Rich S.

The US Auto Crisis

Too many contradictions to take this author very seriously. I'm as patriotic as the next guy, but I don't appreciate disinformation to boost the image of the US auto industry. He states that US manufactures continue to fail in improving long term reliability, then he claims there is no difference between Japanese and domestic cars in this regard, THEN he tells that buyers migrated to Japanese makes because "people started to realize that a car could go more than 100k miles without the transmission blowing up". The reliability of Japanese cars is considerably (and measurably) higher than US makes, as a previous commenter pointed out. American buyers continue move away from domestic manufacturers based on their own experiences with reliability, even if it costs them more upfront.
I agree that a 20MPG hybrid sounds unimpressive, but considering that many of these behemoth SUVs are driven around town by soccer moms, it represents a 40% improvement over their normal city-cycle fuel economy. The key is to convince people that they really don't need a vehicle like that in the first place. If only minivans looked cooler...