Democrats!
i believe him. his suv is dead as in not running
I donât believe in humane traps. I donât want a slow death but I am in favor of death to those varmints. Now when deer and coyote take a liking to wiring, weâre going to be in big trouble.
The takeaway for me is donât let your truck sit for three years.
I hope he drives the new F150 more so that the woodchucks donât get its wiring too.
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Had a bud whose wiring got chewed up in a day or 2 by a woodchuck. He was surprised as heck when he opened up the hood and it ran away. A short sit is no guarantee of no problems from critters. ps the excrement left behind was really foul smelling. We repaired the broken wires, and life was good for a bit.
Congressman Paul Ryanâs home town Janesville, WI has suffered from GMâs closing a major factory. Note that he may replace his masticated GM vehicle with one from Ford. Sour grapes?
I wonder if the thousands around Janesville, WI whose lives were disrupted by GMâs plant closure are buying GM as often as in the past. Probably not. Many canât afford to buy anything new, except parts for GM vehicles they bought years ago.
Ryan is among the few Republicans who publicly question the presidentâs tariffs. Letâs remember, a tariff is a tax, and the buyer pays, or decides to buy something else, or to make do and not buy anything. The basis for a healthy dynamic economy?
Ryan can afford to question tariffs. He isnât running for office. Those that are running for reelection have to calculate whether disagreeing with the President is worth the difficulties it might cause when the President endorses a rival as punishment for disagreement.
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@shanonia Well Janesville is close to Belvedere, IL where they make Italian Jeeps now so maybe heâll get one of those. Personally, I wish he would just leave early and go get a new vehicle and farm or hunt or something useful.
On the other hand I didnât see many crocodile tears from you folks when they closed the Ford plant in St. Paul a few years ago. They made the Ranger and refused to update it, except now they did update it but its made out of the country. The thing is it was a very historical plant where Henry had his own power plant, glass factory, etc. Total vertical integration, not like today. Lots of folks lost their jobs too. I never did get a chance to tour the place but thatâs another story.
I cried hot tears when Studebaker closed its plant in South Bend.
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Just a public service announcement to please keep this conversation as civil and nonpartisan as possible. Thanks.
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I think in Wisconsin it would more apt to have been Badgers rather than woodchucks that are gnawing the wiring on Paul Ryanâs SUVâŠ
And that may have been a mistake
If I had been looking at a new small truck 10 years ago, when the Ranger was still being built, I sure as heck wouldnât have bought one
If youâre planning on keeping a vehicle several years, why should you buy one thatâs already hopelessly outdated, both in looks and technology?
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I donât remember the Ford plant closure coming up here at all, but then in the national scheme of things, one plant in one city in one state probably doesnât often rise to prominence.
I wasnât at all surprised that Ford closed the plant. That Ranger was way too long in the tooth to take seriously. Bad mileage, bad power, bulbous 90âs interior, and when you ran the numbers you didnât pay much more for an F150 and you got more truck in the process.
America needs small pickups, but it needs good small pickups if weâre to buy them new. And one problem is that, yes, weâre now getting small pickups but a lot of them are SUVs with useless little stub-beds on them that wonât haul very much volume at all.
Case in point, the Cruz which is supposedly going to show up for the 2019 my:
Now, look at that bed. If I want to haul a load of mulch, the guy in the bobcat isnât going to be able to load me. Heâll spill half the bucket off the back. So now Iâve gotta shovel all that in there by hand and who is going to be willing to do that?
We need a return of small trucks like the Hilux and the Mighty Max. Both stupid names, but they were bulletproof, basic, simple trucks that could take more than 3,000 pounds in the bed (and still can - I just did it this weekend 
), got good mileage, had good power (for their era), they didnât cost an arm and a leg, and they got the job done.
Ford never figured that out, and thatâs why that plant closed.
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I had an 03 ranger, liked it just fine. More power than an s10, I did not want or need a big truck. Styling was fine with me. I sold it as I needed 4wd for the sand boat launch.
Iâm not talking about your 2003 Ranger
Iâm talking about the very last models, which were essentially unchanged from yours
GM and Ford still make small pickups, and are very popular in the South America market. Not too sure what it would take to import them to the US>
I guess you werenât reading my posts but back then no one wanted to talk about it.
In 2005, GM closed the Broening Highway plant in Dundalk, MD. The assembly plant ran for 70 years, building the Astro and Safari for the last 21 years. They vans were never updated in the last decade, and the plant was shut down at the end of the run. Sound familiar, @bing? Do you miss the Broening Highway plant too?
Our local Toyota dealer has a Toyota Hilux pickup on display in the showroom. I think it was manufactured in the early 1970s. My brother had a 1972 Datsun pickup which was similar. The Ford Courier and Chevrolet LUV were in this time period. IMHO, all these were great compact pickup trucks that served s purpose. I would like to see something like these trucks being sold today. I think these trucks had as much space in the bed as the Ford F-150 with the crew cabs and short beds.
I guess I donât like to see any plant shut down, but @shanonia seemed to think the Janesville shutdown and Paul Ryan were of particular interest. Iâm familiar with St. Paul but not Maryland. I guess we can find a lot of other plants that shut down like the GM/Toyota plant so Iâm not sure why Janesville was singled out. Well, yeah I do know.