⌐ AV8OR WANNABE

For now, wait a day or so and it'll happen...

Bug Smasher

My grandaddy was an assembly line worker at the Ford plant in Atlanta - the one off the approach end of 26R. I find it a fitting testament that one of the walls still standing bears the UAW logo. A fitting epitaph on a headstone that's about 40' tall.

I drive a 293K mile Toyota and I've done brakes and oil changes - that's it. I just don't see anything coming out of detroit that can hold up like that. Maybe if we let the automakers go through the bankruptcy process as we did the airlines, we'll see a leaner, meaner, different product from the domestic automakers.

My $0.02.

MarioWife

If you order a new car, and that interior and that entertainment package, from the factory, you will have to pay for it at the store, and they say that it will be delivered in a week at your adress, If the company goes bankrupt in that week. You suddenly have no money or car. So my tip is, its allmost 2009, wait until dec 20th, the best deals are just before Xmas. And go to one and offer 40 percent of asking for that car you see just there in the shop.. this car will actually decrease at least 30 to 40 percent just driving out the store and allso because its going to be a 2008 model. All depends on make and brand.. But... and then you can go all the way up to 60 percent arguing with the sales man, but decide to stop when you have reached 60 percent, or else you will loose on this buy. Remember its quite hard to sell a used car on our marked today..

Even better is it if you find a demo car for the car dealer.. This cars has at the max runned like 1000 - 3000 miles, and the people driving them are sales personnes, whitch is scared ****tless of loosing their jobbs.. so they are driven carefully. These cars are usually bargains.

kalyx522

What makes a car American? - CNN.com

What makes a car American?

Story Highlights
Fewer than half of parts on some Big Three vehicles made in U.S.
More than 80 percent of parts on some foreign vehicles made in U.S.
Study: U.S. brand vehicles support more engineering jobs in U.S.
Consumer says he prefers quality of foreign cars to American ones

By Ashley Fantz
CNN

(CNN) -- With the top U.S. automakers in economic survival mode, "Buy American" is a frequent cry among those trying to save jobs at home.

But buying a car to benefit the U.S. economy has become an ambiguous, complicated challenge.

"How you define an American car is one of the great conundrums of this world," said Dutch Mandel, the editor and associate publisher of AutoWeek.

Fewer than half of the parts on some Big Three vehicles are made in the U.S.

Looking at a Ford Fusion? It is assembled in Mexico. The Chrysler 300C is assembled in Canada, but its transmission is from Indiana; the brand's V-8 engine is made in Mexico. Engines in the Chevrolet Equinox sport utility vehicle are from China.

On the other hand, Toyota's Camry is comprised 80 percent of parts made in the United States, and 56 percent of Toyota's vehicles sold in the U.S. also are made here, according to Toyota spokeswoman Sona Iliffe-Moon.

The Toyota Sienna and Tundra also have 80 percent of their parts manufactured in the U.S.

"When you have manufacturers from around the world building cars in the U.S. with 85 percent domestic content -- engine, transmission, assembly -- is that an American car?" Mandel asked. Or, he asks, is it considered foreign because the profits go back to a foreign country?

"It's truly a global industry," said Thomas Klier, a Chicago, Illinois, economist who co-authored "Who Really Made Your Car?" an encyclopedic analysis of the auto industry melting pot. Watch how U.S. auto woes affect Asia »

"When you think of buying American, you should focus on three points -- its engine, transmission and where it was assembled," Klier said.

To get that information, read a vehicle's window sticker. U.S. automakers are legally required to detail the origin of a car's parts and its final assembly point.

"Unfortunately, there are few people who know about the sticker or even bother to look at it," said Bernard Swiecki, a senior project manager at the nonprofit Center for Automotive Research in Michigan, which follows trends in the industry.

The sticker's details were news to Douglas Sullivan, 43, a truck driver from Snellville, Georgia. Though he prefers foreign brands, believing them to be of higher quality, he said he used to favor U.S. brands because he wanted to support American workers.

"I wanted to keep the jobs right here," Sullivan said.

Swiecki said many people think about image of a brand, rather than the way that brand has evolved over decades as the market has grown more diverse and competitive.

"They will think, 'I'm buying a GM, I'm getting an American car,' " Swiecki said.

Foreign car manufacturers generate billions of dollars in jobs and community infrastructure in the U.S., but there is a difference between Detroit's economic footprint and that of its foreign rivals.

The Center for Automotive Research says Detroit's Big Three employed almost 240,000 people in the U.S. at the end of 2007. Foreign makers had about 113,00 U.S. employees at the time. Watch UAW leader's take on bailout's failure in Senate »

The key difference in how the Big Three and foreign brands support jobs in the U.S. comes outside the factories, according to a 2006 study by the Level Field Institute, a group formed by Big Three retirees in Washington.

"What's driving the difference in jobs ... is investment in research, design, engineering and management," Level Field President Jim Doyle said in a statement on the 2006 study.

The Center for Automotive Research said the Big Three had 24,000 engineers on U.S. payrolls in 2007. The Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association said its member companies had 3,500 U.S. research and development employees in 2007.

Level Field found that every 1,000 vehicles sold by Detroit's Big Three in the U.S. support more than twice as many jobs as 1,000 vehicles sold by foreign nameplates.

Most Americans consumers understand that the industry is global, Swiecki said, and they are more savvy than ever in purchasing vehicles.

"For the most part, gone are the days of people going to a car lot and paying a buck to take a swing of a hammer at a foreign-made car," Swiecki said.

But there are exceptions.

A Savannah, Georgia, Ford dealer sold 15 cars last weekend after he ran a radio ad blaming Japan for Detroit's financial funk.

While 15 was substantially better than weekends before the ad, dealer O.C. Welch said, it was still about half of the business he did a year ago.

"All you people that buy all your Toyotas and send that money to Japan, you know, when you don't have a job to make your Toyota car payment, don't come crying to me," Welch says in the ad. "All those cars are rice ready. They're not road ready."

Sullivan, who was at an Atlanta, Georgia, dealership Thursday to pick up his American brand minivan from the service department, said he has had a different experience.

He said the vehicle has given him trouble, and whenever he replaces it, he'll probably go with a foreign brand, regardless of whether any of the parts were made in the United States.

"What I look for is good gas mileage, and when I pay it off in four or five years, it's still running," said Sullivan, who has owned several American and foreign brands. "It seems I get better quality with a foreign car."

CNN's Jason Hanna and Brad Lendon contributed to this report.

⌐ AV8OR WANNABE

Ok so should it be a NISSAN made in Smyrna, TN, a TOYOTA from Georgetown, KY, MERCEDES from Tuscaloosa, AL, or a CHEVROLET from Ramos Arizpe, Mexico?

Just wondering?

hotshot

I still say a Subaru from a zero landfill plant in Laffayette, Indiana. It's good for the environment and more parts are made in the US than Ford or GM.

Ottopilot

If you buy an American car it will create jobs here. Many people will be needed to service it as it always breaks down.

Boomer

When DAL, NWA, USAir, United, etc. were in or near BK, what would you tell a reluctant passenger? "Don't risk buying tickets", or "Insist they take a couple hundred dollars off the price as a "bankruptcy sale"?

Ford, Chrysler, and GM are not like SkyBus or EOS. They will not just close their doors and leave hundreds of thousands of customers holding the bag. CH11 maybe, or some type of merger in the worst case.

As others have said, if you must buy new, wait until after the first of the year. The 2009 models on the lot can be had for cheaper and the remaining 08's really get discounted.

whatthe6789

My point wasn't about employing people here, but the overall economy. If you buy vehicles from the Big 3, then the money stays in this country. If you buy from Nissan, Toyota, or Mercedes, guess where the profit is going, even if it was made here in the US. Do you think that Nissan or Toyota would open up branches of their companies here in the US if the parent company wasn't going to make a hefty profit? However you want to look at it, the parent companies (in Japan, Germany, etc...) are still the ones profiting from those car sales, and that is profit that isn't contributing to OUR economy.

⌐ AV8OR WANNABE

I'm glad you clarified what you meant because now I definitely disagree with you. Had Toyota, Nissan, Mercedes, etc. been entirely private companies like Chrysler is I'd have agreed with you. After all - the owners keep all the profits in private companies (and losses until a bailout that is ).

As opposed to publicly traded companies where we all, including you, are more than welcomed to "profit" from their sales - all you have to do is buy shares in those companies....

Think about it, Japan, South Korea and Germany - three countries that we occupied during the post WWII period and helped to turn into democracies AND capitalist powerhouses. They're simply doing what we taught them in the post war economics 101 classes - we however are the ones who forgot the lessons...