researching the transmission's history, I discovered the problem my car encountered was the same one other same-make SUV owners had been encountering for more than a few years.

In other words, management of the car maker refused to change a bad unit.

I am not pointing a finger at the folks who built or assembled the "assembled in America" SUV; I fault management.

At one point I owned an American-assembled Diesel passenger car.

I went to a new car dealer for the vehicle's first oil change. The factory-trained service tech tyro changed a filter and put in a little over 4 (US) quarts of oil.

What's wrong with that? The car required two oil filters and 5-plus quarts of oil.

Then there was the cracked block and the hung-up starter - the dealer people couldn't find the battery to disconnect it. (The battery was in the trunk.)

My first car was a "made-in-America" Oldsmobile 76 - that's not a typo, it was a "76" which I named "The Spirit of '76"; admittedly I was not very original at age 17. Since the 76, I have owned a number of other "made-in-the-USA" or "assembled-in-the-USA" vehicles. I've also owned a Vauxhall, VW, Toyota, Subaru, and Nissan nee' Datsun. Most of the cars were at least "pretty good."

But as the calendar pages turned, it seemed "made-in-the USA" gave way more and more to "assembled-in-the-USA" and management elected to allow production of faulty products - and when confronted with the fact, it figuratively thumbed its nose at the customer . . . the poor person who pays their salary. Chutzpah. Toward the end, "assembled-in-the-USA" was becoming "outsourced to Mexico" (I'm bitterly thinking of Ford's F-100 plant in Mexico, formerly of Chesapeake VA.)

My new sedan was acquired because the SUV needed several thousands of dollars worth of work that, because of $pecialty tool$ could only be accomplished by a dealer (replacement of two timing chains). There also was the cost-of-fuel issue and the fact I no longer need the SUV's capacity.

But why buy a foreign name? There are "assembled-in-the-USA" vehicles which provide decent mileage.

Warranty.

Remember I complained about the SUV's known-bad transmission?

I paid to get it fixed since it was out of the manufacturer's 3 year/36,000 mile warranty.

When I starting shopping for the new flivver, I carefully looked at warranties, gas mileage, and price. Even the highly touted Japanese models offered only 3/36. Some vehicles offered 5/50. Chrysler now has a life-of-vehicle (or first owner?) on its power train (bravo, Chrysler!), but the price and mileage combo kept me off Chrysler lots.

My new car gets "pretty good" mileage (estimated 25/37), was within my "willing-to-pay" range, and has a 10/100 warranty.

I hope I don't have to use all the warranty's benefits, but if I do, I know that I am covered. Based on past experience with the manufacturer and model, chances are pretty good I won't need to use the warranty often, but if I do . . .

Yohanon
Yohanon.Glenn @ gmail.com