I wholeheartedly agree with what most of you have said. I have no problem at all with what's going on with Toyota. That money is being made by Americans and thus, supporting American households.
I'll take it a step further in saying that Detroit has nobody to blame for any woes other than themselves when it comes to the automotive market. The Toyota product, as well as several other foreign vehicles is better, period. I run an automotive repair shop that primarily focuses on transmission repair and we see it every day. We work on the domestic stuff over the foreign stuff probably 50:1. My previous career of 24 years in the spring industry as a multi-tier supplier to the automotive industry was a perfect illustration to me why Detroit is in the position they're in right now. Their arrogance and bullying mentality, in hindsight, was frustrating to deal with and I'm glad I'm out of it. I can't tell you how many times I sat in board rooms with these folks and had to listen to them tell you how to make a spring for an application that, after being engineered into a corner without previous regard for the need of a spring, we knew would never survive. Evidence that the spring wouldn't survive life cycle didn't matter. "Just do it". 6 months later we're back in the same board room going over other options, you know, after spending/wasting however many thousands of dollars. The others, Asians in particular, were HANDS DOWN better to work with. There was no arrogance, no bullying. They knew they needed a spring and they had little to no input, simply because that wasn't their job. As a matter of fact, one engineer from Honda told me, "That's why we have you". If the original idea didn't engineer out properly with regards to the spring, the design changes were made THAT DAY. They trusted us, as they should have, because making springs is what we did. A concept foreign to the leadership in Detroit.
So the fact that we see very little work at our shop for foreign vehicles compared to domestic is no surprise to me. For this particular discussion, I don't mind Toyota. They're employing our people, supporting our households and produce a better product. I know that opinion may not always be popular, but I don't care. I've seen evidence. I've lived it. And on some levels, it's embarrassing to me as an American.
Sean D