Classic, iconic American products no longer made in America

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Ballvalve

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http://www.americanmanufacturing.org/blog/18-iconic-products-america-doesnt-make-anymore

This is a sad and shocking read: 18 items we have given away to other countries to manufacture. If you look through this website, you will find some good news however.

Did you guys notice your LEVI pants still cost the same today as when they were made in Texas?

Your kids radio flyer wagon cost MORE when it was made in Chicago.

Have our corporate decision makers been trained only to look at the profit margin?
 
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Terry

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Toyota's Kentucky Plant Revs Past Eight-Million Engines

http://pressroom.toyota.com/pr/tms/...entucky-plan-revs-past-169804.aspx?ncid=11631

GEORGETOWN, Ky. --- Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky, Inc. (TMMK) reached a significant milestone when its powertrain facility produced its eight-millionth engine on July 27, 2010.

About Toyota
Toyota (NYSE:TM) established operations in North America in 1957 and currently operates 14 manufacturing plants, including one under construction. There are more than 1,800 Toyota, Lexus and Scion dealerships in North America which sold more than 2.05 million vehicles in 2009. Toyota directly employs more than 35,000 in North America and its investment here is currently valued at more than $23 billion, including sales and manufacturing operations, research and development, financial services and design. Toyota's annual purchasing of parts, materials, goods and services from North American suppliers totals more than $25 billion. Toyota currently produces 12 vehicles in North America, including the Avalon, Camry, Corolla, Highlander, Matrix, RAV4, Sienna, Sequoia, Tacoma, Tundra, Venza and the Lexus RX 350. For more information about Toyota, visit www.toyota.com or www.toyotanewsroom.com

So I guess you can still buy Japanese products made in the USA.
 

Ballvalve

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Well, thats a good thing in a sad sort of way. Chrysler produced its last engine in
Kenosha, Wisconsin a few weeks ago. There were at one time 14,000 souls working at this ONE factory.

http://www.jsonline.com/business/105499923.html

American motors made the first economy car that taught Toyota what to build, the Rambler American. Then the Pacer, the boldest car ever to be put into production, and the Eagle, the FIRST SUV [or Subaru] with 4 wheel drive. And the Matador, the ugliest car ever made.

The Japanese took that incredible American innovation and ran with it.

Lest someone reply that Chrysler made bad engines, I have 2 of them, never opened, [ timing chain only, on schedule] with a total of 420,000 miles on them.

So those Toyota jobs are only reduced and recycled American jobs. The worst part is that toyota imports its machine tools for the plants for the most part. We are losing our machinists and machine tool factories due to this and thus we fall prey to becoming a 3rd world economy.

Imagine, Chrysler has 1.9 million square feet under roof, probably a billion dollars worth of investment. Chrysler spent 500 million just to upgrade the place. If the japanese are so smart, they can grab it for 25 million and make their engines there.

Maybe Toto could grab it. Plenty of cheap natural gas and electricity in Kenosha.
 
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Ian Gills

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No loss. All the stuff listed above, Americans were rubbish at making anyway.

I've only found three things Americans are any good at making:

1) ball valves
2) pumps; and,
3) brassware.

Nothing sends more shivers down my spine than an American-made Toyota.

So, it looks like y'all better embrace the service economy.
 
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Jimbo

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The iconic american company, Buck Knives...several years ago had to move from El Cajon, CA to Idaho. Just couldn't afford to operate the business in anti-business California. Then they also had an opportunity to put their product line in Walmart. NO REMOTE POSSIBILITY that they could produce a knife in the US at the price point demanded by the cut-throats at Walmart. But it is a HUGE chuck of business, so they built a factory in China for the express purpose of making Walmart Bucks.
 

Ballvalve

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Americans cant even make clothespins anymore. The ones from China are junk. Canada gave up too. I think the Czechs still make a few good ones.

Just cannot compete with child labor. We call ourselves the great protector of human rights - calling manufacturing back home is the real method.

Ian, looks like Apollo valves in small sizes went to China.

http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/APOLLO-Two-Piece-Ball-Valve-1CKD2?Pid=search

HEY! there is hope. The brass is chinese and the BRONZE are USA:

http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/APOLLO-Ball-Valve-6KK50?Pid=search

Since the USA valve is only a buck more, the profit on the chinese valve is likely 5x more.

Its not about our ability to manufacture at a fair price, its about greed of peddlers.

And here you can buy a Chinese valve and donate a buck and a half above the American valve cost to the fine fellows!

http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/Two-Piece-Ball-Valve-6GD09?Pid=search
 
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Dunbar Plumbing

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I own a Toyota Tundra, Terry owns a Highlander.


Why on earth would anyone stoop to the level of owning a Chrysler. If that ain't punishment, that's just plain ignorance, knowing there's so many products out there that provide reliability.

I left a ford to go to a Toyota... that truck I have now has a stellar reputation for being reliable, trustworthy no matter what government motors has to say.


Every time I hear someone owning a dodge or chrysler, they know their mechanic on a first name basis.


If you put a toyota with 15 years of use, and a chrysler with the same?

One will force you to spend 1000's of dollars in repairs, the other? Gas belts brakes and tires.

I'll be a toyota owner from here on out. A better product, american made and the folks who designed them

know they are the best, along with honda and nissan.

[video=youtube;xxwgThqvP00]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxwgThqvP00[/video]
 
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Achutch

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I own a 2006 Toyota Tacoma, 5 speed manual, 4WD since and love it! I have never had a problem with it, despite the beating it took almost 3 years ago after hitting black ice while towing my snowmobile home. I hit a guard rail overlooking the Winooski River then got flung across the road where the truck landed in a ditch. Snowmobile was flung off its trailer and totaled. The trailer and truck received a lot of damage. However I escaped without a bump and nobody else was involved, despite the fact that it was rush hour and a line of vehicles was heading toward me. The truck was restored to like new condition, but I opted to not replace the snowmobile or trailer.

I guess you can say I'm sold on my Toyota.

My vehicle history:

1972-78: VW beetle, semiautomatic transmission, body rotted fast, terrible heat, and the transmission went bad twice -- the final time was it for that car.

1978-83: Datsun B210, 4 speed manual, fun to drive, terrible on snow (rear wheel drive), body rotted, and ignition coil had a tendency to get get and the car would "die" at the most inopportune time.

1983-89: Ford Escort, 4 speed manual, front wheel drive, the WORST car I owned. It never ran smoothly, engine would buck and kick, and the "module" (part of the electronic ignition) would without warning fail and the car would die usually in the worst of places like a busy intersection.

1989-1998: Plymouth Colt, made my Mitsubishi, 5 speed manual, front wheel drive, the BEST of the cars!! That car perform beyond its expectations and towed two snowmobiles, and forded the brook on the road to my sumer cabin. The body held up fine, but since I needed a truck, it was time to trade.

1998-2006: Nissan 4WD pickup, 5 speed manual, year 1995, the only used (I do not use the term "pre-owned") vehicle I have owned. Excellent all around. Nothing wrong with it mechanically, but the salt used in the winter eventually rotted the frame. I had planned on replacing the truck later on in the year, but ended up replacing it a little sooner.

2006-present: Toyota Tacoma as described above. No issues with it. Completely satisfied. Also, the dealer service has been excellent: appointments on time, service done correctly with no return visits, and since I have to wait, clean and comfortable waiting room. I guess I can say that despite their recent problems, I am sold on Toyota, at least for now.

achutch
 

Ballvalve

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Ford pickups make the top ratings and even consumer reports agree.

Got a 09 that gets 19 MPG pulling a trailer.

Got a 81' F350, loaded full time with 1.5 tons of diesel fuel and crap, no speedometer, most knobs broken off, maybe 200,000 HARD miles, tires like from a backhoe, 4x4 like from the military, and only saw a mechanic for a rear main seal and a new rear differential. Body looks like it was in Afghanistan for a year. Starts on the first click and can climb right over any TOY-ota

2 Chrysler vans loaded with tools for 10 years and brakes and oil only, 400,000 + miles. Hey! just like a toyota!

I hope Dunbar and Terry at least drive their "American" TOY-otas to the job with the American made valves in the back, not the Chinese ones that cost a buck more.

http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/APOLLO-Ball-Valve-6KK50?Pid=search

And watch your "floormats" boys, [japanese defective circuit boards] so you dont end up inside the living room with the water heater wrapped around the bumper.

My chryslers usually go where I steer them:

http://technorati.com/lifestyle/autos/article/toyotas-quality-problems-a-personal-experience/

My "green" neighbor put nothing but greenbacks into Toyotas service department for his sacred Prius, and in one year lost 4 months of use.

Even Yugo's were repairable.

From this link, looks like Toyota is learning from GMC:

http://www.google.com/search?q=My+p...rlz=1I7DKUS_en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7
 
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Jimbo

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ballvalve;279420My "green" neighbor put nothing but greenbacks into Toyotas service department for his sacred Prius said:
4 months out of service in the first year or two would qualify for a buy back under the lemon laws. My daughter got a buy back on a BMW, just before the 3 year warranty ran out. She kept every scrap of service document, and the case was a slam dunk. They took back her car, and paid back all the payments she had made on it for 3 years.

Yugos.....you could get one free with purchase of Buick. I think availability of parts was an issue. Years ago, we had a Le Car, which wasn't too bad, but same thing, parts hard to get.
 

Ian Gills

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The bottom line is Toyotas are good, but only the Japanese made ones.

Like I said before, Americans cannot make a decent car.

So new, American-made Toyotas are awful.

I drive an old Toyota, that arrived on a boat from Japan.

And it's a cracker.

Case in point:

1998-2006: Nissan 4WD pickup, 5 speed manual, year 1995, the only used (I do not use the term "pre-owned") vehicle I have owned. Excellent all around. Nothing wrong with it mechanically, but the salt used in the winter eventually rotted the frame. I had planned on replacing the truck later on in the year, but ended up replacing it a little sooner.
 

Dunbar Plumbing

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The one and only issue Toyota had?


Americans made the parts that caused the gas pedal issue, and that part was used on numerous product brands, not just Toyota.

But that wasn't news. Just because it pointed out how pathetic the uneducated unskilled worker is in America.

And they wonder why jobs shoot across the pond.

I've owned GM and FORD both, riddled with recalls. If you don't get a recall during the course of the year with those brands, they don't have your right address.

LMFAO!!!


I have found that my clientell of customers are smart consumers, understanding the cost of maintenance is worth more for the up front value then to get bailed out by the government, having pathetic union workers turning wrenches in a production line for $94,000.00 a year like they deserve it? Psssh.


A client of mine owns a Toyota and Honda over the past 16 years.

He said that between his wife and him, they have spent $1800.00 for repairs.


You will never find an american owned vehicle with that reputation, ever.
 

Ballvalve

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"uneducated, unskilled americans"? wow, you might consider therapy if you think that of your country, and worse, if you think they had anything to do with the POS japanese throttle control. And steering control. And exploding engines. And un-repairable Prius's.

Toyota started the electric throttle control to save a buck, and if the ignorant [in your words] americans made it, they made it entirely to some jap engineers specs sitting at a desk in tokyo. Even though our engineers taught them to build cars in the first place.

Then they made up a story [lied] about "floor mats" - fine bunch of carmakers!

Sacred, genius, glorious, infallible, toyota is just a fantasy. They have had hundreds of recalls, but fewer than the Americans - why? because their culture and love of the profit line wont allow them to admit to a mistake. Its called dishonesty.

I'll give an American auto worker 20 bucks an hour + $15 an hour in benefits long before I give a flunky plumber 85 or 90 dollars an hour to screw up my plumbing. An average American plumber in Japan would be flogged in public for incompetence.

Your 15$ an hour Toyota slaves cant afford a plumber anyway. YOU now get to pay for their government health care in YOUR taxes. Toyota is laughing at America's stupidity while shipping container loads of dollars home to pay for free health care for the Japanese.

The Japanese buy Japanese cars because they know it makes the country stronger. Americans like you forgot about that a generation ago.

You sound like the kind of guy that thinks Airbus makes a better plane than Boeing.

You'll be laughing YFAO when you are standing in a free soup line with all your incompetent out of work ignorant Americans that lowered sacred Toyotas quality control.

You won't laugh when the Chinese move you and the family to a uranium mine in Utah. Guess what though? Free cup of rice a day and housing! Straw mat to sleep on. Electricity every third saturday. Free health care - the gallows. And no more OSHA or those silly respirators and hard hats! Hurray!
 
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Ballvalve

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The bottom line is Toyotas are good, but only the Japanese made ones.

Like I said before, Americans cannot make a decent car.

So new, American-made Toyotas are awful.

I drive an old Toyota, that arrived on a boat from Japan.

And it's a cracker.

Case in point:

Your cracker jack Prius's arrive from Japan, and after 5 years not even toyota can repair them.

And where is the PLUG for the Prius? They could have done it years ago, but it would reduce maintenance and thus profits.

At least you buy Apollo. Be sure to get the BRONZE valves, still made here.
 

Ian Gills

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Of course I would not buy a Prius. Hybrids are false economy. A decent diesel engine will get you better mileage if Americans had the common sense to lift their diesel restrictions (which date back to the smog era when diesels were dirty...not any more).

But I would buy an electric vehicle. Like the Rav 4 EV for instance which came out a decade ago to fulfill California regulations making car producers produce a zero emission model.

It was a great car, made in Japan and one that I would gladly own.

But it disappeared. As usual, Americans started running scared of big Government like a bunch of little girls. So Toyota discontinued the RAV4 EV program one day after the passing of new air-quality requirements by the California Air Resources Board (CARB). CARB eliminated most of the Zero Emissions Vehicle (ZEV) requirement, substituting a greater number of Partial Zero-Emissions Vehicles (PZEVs) to meet the requirement.

Man up America.

rav4-ev-1024x768.jpg
 
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Dunbar Plumbing

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Yes. Unskilled, uneducated americans.


See how easy it is to piss off a chrysler owner? Tell em you own a toyota, just like the rest of the smart educated consumers buy. Statistics don't lie, they don't have a history of failure like the small 3 have.

Most that can't afford Toyota or Honda settle for less... much less.

It's okay.

Drink some milk and get strong. It'll happen.
 

Ballvalve

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Of course I would not buy a Prius. Hybrids are false economy. A decent diesel engine will get you better mileage if Americans had the common sense to lift their diesel restrictions (which date back to the smog era when diesels were dirty...not any more).

But I would buy an electric vehicle. Like the Rav 4 EV for instance which came out a decade ago to fulfill California regulations making car producers produce a zero emission model.

It was a great car, made in Japan and one that I would gladly own.

But it disappeared. As usual, Americans started running scared of big Government like a bunch of little girls. So Toyota discontinued the RAV4 EV program one day after the passing of new air-quality requirements by the California Air Resources Board (CARB). CARB eliminated most of the Zero Emissions Vehicle (ZEV) requirement, substituting a greater number of Partial Zero-Emissions Vehicles (PZEVs) to meet the requirement.

Man up America.
Honda and Ford made a great electric vehicle, Honda CRUSHED all of theirs and got no bad press.

Ford was going to crush theirs, and stopped due to PR pressure.

Ford should be your choice to thank them for that.

Sacred Toyota also destroyed their prototypes.

Man up America and buy American.
 
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Jimbo

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You can't put ALL the blame on the moguls. Featherbedding destroyed the railroads, and the unions added so much overhead to the cost of a car that t\he US companies could not compete head to head with toyota on quality and technology.
The public employees have out the city of san diego and state of CA on the brink of insolvency, so blame the UNIONS and also the CONSUMER ( look in mirror)
 
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