Are You Sure About Buying an Import, Man?

Today, when you listen to members of my generation (who no longer seem to want to die before they get old), it's hard to believe that Boomers were also responsible for the counter-culture of the 1960s.

We believed in long hair, shorts skirts, free love, women's rights, racial equality, James Taylor and doing your own thing, man, all of which are still admirable goals.

But many of the people who supported The Movement nearly 40 years ago are considerably less likely to bend today, let alone move. Consider if you will the Boomers' love for cars from Europe and Japan and their distrust of anything from American companies.

To be fair, there was considerable reason to take up this position in the 1970s. Few of the cars coming out of Detroit's factories appealed to anyone under the age of 50, and they weren't very reliable and they tended to use a lot of gas when we couldn't afford to pay much.

Perhaps most importantly, our parents owned or coveted Buicks, Cadillacs, Chryslers, Lincolns, Mercurys, Plymouths and the like, so we couldn't possibly. We weren't our parents, after all, and buying a Japanese car was thought to be a polite way of establishing our own identity.

We were so shallow at the time that it never occurred to us that buying a Honda or a Toyota -- or a BWM or a VW, come to that -- was a slap in our parents' faces. We conveniently chose not to remember that the Japanese and the Germans had only recently been trying to kill our parents, their families and friends, and indeed our very way of life. World War II might have seemed like ancient history to us, but for our parents it was -- and still is -- their defining moment. So our disloyalty must have hurt them all a great deal, and I can't even begin to imagine what it's like for Jewish parents to see their children buy a Beetle or a 3-Series.

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I don't know what to say. Let the discussion begin.

 

I think Ford and GM have the biggest chance. How? Import those damn cars from Europe. Stop watering them down to suit "American" tastes. Judging by sales, it's obvious that their definition of "American" isn't what consumers think they want in an American car. Where's the Euro Focus, Vauxhall Vectra (the new one, not the one from 2001), the Holden Monaro (not the GTO 5.7). Give us the real deal.

I don't get it. Why can Toyota make solid, reliable Corollas from say, their NUMMI plant but someone like Mercedes for example can't make a decent M-Class from their Alabama plant?