2002 Toyota Tundra SR5 from North America - All Comments

That is true the Saturn Astra is made in Germany. Therefore, I cannot get excited about them. Someone here however said that Saturn might be tooling up to make the US models here in the US. I hope that is true, as they would warrant a look if that were the case.

I will only buy a vehicle if it is made by a US manufacturer in the US.

I looked at the 2006 Colorado before buying a 2006 Ranger. It was nowhere near $20,000 unless equipped with every conceivable option.

You can also buy a new true full size GM Silverado (such as the plain work truck series) even if you just get A/C, automatic and wind up windows with the nice V6. I upgraded steel rims to new factory alloy wheels, tires, aftermarket sound system (took an hour to have put in used stock existing speakers) even carefully heat gunned all the stock decals off and put the upgraded GM stock exterior factory side tailgate trim all from bidding ebay as budget allows. Truck rides nice, is full size, V6 for mileage and better warranty. Why buy the small stuff for the same price?

I am in total agreement with 06:49. I will only buy American cars made in this country by American workers. I passed up a couple of made-outside-the-U.S. domestics before my last purchase. All three of our cars are domestics assembled in the U.S. and containing over 85% domestic-made parts. I might also add that not one of them has ever had any problems of any kind.

You'd be hard-pressed to find hardly any vehicle made in the US with US parts. Ain't happening. GM imports a ton of parts from Mexico, Brazil, Canada, and Germany. A good bit of the engines GM imports these days comes from China.

Somehow, I fail to see what the problem is of say - buying a car made with US labor - regardless of the brand or parts source - in a US plant. The last two Toyotas I have bought came from Kentucky and California. There are US workers in those plants making good money and supporting their families. If you simply refuse to buy because they don't happen to be gluing a Toyota badge to the front of a piece of stamped steel stamped at that very plant, then guess what? You're not supporting US workers.

There is a lot of people who need to realize that we're in a global economy. The US is no longer a manufacturing specific country. You can support US workers in more ways than just looking to see what something is made out of.

23:28.

Amen Brother!!

I even took that a step further; I stopped buying new imports when they started having more and more major mechanical problems.

I never thought that the switch would occur... it started back in frugal college days driving Corollas and staying import afterward. Now it's more wisdom looking beyond just fuel costs and factoring in repairs during total ownership costs.

It's been a wiser move in our family and less repair headaches. Having a supposedly well maintained vehicle with a full tank, sitting alongside the road on the way to work, broken down and being towed yet again, dispels the import myth.

It's the company HQ that gets the profit from the vehicle sale, regardless of where it is made. If the company is foreign based, the profit is heading to another country.

The point made by comment 10:29 has been made repeatedly on this site.

American industry brings profits to America. Japanese industry funnels profits OUT of the country.

13,000,000 people are directly or indirectly employed by and get their living from the American auto industry. Every time a Honda or Toyota is purchased, it takes money away from our fellow citizens. Even if imports were more reliable (and no substantiated data indicates that they are) I would still refuse to buy one.

What difference does it make as to whether corporate profits goes from one country or another? Do you know where a lot of the profits US car companies makes goes? Into the pockets of the upper-ups. That's right - into their pockets, and not to the workers on the line who are merely disposable whenever the price of fuel gets hiked up and nobody can afford to buy the gas guzzlers they produce.

Did you know that one of the GM execs actually pilots his own personal helicopter to the office every day? That and he actually owns to Czechoslovakian fighter jets in his private collection? I kid you not. I'm sure he's thrilled that some of you are so happy to fund his toys and extravagant lifestyle at the expense of all those GM retirees who now have to give up many of their retirement pensions and benefits as a result of poor management and shoddy product development.

Some of you seem to be thinking that if you buy American - then all of the money goes to the worker. All I can say is that when Toyota moved a new plant to KY - which is our neighboring state - they offered salaries that were far higher than what the avg salary of the region was at the time. The same for the Nissan plant outside of Nashville, or the Honda plant in Ohio.

For the many families who work in those factories, they get good pay, good benefits, and they get to have stable, comfortable homes working at a stable, high quality company that makes wiser decisions in regards to appropriate product offerings instead of focusing entirely on cheap, high profit, truck-based SUVs, only to have to shutter those same plants once the price of gas caught up.

These are AMERICAN workers. That they work for one company or another is no difference. That is unless you really care more about whether the upper up is Japanese or American.

Let me tell you another thing. GM, Ford, and Chrysler haven't been exactly honorable in regards to US labor to start with anyway. If it weren't for the unions, I can almost guarantee they would cut and put all their plants in Mexico, South America, China, and so on. For decades, the big three have made every effort to shut down US factories in favor of building cars in other countries. These three companies should be grateful that so many Americans seem to think that by buying a US-branded car that they're supporting their fellow man. If some of you knew the actuality, perhaps there wouldn't be so much flag waving.

The number of U.S. citizens employed by Japanese car companies in the U.S. is absolutely a drop in the ocean compared to the number that are directly or indirectly employed by domestic makers.

As for executives salaries, I seriously doubt that CEO's of Japanese companies live like average middle class folks either. ALL CEO's of most companies make obscene salaries, whether in the U.S. or abroad.

I did consulting work for a relatively small company some years back, and the CEO asked if I wanted his pilot to pick me up in his helicopter. Helicopters are hardly a rare thing for most companies doing work over a broad area. No one is naive enough to think that ANY worker makes even a tiny fraction of what any company head makes, regardless of the country.

The point domestic owners try to make is that the U.S. auto industry employs over 13,000,000 people, and to wish for the demise of domestic car companies is little different than wishing for some catastrophic disease to wipe out a huge number of our citizens. It will have effects that ripple through the entire economy as well as destroying the lives of those workers.

Our economy, like our ecology, is inter-dependent on many things. There is simply no way that I could bring myself to wish for the destruction of the lives of a large percentage of the people of Japan, and I find it a little scary that there are, apparently, American citizens who would actually wish such a catastrophe on our OWN people because a myth propagated by ad hype.

10:44 Well, as an American, owning imports has put money IN to my pockets, because they in fact are more reliable, and the evidence surely does exist, whether or not you believe it.

Since I wised up, many years ago and stopped buying junk from the Big 3, my repair bill, covering FOUR imports over 17 years, has been exactly $90. ONE starter put in my former Tacoma at nearly 100,000 miles. If I have to put a starter in a Toyota every 100,000 miles for the 3 or 400,000 I know I'll get out of it, that's just fine with me. Beats having a head gasket or transmission go out on a Chevy or Ford at 70,000 miles, if that. I don't buy that garbage any more, and never will.

Granted the small specific Tacoma may be a reliable vehicle in your case, but many owning small import Japanese sedans have had engine sludging woes, transmission failures, airbag issues, braking which is relative to them to the individuals who have bought them. Own a few new import sedans and the larger Tundra lately, and then share some broader ownership comments.

10:57,

Nobody is wishing ill on the American worker. But the fact is that we are a free trade country with an open door policy in regards to what we buy. This in essence gives the US consumer access to the best choice of the best made products.

The tone of many US brand owners seems to be that somehow, companies like Toyota, Honda, and Nissan played an unfair game. But the truth is that they created superior products for decades while the big three were asleep at the wheel. Perhaps this is no longer the case and their products have improved. But they burned too many people's bridges for too long to make that much of a difference.

I will say that at least in GM's case, they are going in the right direction. They realized that in order to win back the kinds of people who buy Hondas and Toyotas, they would have to beat them at their own game. The new Volt coming out in a couple of years could be such a product. I also think their job on the new Malibu is also admirable. If I were in the market for a family car, I'd probably go with that car.

But don't blame people who buy Toyotas for being un-patriotic or somehow desiring to bring down the US auto industry. Again, if GM and Ford had spent the last 30 years making competitive, reliable, innovative products to keep up with the Japanese competitors, then we probably wouldn't be having this conversation. Consumers have a choice and their buying preferences are often accurate in portraying which products are the best choices.

We are also no longer a manufacturing centered country. To say that we must do everything to prop up this aspect of our economy is a losing argument. Simply put, the US is more like the UK, which itself was once the largest manufacturing country in the world, only to later cede that title to the US, who is now ceding the same to China and perhaps India. Perhaps an equally patriotic thing to do would be to go to college and get degrees that prepare our youth for the future and realistic service and research atmosphere of the US economy.

I consider myself to be very patriotic. Yet I own a Japanese car and truck because I think they are still one of the more reliable choices to be made. That doesn't make me a bad person.

And I was paying $30.00 at the Honda dealership for oil changes every 3000 miles. Guess I should buy a Toyota instead or drive 3000 miles a year to get my $90.00 value. And if I could have gotten 70,000 miles on just one Honda transmission, I would be in heaven on my last mistake. I'll take the 100,000 mile warranty and have.