"American" vs. "Import"

[Broke_as_****]

Originally Posted by kman10587

The funny thing about Mitsubishi is, like you said, poor management, and they're an exception to the rule of Japanese companies being well-managed.

Nissan was so broke dick at the end of the 90s that Renault had to step in and straighten things out. They were well into the negative side of the balance ledger just like Mistubishi motors is now.

Mazda is still some 5 billion dollars in debt and has been forced to take some very drastic measures just to stay open let alone make a profit. The release of almost 10% of their salaried work force and the automotive industry taboo of closing of one of their main production plants a few years ago. After Ford bought a big chunk of them a while back they have revamped their entire line and are doing better.

Think about this, Ford has a controlling stake in Mazda, Dodge has a controlling stake in Mistubishi, Renault has a controlling stake in Nissan, GM had about 20% of Fuji Industries (Subarus parent company) before they sold it to Toyota...just about every Japanese manufacturer except Toyota and Honda has a majority of their stock controlled by a company outside of Japan. All of those companies were bought when they were struggling and almost all are doing better since then.

On that note though, it's not as if the Mistubishi motor company is going anywhere. It's a very, very small part of a very, very large company.

http://www.mitsubishi.com/php/users/...rch.php?lang=1

[Nayr747]

Originally Posted by Jimster

Mitsubishis are rubbish, trust me, there's enough of them back in my home country and I found some disturbing facts about them from working for Inland Revenue (They had a provision in thier books that 65% of thier cars would come back for warranty work within 12 months costing on average $1000 NZD which back in 1989 was about the equivalent of US$1200 today with inflation and exchange rate fluctuations etc).

Diamantes cook thier transmissions with relative ease, as do Automatic Galants and most of thier AWD models make easy work of blowing gearboxes. Don't even get me started on the rusty-roof syndrome or the ball-joint recall. Even Alfa Romeo soundly kick Mitsubishis ass for producing reliable motoring and frankly, that shows just how unfunny the joke that is Mitsi really is.

Ok, I guess I was wrong. I don't know anything about Mitsus owning one and all, and researching them and talking about them every single day for over 2 and a half years. I guess I should just trust you... Let me just say that I am biased when it comes to DSMs. But my car has been fine and has had less problems than both my mom's '05 Volvo S70, her '98 Cherokee (that thing was absolutely horrible), and even my brother's Integra You want to know why that Integra has had SOOO many problems? Because it's making 260whp with a turbo. And what do you know, this is the exact situation every single person that owns a DSM is in, except in most cases they're making much more hp. Take one of the most reliable cars in the world (the Integra), put it in the same situation as a DSM, and it seems to have more problems. This seems to indicate that for how they are treated DSMs are actually more reliable than other cars.

This is the thing with DSMs. Every group of cars has a type of person that buys them. The people that buy DSMs are almost universally poor bastards that want to go faster than anything on the planet. They do not buy body kits, under car lights, shift knobs, or pretty gauges. They buy huge turbos, boost controllers, and fuel pumps. This results in the mentality "I'll put this 60-1 turbo on it, make 500whp, make a couple passes, and see if anything needs to be upgraded (by it braking)." People go as far as making an intake out of ABS pipe connectors from Home Depot and intercooler piping from copper plumbing (again from Home Deopt). Instead of paying $25 for a metal shift bushing kit they will make their own from hardware store washers Jb Welded together. Can you imagine people doing that to an Audi RS6 or 350Z? Other than the things that went wrong from the factory, this is why I believe DSMs get the unreliable reputation they have. When you see the common picture of a DSM on jack stands with it's engine out, it is usually because they followed the DSM mantra "Go as fast as possible for as little money as possible." It's not the car's fault the owner turned up the boost or put a huge turbo on it and didn't want to spend the money on injectors or tuning.

When someone buys an Evo they likely want to go fast. And most of them will spend a couple hundred dollars buying a boost controller, exhaust, and chip, and run mid 12s. I wonder why the clutch went out...

And I don't see Alfa Romeos setting records or dominating competition costing many times as much, as DSMs have done (fastest 4-cyl, 2nd fastest (soon to be first) AWD, highest hp per liter stock engine, rallying champions, pro outlaw rwd champion/record holder competing against higher cylinder motors without even using nitrous, quick class track record holder (Brent Rau @ Bandimere Speedway), etc, etc)

[blakscorpion21]

Originally Posted by Nayr747

Mitsu is in financial trouble but that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with what kind of cars they produce. Everyone gives Mitsubishis crap but the fact is they do one thing better than possibly any other company: Make the best bang for the buck performance cars in the world. Every review I've ever read: Edmunds, Road and Track, Sport Compact Car, etc. praises the Evo like no other. It was even SCC's Car of the Year last year. And it or an Eclipse usually dominates every year at the Ultimate Street Car Challenge in every area of speed or performance. They are innovators in rallying and their AWD system and steering is arguably the best in the world (I can give sources if you want). They also make engines (the 4g63 mostly) that may be the best in the world for producing power; The production engine with the highest hp per liter is the 4g63 in the Evo FQ400 produced in the UK, the record for the fastest 4-cyl was recently broken by Brent Rau in his 4g63 powered Talon with a 6.97 @ 198.2 mph pass, all without nitrous http://www.racingflix.com/getvideo.asp?v=1360 http://www.racingflix.com/forum/foru...?TID=2396&PN=1 , and the second fastest AWD car in the world is a Talon (same as Eclipse) which is driven, tuned, etc all by one guy who is competing against big name-backed Skylines in Japan, and he will most likely beat the record this year http://shepracing.com/ . So I think Mitsu sucks big time at managing their company and making very reliable cars, but is very good at making performance cars.

i wouldnt say mitsu is such an innovator in the rally. whatever the evo did in the rallys the gt-4 did better. the 6th gen gt-4 can almost match the modern day evo, and it is 10 years older.

[Jimster]

Originally Posted by Nayr747

And I don't see Alfa Romeos setting records or dominating competition costing many times as much, as DSMs have done (fastest 4-cyl, 2nd fastest (soon to be first) AWD, highest hp per liter stock engine, rallying champions, pro outlaw rwd champion/record holder competing against higher cylinder motors without even using nitrous, quick class track record holder (Brent Rau @ Bandimere Speedway), etc, etc)

Lancia are the most successful Rally Car maker in the world, they're Alfa Romeo's sister company and have been for decades, a Lancia Delta is pretty much the same car as an Alfa Romeo 155. Alfa Romeo has concentrated on motorsports that matter, like dominating the European Touring Car Championship, doing well in DTM and previously, Formula One (Though once Ferrari were snapped up by FIAT they were no longer required).

Between me and my family we've had 3 Mitsubishis (An Evo IV- The NZ equivalent to a 2nd Gen DSM, a Pajero 3.5 and a Mirage) and they were all rubbish, the Evo was fast and the Pajero was great off road, but the Evo ate transmissions (Admittedly it did get thrashed, but I've seen WRX's, Commodores, GT4's and GTR's stand up to far worse than what it was given), the Pajero had probably the worst built interior I've ever come across (It was awful, the glovebox was at one time full of plastic bits that had come loose) and the Mirage (Back in '87) broke down at least 3 times from memory, not even our previous Austins and Morris' could manage such a feat.

Obviously if you look after a car you'll probably get a relatively fault free run, but most VR4 (Galant, not 3000GT)/Evo owners I've met seem to be looking after thier cars religiously to stop them breaking and the second they start neglecting it, something (Usually a gearbox) goes kaput, that's not worth the effort as far as I'm concerned. Obviously with a fast car it's to be expected that things are going to break and it can be forgiven that Evo's etc break easier than normal cars given the amount of stress the engine and driveline is under, but thier pedestrian cars like the Diamante and Galant are also well below par.

[DinanM3_S2]

I honestly do not understand why people buy Galants and Lancers over Civics, Accords, Camrys, and Corollas. There is absolutely no point to them.

[drdisque]

because Galants and lancers are cheaper and if you're only going to drive it while its under warranty why not drive more car for less money?

[Jimster]

I can kinda see the logic in the 2004+ Galants over Camrys and Accords, they're quite good looking cars and the Camry has a very cheap feel to it when it's not specced up properly, like the one I had in Australia last year, a 2.4 Altise I believe it was, which lacked electric rear windows, not rare here in Italy in small/medium hatches and base model mid-size sedans like the Vectra or 407, but this is a big Australian market family car.... and as said above the warranty'd cover you when it breaks. The Accord is a fairly dowdy looking car, well the US market one anyway.

There's pretty much no justification for the Lancer though, stodgy chassis, cheap plastics and it's one strange looking thing.

[kman10587]

Originally Posted by Broke_as_****

Nissan was so broke dick at the end of the 90s that Renault had to step in and straighten things out. They were well into the negative side of the balance ledger just like Mistubishi motors is now.

Mazda is still some 5 billion dollars in debt and has been forced to take some very drastic measures just to stay open let alone make a profit. The release of almost 10% of their salaried work force and the automotive industry taboo of closing of one of their main production plants a few years ago. After Ford bought a big chunk of them a while back they have revamped their entire line and are doing better.

Think about this, Ford has a controlling stake in Mazda, Dodge has a controlling stake in Mistubishi, Renault has a controlling stake in Nissan, GM had about 20% of Fuji Industries (Subarus parent company) before they sold it to Toyota...just about every Japanese manufacturer except Toyota and Honda has a majority of their stock controlled by a company outside of Japan. All of those companies were bought when they were struggling and almost all are doing better since then.

On that note though, it's not as if the Mistubishi motor company is going anywhere. It's a very, very small part of a very, very large company.

http://www.mitsubishi.com/php/users/...rch.php?lang=1

That doesn't necessarily have to do with those companies being poorly managed. The oil crisis of the 1970's hit every company hard. To make matters worse for the Japanese companies, Japan's economy sharply declined towards the end of the 90's, and it's still in the pits today. Being smaller and less established in America (which was then and still is now the number one car market in the world), the Japanese companies were financially unable to survive these hardships, and that's why they needed to be bailed out.

[Broke_as_****]

First, the Oil Crunch of the 70s isn't factoring into this. That was at least 20 years previous to the time period in which we are speaking. That and even if it did factor into it, it would have been shown as beneficial to most Japanese companies as they tended to offer smaller more fuel efficent cars at the time. Devoties of automotive history will note the massive gains in market share that Honda in particular made during this time.

Second, concerning Mazda, Mitsubishi and Nissan, their problems started mostly in the early 90s. Nissan especially, over extending resources in an attempt to gain market share which then bit them in the ass when they weren't able to recoup the money they had shelled out. You can see this as a rapid increase in the cost of their vehicles through the mid 90s and as a dwindling R&D effort that didn't pick up again until Renault bought a majority share. Mazda, which had the best selling small pickup in the world in the early 80s started it's downward fall as early as 89 and 90, posting ever smaller yearly gains. Mitsubishi, despite the apparent popularity of the Eclipse, had never gotten a good foot into the world market door. This was later compounded by some poor marketing decisions, the most severe of which was a 0-0-0 financing plan that back fired.

I'm not trying to rip on Japanese companies, not intentionally anyway, because if nothing else I own two Nissans that I'm not inclined to sell any time soon. I'm just trying to show, that like everyone else, they too shoot themselves in the foot now and again. I don't think anyone could make a legitimate claim that any automotive company is "better managed" than any other one because they all display quite a bit of stupidity. They all have made vehicles and even whole sub-divisions of vehicles that have failed miserably. All have slammed their dicks in the marketing door plenty of times. Even Honda, which is known for being to make just about anything work, has lost tens of millions in it's continued quest to make a CVT trans that people will buy. Any argument that one company or another is better managed or has made better business decisions can be countered by something shrewd said company has done. Like the Aveo that is selling quite well under the Chevy line was originally a Daewoo car called the Kalos, rebadged and sold by the parent company GM. Considering that GM picked up Daewoo for pennies on the dollar, it was a nice move. But on the flip side, they tried to improve most of their engine line by tighting up their design tolerences, which they were unable to reproduce in mass quanity. If you have heard a low mileage GM with some pistons slapping around, that was usually the root cause. They have worked out most of that mess in the last year but it still leaves a bunch of broke dick engines sitting around.

Long story short, humans are humans the world over, especially CEOs of car companies.

[kman10587]

Originally Posted by Broke_as_****

First, the Oil Crunch of the 70s isn't factoring into this. That was at least 20 years previous to the time period in which we are speaking. That and even if it did factor into it, it would have been shown as beneficial to most Japanese companies as they tended to offer smaller more fuel efficent cars at the time. Devoties of automotive history will note the massive gains in market share that Honda in particular made during this time.

Second, concerning Mazda, Mitsubishi and Nissan, their problems started mostly in the early 90s. Nissan especially, over extending resources in an attempt to gain market share which then bit them in the ass when they weren't able to recoup the money they had shelled out. You can see this as a rapid increase in the cost of their vehicles through the mid 90s and as a dwindling R&D effort that didn't pick up again until Renault bought a majority share. Mazda, which had the best selling small pickup in the world in the early 80s started it's downward fall as early as 89 and 90, posting ever smaller yearly gains. Mitsubishi, despite the apparent popularity of the Eclipse, had never gotten a good foot into the world market door. This was later compounded by some poor marketing decisions, the most severe of which was a 0-0-0 financing plan that back fired.

I'm not trying to rip on Japanese companies, not intentionally anyway, because if nothing else I own two Nissans that I'm not inclined to sell any time soon. I'm just trying to show, that like everyone else, they too shoot themselves in the foot now and again. I don't think anyone could make a legitimate claim that any automotive company is "better managed" than any other one because they all display quite a bit of stupidity. They all have made vehicles and even whole sub-divisions of vehicles that have failed miserably. All have slammed their dicks in the marketing door plenty of times. Even Honda, which is known for being to make just about anything work, has lost tens of millions in it's continued quest to make a CVT trans that people will buy. Any argument that one company or another is better managed or has made better business decisions can be countered by something shrewd said company has done. Like the Aveo that is selling quite well under the Chevy line was originally a Daewoo car called the Kalos, rebadged and sold by the parent company GM. Considering that GM picked up Daewoo for pennies on the dollar, it was a nice move. But on the flip side, they tried to improve most of their engine line by tighting up their design tolerences, which they were unable to reproduce in mass quanity. If you have heard a low mileage GM with some pistons slapping around, that was usually the root cause. They have worked out most of that mess in the last year but it still leaves a bunch of broke dick engines sitting around.

Long story short, humans are humans the world over, especially CEOs of car companies.

An interesting post, and all in all, I don't disagree with it. I have to say for myself, though, that I never claimed the Japanese management was perfect, just the best out there; but you are right, everyone makes mistakes, and I believe I made one in overly glorifying the Japanese companies. Oh well. Like I said before, I can't help it if I'm more than a bit biased towards 'em.

Oh, and I mainly threw the oil crisis in there because it nearly bankrupted Mazda, and they never fully recovered from it. I'm well aware that 1973, the year of the oil crisis, was when the Honda Civic debuted, and quite a success it has been. Not to mention the ever-popular Corolla.

[DinanM3_S2]

Originally Posted by drdisque

because Galants and lancers are cheaper and if you're only going to drive it while its under warranty why not drive more car for less money?

Nope, they arn't, at least according to their websites they arn't. The Galant starts at $19,399, while the Accord starts at $18,225 and the Accord LX goes for $20,025, just about $600 more then a base Galant. The new Civic starts at $14,760 while the Lancer starts at $14,599 which is hardly a difference for a massively better car. The new Camry starts at $18,270 and Corolla goes for $14,105. Honestly, why buy a new Mitsubishi? I just don't see the point.

[Nayr747]

Originally Posted by DinanM3_S2

Nope, they arn't, at least according to their websites they arn't. The Galant starts at $19,399, while the Accord starts at $18,225 and the Accord LX goes for $20,025, just about $600 more then a base Galant. The new Civic starts at $14,760 while the Lancer starts at $14,599 which is hardly a difference for a massively better car. The new Camry starts at $18,270 and Corolla goes for $14,105. Honestly, why buy a new Mitsubishi? I just don't see the point.

Well, why buy any car new? You're just wasting money buy not buying a used car. But anyway, why but a Mitsu today? I can't defend the Lancer and Galant, but why wouldn't you buy an Evo? It has some flaws such as a poor side impact crash rating and I'm sure some mechanical problems. But if you want a performance car it's the one to get. No new car is gonna beat it for cheap straight line speed or its ability with the twisties, even if you spend twice as much.

[Jimster]

I'd like to think that the STi will keep up with an Evo and the new Golf R32 will nearly able to keep up (But not sacraficing comfort, mechanical reliability, refinement etc the way the Evo does)

[DinanM3_S2]

I can justify new cars because you get to pick your options, get more time under warranty, and don't have to worry about how others drove/maintained the car.

The Evo has a rediculously bad transmission. I've heard from more then one person that the clutch can go bad within 20,000 miles even without launching it. I've also heard about chronic linkage problems. When you go to dealers asking to get these problems fixed they accuse you of driving too hard and refuse service. Mitsubishi is also known for voiding warranties on any Evos that are raced or modded. They literally watch forum websites and tracks for Evos to void. Competitive cars like the STi, GTO, Mustang GT, S2000, 350z, etc have none of these problems.

In my opinion, the only reason someone would buy an Evo would be for its performance. Its pretty ugly, and its pretty terrible as a daily driver. The second you start using that performance, they try to kill your warranty and god forbid something goes wrong you'll end up paying out of your own pocket for it. I'd also reckon a GTO would take it in a straight line and the STi is about the same.

[pimprolla112]

Damn this post has some great points against and for car manufacturers. I do agree with about 90% of it and the debt problems for nissan were astonishing. As for the Domestics being the leader in sales to me they dont look like there doing so well with the mass amounts of people getting layed off, and the amounts of money there putting into cars to compete with the japanese market. Looks to me like they have the upper hand at this point. One thing i do like is that Honda or Toyota have never been partly owned by another major manufacturer. Gm did share some technology and car labels with Toyota in the past, but its nothing like Ford/Mazda or Diamler Chrysler/Mitsu. The only reason i say i like this is because these companies arent influenced by anothers vehicles they have been unique and still are (dont agree with the new civics yet).

As for the DSM's, they could not compete with Honda as far as engines go, they make more hp per liter than any production mitsu (US model) without the aid of forced induction. I will give them credit the 4G is one of the most popular and most used for drag engines on the market. And for the most power for the least money, that made me laugh. Ive seen some of these cars with 20-35k into them and they cant break into the 12's, but these where riced pieces of shit. Ive seen some fast ass ones with a little over 10 including the car but generally around here i see them with mass amounts of fiberglass, carbon fiber, wings and paint that makes a damn HOK paint job look like factory and the car cant even get out of its own way. Im not bashing them but ive seen different sides of this factor.

To me the japanese cars are far more reliable, and just generally have a better side for performance. High revving, light bodies, massive aftermarket support and cars with just engine swaps that can do the same 1/4 et as a stock v8 car. Domestics have had there time and they are still diminishing, imports are now the future for performance.