Food for thought...not pushing any opinion here, just providing data:
https://i41.tinypic.com/2priqah.jpg

I don't agree with that at all. Just because they didn't used to have awesome quality doesn't mean they are junk now and nobody should buy them and their comany should go out of business. Fords have great quality now and they used to make the Pinto, a car that is sometimes labeled the 'downfall of the American car'.

no question about that. however...

i would consider Clark Howard to be at least as good as any opinion here. yesterday he predicted that there will be a LOADED entry level car for sale in the US by next year for under $10k. 2011 model?

as previously discussed there are already stripped cars avail for that price. i stand by my original thought that in order for auto makers to survive one of the things they must do is lower prices. consumers dictate the market, and this is what is needed.

The catch-22 of it however is that the US car makers are having to compete with foreign makers who are the benefactors of a more socialist tax structure, providing their employees with things like socialized health insurance. Throw on the fact that we have yet to institute any kind of trade policy that accounts for that with reasonable tariffs, and the US automakers are doomed if they don't outsource more of their production.

The bottom line is that if nothing else changes in how we do business with the world, the choice for US automakers is outsource or die. No amount of stimulus or loans will fix that, and forcing workers to take a never ending string of cuts to their benefits is just a race to the bottom that innovation will never be able to compensate for in the long run.

found this article...

https://www.parade.com/news/2009/05/h...e-smarter.html

it just confirms my suspicion that people WILL (must) learn this lesson in tough financial times. a new car, as we know, puts a rather large damper on savings. it's just another opinion however, time will truly tell.

It's unfortunate that they lump real estate investment into it to suggest it's a get-rich-quick scheme. Granted, there are too many short term no money down BS plans being preached out there, but for the investor willing to hold for decades, it's the hands down favorite for slowly getting rich.

I shudder to think how much money we have thrown away over the last 10 years on cars however. My Escort, which I paid $2500 cash for, has cost us a whopping $400 for tires and wipers +gas and insurance in the last two years. The Mazda5 costs us that much every month, and after 2 years, we still don't have any equity in the damned thing!

I also find it very disturbing that the media seems focused on reporting that the economy must be looking up because the DJIA has been slowly heading back up. Somehow they seem to completely miss the fact that the auto industry is the largest manufacturing segment of our economy, and that one major automaker going bankrupt means that thousands of other manufacturers that supply them will suddenly not be getting paid what they are owed - if at all, meaning thousands more layoffs, a further reduced GNP, and spending that will continue to decline. Yes, the stock market is up today, but it will start heading into the 6000s when all of those quarterly earnings reports start trickling in from those other industries with ever increasing receivables and announcements of layoffs (many of which won't make the national news).