I don’t care “where the profits go”. If I want a chunk of Toyota’s profits, I can buy Toyota stock.

I want jobs. And while the foreign brands generally do an ok job on the production side of things, they miss badly on white collar jobs. Ford’s plants are only slightly less productive than Toyota’s, and their US sales…

Maybe because the Cincinnati airport is in Kentucky?

Yeah, they can’t even get it right here.

That’s a somewhat reasonable point.

But the issue for many is that the savings isn’t passed on to the consumer. The consumer pays the same regardless of where it is built, the worker isn’t paid particularly well - better than other options they may have, but still not well - and the company just gets richer. The…

I’d love to see those stories - average pay in Mexican auto plants is $3.14 an hour.  I don’t doubt that doctor/lawyer pay in Mexico is much lower than in the US - but that low?  

1st:

Cars.com’s list is still unadulterated bullshit. They set an arbitrary % domestic content cutoff, and arbitrarily rerank roughly by sales numbers, but give absolutely no credit to white collar jobs.

Years ago, they gave the Camry the #1 spot for many years in a row. The first year, there were ***41*** vehicles on…

Oh, hell? A Monorail? Our local grocery store even has one of those...

Overall mileage has barely improved?

If you compare like-to-like, you’d see mileage has improved dramatically, but people are buying more and more vehicle, so averages across the industry aren’t improving.

Case in point - I had a 98 Camry LE - 4 cylinder. I got about 23 mpg combined on my commute with it. Now I drive an…

Funny you mention that.

Site Selection magazine actually tracks new projects and significant expansions. Since Michigan went right-to-work, their ranking has plummeted.

In 2018, per capita, the top states in the country were:

1) Nebraska
2) Kentucky
3) Ohio
4) Illinois
5) Iowa

Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania have…

5th:

It absolutely floors me that a company with 1900 workers at a plant wouldn’t already have a full time health and safety representative.

That seems like gross negligence by management.

“(it was actually safer than the Vega, Gremlin, Datsun, and Beetle in the NHTSA fatality rate study in 1975-76; the other cars just weren’t bursting into flames on contact).”

It wasn’t just that - the Pinto actually had lower overall fire rates than those vehicles, too. The only aspect where they were worse was in rear…

Every time these lists come out they bug the hell out of me.

Why? Because they’re comparing the used prices to the original MSRP, not original sales prices.

If a car is discounted 30% from MSRP, and resells 3 years later for 50% off MSRP, it didn’t depreciate 50% - it depreciated 29%.

If you’ve ever been in SAM 26000, you’d know how true that statement is.

The 707 they used for SAM 26000 and 27000 is a hair bigger than a 737-MAX10, or just a hair smaller than a 787-800. And SAM 26000 feels downright tiny inside once they packed it with communication gear.

Reminds me of the 747 in TWA’s last livery:

“With the average vehicle transaction now over $37,000, and used cars priced higher to pick up the slack, it’s becoming more difficult to realize the American ideal of living in the suburbs and commuting to a job in the city.”

Oh, please, this is more than a little over the top. A Ford Escape SE has a market average…

Yes.

But follow his series and tell me you’d buy one.

The one where he found a “salvage” Model S “cheap” floored me. The cost of that repair was easily double or triple (or more) what most any other car would have cost for similar damage. And that’s before we get to the insane charges to “recertify” a vehicle...

Replacing the drive unit this soon doesn’t give me much confidence in Tesla long term reliability.

But did anyone else notice that their hourly rate is $195 an hour?!?!?

I know Boston is expensive, but holy shit...  that’s about 70% higher than around here for most makes.

FOR SOME PEOPLE. Yes, it makes the difference between affordable and not.

HOWEVER, every last one of those people that can afford it with the $7500 credit, but can’t afford it without, will be someone who will be paying $7500 a year in federal taxes. In other words, taking $7500 off the sticker instead of a…

I thought the same briefly...

Then thought better - an AWD MKZ is more comfortable and feels more spacious.

Has anyone pointed out to him that he should be considering snow tires first, THEN AWD?

I know a lot of people living in ND/MN, etc, who get along fine along their rough roads with 2WD (both F and R) and snow tires...

And even then, it only hurts the model’s reputation if it is a rental fleet king.

Commercial/government fleets have virtually no effect on resale, because those things are generally beat to hell before they’re sold off.