My father bought one of the first Chrysler minivans in 1984 or something… a revolutionary product. Chrysler sat on their laurels and allowed foreign brands to take their market share away with more efficient engines, new features like seats that folded into the floor, etc. And just when you had some good American cars like the Pontiac G5 the brand is killed or when Saturn came out they stopped designing new cars for years until finally they were done (how many years was the LS1 or LS2 built unchanged?

I bought Japanese because I worked for Acura at the time, liked their products, they were a good value, very durable, cheap to maintain, and were loaded with advanced features (Xenons, leather, LSD, BOSE sound, etc…). That’s the free market for you.

I am not sure what abuses by the domestic manufaturers you are referring to but don’t forget the manipulation of the dollar to yen ration by the Japanese government to make their prices lower. Lets also not forget about the left wing media reporting on domestic manufaturers product recalls as if it were a great sin and ignoring the fact that imports have just as many recalls.

The bottom line to my previous comments is the cash for klunkers program did nothing to boost American economy, specifically the two manufaturers that were forced into bankruptcy by the current administration even though both had viable recovery plans. And remember the downturn was not caused by the auto companies but by the mortgage fiasco that dried up all of the credit. Difficult to sell cars without credit being available. And where does Obama get off firing two CEO’s?

When it comes time for trade-in values American cars get hammered more than their foreign competitors.