“I don’t think the car buying public cares where the car is manufacturered.”
I have to agree. For the most part, those that do care, have little or no choice but to do lots of research and get a degree in statistical analysis.
Canada is ok with me so long as the company building the car there still employs workers in the US in relative proportion to the amount of business they do here.
In GM and Ford’s case, they both import a considerable number of vehicles from Canada into the US. However, they also export a considerable number of vehicles from the US to Canada. Ford sells a ton of F-series trucks in Canada (they’re the #1 selling auto company in Canada now), and every last one is made in the US. To me, if you hit a balance, that only benefits the consumer. By centralizing production of F-series trucks in the US, they can make them cheaper than if they had a plant in the US, a plant in Mexico, and a plant in Canada. In exchange, I can accept that they import the Flex, Edge, MKX, Crown Vic, Grand Marquis, and Town Car from Canada (the last three are going away as Ford is closing 1 of their 2 remaining assembly plants in Canada).
However, I expect that Ford/GM maintain an employee base in the US in proportion to their business here. So far they have, and I don’t see any reason to complain.
I read the article and it said that Oshawa production would start in the 1st quarter of 2011. That means about 6 months of assembly in Germany. I think that you are splitting hairs if a whole six months of what presumably will be 10 or more years of production is all that important to you.
Not only is Canada OK, but all countries are OK for car manufacture. We live in a global society and if domestic car companies can’t compete, then they will have to face the cosequences.
Canada is the 51st state, isn’t it?
Um… No… BMW and Toyota pay their workers the same- or better, in the case of BMW- wages as US makers… the difference is, both countries give subsidies to their auto industries, allowing the prices to be kept down.
“These are the top ten American-made vehicles, according to Cars.com, which ranks them according to how many American-made parts they use and where they’re built.”
Wouldn’t the Chevrolet Corvette rank as the number 1 American MADE vehicle, since it has NEVER been built outside the US, currently in Bowling Green, KY, as well as having the fewest foreign parts???
Just wondering
Half are Japanese care, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Where is the F150 and Suburban. The question was what is the most American.
What about the Hyundai Sonata built in Alabama?
I wouldn’t say cars are made in America, rather “assembled” in America.‘Made in America’ to me means 100% USA parts at a plant in the USA.
European countries in the past shared components like gas tanks, and other related parts.
This backfired when the gas tanks imploded and all the manufacturers had the same recall at the same time. Gas tanks were on back-order for months due to the instant demand for millions of gas tanks. This happened around 1979.
Unfortunately manufacturers have a short memory and once again are going to share parts from the same supplier.
Despite your apologetics for Toyota, Ford is NOT shipping jobs overseas to India and China
WRONG…You’re saying that On-Star is ONLY available in China and India?? On-Star is designed and manufactured in India and China…The ONLY thing here in the US is SOME of the service…
Human resources for GM is MOSTLY in India…Almost all of GM’s retirement benefits sector is in India…GM is moving many of it’s engineering jobs to India…YES I’ll admit that a lot of it has to do with the vehicles GM is selling there…but they are also eliminating jobs DUPLICATE engineering jobs here in the US. Sorry but it’s a fact.
This is a global economy, and these are global companies. Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Hyundai, etc, are all providing a small number of jobs relative to their sales and simply have NOT grown their US employee base to keep up with their increased sales.
The FACT is they are GROWING…GM and Ford is SHRINKING. 30 years ago Nissan, Honda and Toyota’s presence in the US was non-existent…Now they’re growing while GM and Ford is shrinking…Check back with me in 10 years.
The Sonata uses only 40% domestic content - nowhere near enough to qualify for their list. There are a LOT of vehicles with significantly higher domestic content that are built in the US.
No - currently the Corvette uses just 70% domestic content - that’s around 57th most domestic content…
Believe what you want, Mike, but you’re blind to the truth.
GM and Ford are shrinking BECAUSE:
- Higher productivity leads to less labor needed
- Shrinking market share leads to less labor needed
Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Hyundai, etc, have historically only added about 1 job in the US for every 2 they displace at a domestic manufacturer. Despite all your rhetoric, they have NEVER kept up US employment to match their growth. They give us a small % of their jobs despite getting a large % of their revenue from us, and then people like you praise them for it.
AGAIN,
when comparing their US revenue to US jobs, GM, Ford, and Chrysler do a very good job of matching their employment to our demand for their vehicles. Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Hyundai, etc do NOT.
Believe what you want, Mike, but you’re blind to the truth.
It’s not a matter of belief…it’s a matter of fact…I take it you never even glanced at any of the URL’s I posted above.
They give us a small % of their jobs despite getting a large % of their revenue from us, and then people like you praise them for it.
You obviously are NOT reading anything I’ve ever said…I’ve NEVER praised them…All I’ve stated are the FACTS…Toyota, Nissan and Honda are adding MORE jobs to the US economy…while GM and Ford are DECREASING jobs…It’s NOT praise…it’s just a fact. I’d LOVE to see them add more jobs…
when comparing their US revenue to US jobs, GM, Ford, and Chrysler do a very good job of matching their employment to our demand for their vehicles. Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Hyundai, etc do NOT.
Again…You keep making the same mistake over and over again…You’re seem to refuse to acknowledge GM and Fords jobs that are overseas…and you lump their World Wide revenue in and then divide by the number of employees that you THINK you have a handle on…And as I pointed out…you don’t. You have no idea what jobs GM or Ford are overseas that support their US sales and manufacturing. I pointed out several jobs that I know of…and you still refuse to acknowledge them or just ignore them. But at the time you lump seem to account ALL of Honda’s world wide employees and use that figure to account for your accounting trickery. Lets compare apples to apples…not apples to snow-plows.
Toyota - 46,000 US employees - 9.7 million vehicles sold (US only)
GM - 56,000 US employees - 10.5 million vehicles sold (US only
Ford - 45,000 US employees - 9.91 million vehicles sold (US only
Those are the numbers. It’s also very difficult to get a accurate number of GM US employees because they fall under the Umbrella of GM North America which includes Canada and Mexico. GM North America employees a total of 105,000 employees. So about half of the GM north America work force is in Mexico and Canada. All cars built by GM in North America are sold in North America…and since the United States account for 75% of all GM North American sales that really brings down the number of US employees to US Cars sold ratio.
GM is also planning on cutting some 12,000 jobs (in the US) by 2012. Toyota and Ford are not planning on any job cuts.
Mike - where on earth did you get those numbers? They aren’t even CLOSE to the truth.
Toyota: 28,783 employees.
Ford: 78,000 employees in North America, including 13,695 in Canada and Mexico - or 64,305 in the US
GM has 78,000 employees in the US
sources:
http://www.toyota.com/about/our_business/our_numbers/
http://www.ford.com/doc/ir_20100427_1q10_financial_results.pdf
http://www.ford.com/about-ford/company-information/operations-map
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9NDY1MzV8Q2hpbGRJRD0tMXxUeXBlPTM=&t=1
NONE of that information was hard to find.
The numbers you posted do NOT come close to matching the numbers which the individual companies posted on their own websites and SEC filings (and you can get in SERIOUS trouble if you falsify that info).
AND NONE of the companies sell anywhere near the number of vehicles in the US you claim.
Last year, in the US, they sold:
Toyota: 1,770,149
Ford:1,682,323
GM:2,084,492
(http://www.theautochannel.com/news/2010/01/05/460606.html, http://www.theautochannel.com/news/2010/01/05/460571.html, http://www.gm.com/corporate/investor_information/docs/sales_prod/09_12/deliveries_0912.pdf)
So that gives:
Ford: 3.82 US jobs per 100 cars sold in the US
GM: 3.74 US jobs per 100 cars sold in the US
Toyota: 1.63 US jobs per 100 cars sold in the US
Mike, not a piece of any of that information was hard to find, and it is all through regulated and audited sources.
Well after more searching…
I’ve found different numbers.
http://www.toyota.com/about/our_business/toyota_in_america/our_numbers/
http://www.toyota.com/about/news/community/2007/10/31-1-50thAnniversary.html
I don’t know you tell me…I keep finding numbers all over the place…I saw one where GM said it had 140k US workers…GM is STILL laying off…in fact from the listing below even using YOUR numbers…GM has more layoffs planned (unless they turn things around). GM also lists GMAC which most people don’t consider to have anything to do with car manufacturing…But they are listed as US GM employees.
http://www.richmond-toyota.com/buy-american.htm
So that gives:
Ford: 3.82 US jobs per 100 cars sold in the US
GM: 3.74 US jobs per 100 cars sold in the US
Toyota: 1.63 US jobs per 100 cars sold in the US
So that means that GM and Ford are FAR FAR less efficient in building cars then Toyota…Is that what you’re saying.
You keep saying I"M DEFENDING Toyota…I’m not…in fact it’s YOU who keeps defending GM…They’ve screwed up BIG-TIME…I’ve just called them on it…Toyota screwed up big-time too with this accelerator problem…I have no problem sticking it to Toyota either…
Your first link for Toyota is dated March 2008 - it includes facilities they have closed (NUMMI) and does not count their layoffs they’ve had the past two years
Your second link is 3 years old and reports “42,000 in North America”, which includes their Mexican plant and their extensive production in Canada.
Your third link is over a year old and the only reference to US employees is that they are reducing 3400 white-collar positions in the US as part of a 10,000 white-collar reduction worldwide (ie, 34% of their cuts were in the US, though the US represents about 40% of their business - in other words, they were relatively cutting DEEPER overseas)
The links I provided were all from THIS year in Toyota’s 2010 operations brochure and Ford/GM’s latest quarterly results.
And NO, GM and Ford are NOT “FAR, FAR less efficient”. The fact is that GM and Ford build about 75% of the vehicles they sell in the US here, in the US. Toyota is a bit over 40%.
If you look at the Harbour Report, you’ll see that there was little to no productivity gap
Total man-hours per vehicle (2007, the last year such data was free):
Chrysler 30.37
Toyota 30.37
GM 32.29
Ford 33.88
http://www.oliverwyman.com/content_images/OW_EN_Automotive_Press_2008_HarbourMedia08.pdf
The difference in the number of employees is ENTIRELY because Toyota imports so many more vehicles and has so much less of their R&D based in the US. Plain and simple.
Ok, so you’re not defending Toyota - you’re just making false statements that Toyota is doing a better job of employing Americans and falsely claiming that the employment gaps are closing.
Oh, and GM does NOT include GMAC in their current totals (on their quarterly results that I linked to). GMAC was spun off from GM nearly 4 years ago and GM lost their remaining stake with the bailout of GMAC. There is no connection, they are not part of GM and not counted as GM employees.
Oh, but one thing you didn’t acknowledge, Mike, is that in Toyota’s count includes 3,325 people working for “Toyota Financial Services”, their lending arm. So we’re supposed to count those, but even if GM actually did count GMAC (they DO NOT), we weren’t supposed to count those employees for GM?