Govt. B.S. What Americans are really buying with their Clunker Cash
08-26-2009, 09:45 AM
#1
TECH Regular
Thread Starter
iTrader: (3)
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Magnolia, Texas
Posts: 464
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Govt. B.S. What Americans are really buying with their Clunker Cash This discussion is from another board I visit. I think it's worth repeating.
Vernon
As always, be very careful about who is spining the data. The lists everyone is touting that show the top 10 cars bought under the program were foreign really aren't true (depending how you look at it...)
The problem is that the government agency reporting the data that way is counting vehicles like the Ford Escape differently than any regular human would. IE the Escape 2wd is a different model than the Escape 4WD, which is different than the Escape AWD. Thus the Escape numbers are divided amongst 3 models, and doesn't even show up on the list. The Toyota Carrolla only comes in 2wd, so all those numbers count as the "Corrolla" placing it in the number 1 slot. When you combine all of the Escape model numbers into one, it becomes the best seller under this program, and the Carolla drops to #9.
Edmunds had reported the data by counting "all Escapes as Escapes..." which looks different than the list from everywhere else.
Rank DOT (what everyone is reporting)
1. Toyota Corolla
2. Ford Focus
3. Honda Civic
4. Toyota Prius
5. Toyota Camry
6. Hyundai Elantra
7. Ford Escape (FWD)
8. Dodge Caliber
9. Honda Fit
10. Chevrolet Cobalt
Rank Edmunds (what's really happening)
1. Ford Escape
2. Ford Focus
3. Jeep Patriot
4. Dodge Caliber
5. Ford F-150
6. Honda Civic
7. Chevrolet Silverado
8. Chevrolet Cobalt
9. Toyota Corolla
10. Ford Fusion
Rumor has it the data is being pushed as it is because they want this to be seen as such a wonderful "green" program, and show American's really do want tiny s%&*. Having the top 5 sellers being Domestic trucks and SUV's kinda shoots that in the ***. For me it's back to the A-holes in government telling us that "we don't build the vehicles people want" and this is another data spin to try and make their point.
Vernon
Originally Posted by Andy94SC
Originally Posted by Thomas A
Did anyone notice that out of the top 10 models of new cars sold under this program, 8 are made by foreign manufacturers? GM and Chrysler, arguably the two manufacturers that needed the most help, didn't even have a model make the top 10 list (Ford had 2). So, the government's whole argument of helping out the automakers must not of included the domestic ones. :roll:
The entire program is beyond asinine, and is yet another display of the wasteful, short sightedness of government. It makes zero economic sense.
Thomas`
The entire program is beyond asinine, and is yet another display of the wasteful, short sightedness of government. It makes zero economic sense.
Thomas`
The problem is that the government agency reporting the data that way is counting vehicles like the Ford Escape differently than any regular human would. IE the Escape 2wd is a different model than the Escape 4WD, which is different than the Escape AWD. Thus the Escape numbers are divided amongst 3 models, and doesn't even show up on the list. The Toyota Carrolla only comes in 2wd, so all those numbers count as the "Corrolla" placing it in the number 1 slot. When you combine all of the Escape model numbers into one, it becomes the best seller under this program, and the Carolla drops to #9.
Edmunds had reported the data by counting "all Escapes as Escapes..." which looks different than the list from everywhere else.
Rank DOT (what everyone is reporting)
1. Toyota Corolla
2. Ford Focus
3. Honda Civic
4. Toyota Prius
5. Toyota Camry
6. Hyundai Elantra
7. Ford Escape (FWD)
8. Dodge Caliber
9. Honda Fit
10. Chevrolet Cobalt
Rank Edmunds (what's really happening)
1. Ford Escape
2. Ford Focus
3. Jeep Patriot
4. Dodge Caliber
5. Ford F-150
6. Honda Civic
7. Chevrolet Silverado
8. Chevrolet Cobalt
9. Toyota Corolla
10. Ford Fusion
Rumor has it the data is being pushed as it is because they want this to be seen as such a wonderful "green" program, and show American's really do want tiny s%&*. Having the top 5 sellers being Domestic trucks and SUV's kinda shoots that in the ***. For me it's back to the A-holes in government telling us that "we don't build the vehicles people want" and this is another data spin to try and make their point.
08-26-2009, 05:11 PM
#2
Toyota is more of an american company than most of Domestic cars....
80% of the money from a new Toyota stays in America.
with GM less than 30% stays in the states...
Honda Acura Nissan and Toyota are all owned and engineered by the Japs but is built and managed by Americans.
Cash for Clunkers was never meant to stimulate economy. It was meant to get polluteing vehicles off the street.
80% of the money from a new Toyota stays in America.
with GM less than 30% stays in the states...
Honda Acura Nissan and Toyota are all owned and engineered by the Japs but is built and managed by Americans.
Cash for Clunkers was never meant to stimulate economy. It was meant to get polluteing vehicles off the street.
08-26-2009, 10:15 PM
#4
TECH Regular
iTrader: (1)
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: La Porte, TX
Posts: 406
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
True, the article I read had the first list as gospel. It also stated the top 10 trade-ins were all domestics, which sounds about right. I would like to believe that the Edmonds list is the most accurate but Toyota did sell the most vehicles with close to 20% market share.
08-26-2009, 10:53 PM
#5
TECH Addict
iTrader: (12)
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Houston, Texas
Posts: 2,693
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Toyota is more of an american company than most of Domestic cars....
80% of the money from a new Toyota stays in America.
with GM less than 30% stays in the states...
Honda Acura Nissan and Toyota are all owned and engineered by the Japs but is built and managed by Americans.
Cash for Clunkers was never meant to stimulate economy. It was meant to get polluteing vehicles off the street.
80% of the money from a new Toyota stays in America.
with GM less than 30% stays in the states...
Honda Acura Nissan and Toyota are all owned and engineered by the Japs but is built and managed by Americans.
Cash for Clunkers was never meant to stimulate economy. It was meant to get polluteing vehicles off the street.
Cash for Clunkers was a giant waste of time and money whatever it's ostensible reason.
08-26-2009, 11:43 PM
#6
And i promise you... acura toyota nissan benefit the American economy more than the big 3.
08-27-2009, 10:12 AM
#7
TECH Regular
Thread Starter
iTrader: (3)
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Magnolia, Texas
Posts: 464
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
I asked my friend Andy, who works as an engineer for one of the Big Three, to wiegh in on this. Stuff that we have trouble with in auto manufacturing he can explain very well and accurately. This is what he says:
"Vernon, I hear and read a lot of that kind of crap. Sadly you can just about never change a persons mind when they have it made up on what they want to believe. My dad went to his grave still beleive Ford has been hiding the 75 MPG carberator since the mid 1970's so they could make more money from fuel injection... People, for some reason, like to point to a "foreign" car that is Built in the US, and then to a "Domestic" car built in Mexico for example to support that guys type of argument. Admittedly it is a very complex situation most people won't take the time to even think about figuring it out.
Here's an article you can link to that has some information... http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_q ... ntent;col1
There was also a lot of information in the documents GM sent the government when asking for the loans late last year.
It is a very complex situation, and making general statements about a manufacturer are pretty vague because the case is different for each individual car. But there are a few rules of thumb that should make sense.
The final assembly plant cost is 10% or less of the cost of a car. For example a car that was engineered outside the US, and all components sourced from outside the US, but built in the US and sold here for $20,000 would leave about $2000 in the US. It's a lower amount for more expensive vehicles because most of the increase in vehicle price of a luxury car is the cost of the higher end components, not the cost to assemble.
The dealership adds a very minor amount to the vehicles (usually) and is generally about the same regardless of where the company is headquartered.
That leaves the two major contributors to a vehicles cost; Paying for the engineering and development of the vehicle - all the money that flows back to the company to pay the workers who are not at the assembly plant; engineers, accountants, research scientists, marketing people, managers, etc etc. Second paying for the components that make up the vehicle. I really do not have a very good idea where the split is on those two things, but combined they are 80% or more of the cost of a vehicle. It's getting tricky to say what's what there because lately a lot of the enginerring / administrative costs and simply being added into the costs of the parts.
So if you look at parts, this varies greatly from vehicle to vehicle, one GM car will have a different domestic content than another because they use parts from different suppliers in different countries. The domestic content is required to be listed on the window sticker of the vehicle. However you have to take that with a grain of salt because the money trail is VERY difficult to follow because there are so many suppliers invloved, and most of them are global too. IE the money that pays for the instrument panel also is split to pay for the parts that come in the instrument panel, like the radio which will be from another supplier. That radio money goes to a supplier with engineerng facilitiers in one country, administrative and testing facilities in another, and a third country has the radio'smanufacturing plant - then you consider all of the suppliers that make the components that make up the radio - like the CD mechanism, or PCB, then all of the suppliers that make the parts that make up the different radio components - the motors and gears in the CD mechanism, and the suppliers to those suppliers - the magnets, and wiring that make up the motors... and these are all changing as the different suppliers move their manufacturing to different plants in different countries all of the time. So it's impossible to say exactly at any given time what the domestic content is.
All car manufaturers are using the same set of suppliers. Looking at the domestic content on the sticker isn't accurate, but it's pretty close. But domestic content of domestic vehicles is gernerally higher because manufactuers tend to work most closely with the suppliers from their home countries the most. This is slowly changing as the world becomes "global", but Japanses cars have mostly Japanese components, American cars have mostly American components, and European cars have mostly european components.
Finally there are those engineering and administrative costs. That's easy. Look how many people (outside of assembly plants) that are employed and collecting retirements from the manufacturer. This is where the Domestics absolutley dwarf the imports that are built here. For example Toyota employs about 1% of what GM employs in the US.
In, short if you want the most of your money to stay in the US when you buy a car, First look for a Ford, GM, or Chrysler, because thats the biggest indicator of where most of the money goes. They have the most US employees and retiree's to pay, and they source more components from US companies than foreign companies. Second look for the highest domestic content on the window sticker. The last thing toconsider the location of the assembly plant."
"Signature": not so proud employee of Obama's Socialist Government Motors.
"Vernon, I hear and read a lot of that kind of crap. Sadly you can just about never change a persons mind when they have it made up on what they want to believe. My dad went to his grave still beleive Ford has been hiding the 75 MPG carberator since the mid 1970's so they could make more money from fuel injection... People, for some reason, like to point to a "foreign" car that is Built in the US, and then to a "Domestic" car built in Mexico for example to support that guys type of argument. Admittedly it is a very complex situation most people won't take the time to even think about figuring it out.
Here's an article you can link to that has some information... http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_q ... ntent;col1
There was also a lot of information in the documents GM sent the government when asking for the loans late last year.
It is a very complex situation, and making general statements about a manufacturer are pretty vague because the case is different for each individual car. But there are a few rules of thumb that should make sense.
The final assembly plant cost is 10% or less of the cost of a car. For example a car that was engineered outside the US, and all components sourced from outside the US, but built in the US and sold here for $20,000 would leave about $2000 in the US. It's a lower amount for more expensive vehicles because most of the increase in vehicle price of a luxury car is the cost of the higher end components, not the cost to assemble.
The dealership adds a very minor amount to the vehicles (usually) and is generally about the same regardless of where the company is headquartered.
That leaves the two major contributors to a vehicles cost; Paying for the engineering and development of the vehicle - all the money that flows back to the company to pay the workers who are not at the assembly plant; engineers, accountants, research scientists, marketing people, managers, etc etc. Second paying for the components that make up the vehicle. I really do not have a very good idea where the split is on those two things, but combined they are 80% or more of the cost of a vehicle. It's getting tricky to say what's what there because lately a lot of the enginerring / administrative costs and simply being added into the costs of the parts.
So if you look at parts, this varies greatly from vehicle to vehicle, one GM car will have a different domestic content than another because they use parts from different suppliers in different countries. The domestic content is required to be listed on the window sticker of the vehicle. However you have to take that with a grain of salt because the money trail is VERY difficult to follow because there are so many suppliers invloved, and most of them are global too. IE the money that pays for the instrument panel also is split to pay for the parts that come in the instrument panel, like the radio which will be from another supplier. That radio money goes to a supplier with engineerng facilitiers in one country, administrative and testing facilities in another, and a third country has the radio'smanufacturing plant - then you consider all of the suppliers that make the components that make up the radio - like the CD mechanism, or PCB, then all of the suppliers that make the parts that make up the different radio components - the motors and gears in the CD mechanism, and the suppliers to those suppliers - the magnets, and wiring that make up the motors... and these are all changing as the different suppliers move their manufacturing to different plants in different countries all of the time. So it's impossible to say exactly at any given time what the domestic content is.
All car manufaturers are using the same set of suppliers. Looking at the domestic content on the sticker isn't accurate, but it's pretty close. But domestic content of domestic vehicles is gernerally higher because manufactuers tend to work most closely with the suppliers from their home countries the most. This is slowly changing as the world becomes "global", but Japanses cars have mostly Japanese components, American cars have mostly American components, and European cars have mostly european components.
Finally there are those engineering and administrative costs. That's easy. Look how many people (outside of assembly plants) that are employed and collecting retirements from the manufacturer. This is where the Domestics absolutley dwarf the imports that are built here. For example Toyota employs about 1% of what GM employs in the US.
In, short if you want the most of your money to stay in the US when you buy a car, First look for a Ford, GM, or Chrysler, because thats the biggest indicator of where most of the money goes. They have the most US employees and retiree's to pay, and they source more components from US companies than foreign companies. Second look for the highest domestic content on the window sticker. The last thing toconsider the location of the assembly plant."
"Signature": not so proud employee of Obama's Socialist Government Motors.
Trending Topics
08-27-2009, 03:09 PM
#9
TECH Regular
Thread Starter
iTrader: (3)
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Magnolia, Texas
Posts: 464
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
They goto Big Leroy's Auto Salvage in Acres Home LOL. At least that's what the news reported the other night. Leroy had to buy a bigger fork lift. The engines have to be destroyed by the dealer who can then sell it to a salvage outfit. They then have 6 months to remove parts then the hull has to be crushed. The engine and VIN must be killed off. They pour some chemical into the intake that ruins metal.
Vernon
Vernon
08-27-2009, 03:10 PM
#10
TECH Apprentice
iTrader: (1)
Join Date: May 2009
Location: San Antonio Tejas, TX
Posts: 329
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Toyota is more of an american company than most of Domestic cars....
80% of the money from a new Toyota stays in America.
with GM less than 30% stays in the states...
Honda Acura Nissan and Toyota are all owned and engineered by the Japs but is built and managed by Americans.
Cash for Clunkers was never meant to stimulate economy. It was meant to get polluteing vehicles off the street.
80% of the money from a new Toyota stays in America.
with GM less than 30% stays in the states...
Honda Acura Nissan and Toyota are all owned and engineered by the Japs but is built and managed by Americans.
Cash for Clunkers was never meant to stimulate economy. It was meant to get polluteing vehicles off the street.
Agreed, They have similar program with Diesels. The government can buy you a new truck all you have to do is work it for 10 years! so Im about 2 years away from getting a new Tractor
08-27-2009, 03:15 PM
#11
TECH Fanatic
iTrader: (5)
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Evansville, IN
Posts: 1,199
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Toyota is more of an american company than most of Domestic cars....
80% of the money from a new Toyota stays in America.
with GM less than 30% stays in the states...
Honda Acura Nissan and Toyota are all owned and engineered by the Japs but is built and managed by Americans.
80% of the money from a new Toyota stays in America.
with GM less than 30% stays in the states...
Honda Acura Nissan and Toyota are all owned and engineered by the Japs but is built and managed by Americans.
08-27-2009, 03:51 PM
#12
I honestly cant remeber what article that i read that went more in depth about this. Some of the information was introduced by out on govt economistst. (spell check).
It talked about the American automakers spending their money everywhere except America. Then talked about Toyota and Acura specifically. That was only one source of information... believe me i am not saying this because i read one article.
If you think about it it realy doe make sense. American copanies have replace humans with machines and Out sourced the rest. Think about things like phone companies, clothing companies, or even major retail stores. American owned companies that take advantage of cheap labor and parts in third world countries.
Seeing as though i dont have proof of what i am saying... Ill back out of this argument. But I know Nissan, Toyota, and Acura benefit the American economy greatly without out needing a 700 billion dollar bailout.
It talked about the American automakers spending their money everywhere except America. Then talked about Toyota and Acura specifically. That was only one source of information... believe me i am not saying this because i read one article.
If you think about it it realy doe make sense. American copanies have replace humans with machines and Out sourced the rest. Think about things like phone companies, clothing companies, or even major retail stores. American owned companies that take advantage of cheap labor and parts in third world countries.
Seeing as though i dont have proof of what i am saying... Ill back out of this argument. But I know Nissan, Toyota, and Acura benefit the American economy greatly without out needing a 700 billion dollar bailout.
08-27-2009, 04:24 PM
#13
TECH Fanatic
iTrader: (5)
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Evansville, IN
Posts: 1,199
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
I dont doubt those three (four if you count Honda) benefit the economy but to say that they greatly do it is a little far stretched. All companies produce cars out of their home land. Hell, look how good GM does in China and South America as well as the Middle East.
You say that American companies outsource but what is it when the other companies keep it in their own land because its so cheap? Nothing wrong with that is there? Well, if the automakers did bring it back to the US workers would have to work for less to make it profitable for the companies. No sense in running a company if you are going to be running in the red because of labor costs.
Here is another fact you have to look at too. How transparent are the US companies? They are publicly traded so you get to look at their balances and ALL that. How many other car companies are? It wouldnt surprise me at all if the Chinese government bailed out some company and we didnt hear about it.
You say that American companies outsource but what is it when the other companies keep it in their own land because its so cheap? Nothing wrong with that is there? Well, if the automakers did bring it back to the US workers would have to work for less to make it profitable for the companies. No sense in running a company if you are going to be running in the red because of labor costs.
Here is another fact you have to look at too. How transparent are the US companies? They are publicly traded so you get to look at their balances and ALL that. How many other car companies are? It wouldnt surprise me at all if the Chinese government bailed out some company and we didnt hear about it.
08-27-2009, 05:41 PM
#15
You say that American companies outsource but what is it when the other companies keep it in their own land because its so cheap? Nothing wrong with that is there? Well, if the automakers did bring it back to the US workers would have to work for less to make it profitable for the companies. No sense in running a company if you are going to be running in the red because of labor costs.
08-27-2009, 05:45 PM
#16
Like i said i really dont have a leg to stand on in this argument seeing as though i have no proof. That being said you do make a good point. A lot of companies relie on the big three such as bankers, accountant firms, software engineering. (assuming that is what you meant)
08-27-2009, 06:35 PM
#17
if you really want to know the difference between domestics and imports, look at which country each automaker turned to when they needed a bail out. ford-US (even tho they didnt take it) GM-US, Chrysler-US, toyota-japan. those are the only ones im aware of. if somone wants to post more automakers go right ahead