<VV> AMerican cars--NO CORVAIR, probably should be off net

[Garth Stapon]

Chuck:

NAFTA clearly outlines that a minimum percentage of the car must contain domestic components to be freely imported (read duty free) / exported from Canada & the USA. I am not sure what the exact domestic content number is although 70% comes to mind. (Maybe someone knows?) 

They Government on both sides of the border watch this level very closely. 

There are instances where local content rules are abandoned - (Like on the full size Ford & Lincolns) manufactured in St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada. 

It seems that Ford bean counters calculated that Ford paid less of a penalty in the way of an import duty on cars sold into the American market- than it would have if the cars that were counted as domestic and included to calculate CAFE. 

It seems they were selling too many of this gas guzzler and by going off shore for parts, Ford was disqualifying the cars as domestically made. Hence they were not included for CAFE. 

A clever way of doing business.

Regards, Garth

-----Original Message-----
From: Chuck Kubin <dreamwoodck at yahoo.com>
Sent: Nov 22, 2005 11:34 AM
To: virtualvairs at corvair.org
Subject: <VV> AMerican cars--NO CORVAIR, probably should be off net

Mike has a good point. Japanese companies assemble their cars in Kentucky. My 2002 Dodge (owned by Germans) truck has a 4.7L engine designed by Germans who wrapped Mecedes technology around the old 318 platform. Saturn is a GM company, but how much of the car is "American?"  My cousin's Indiana company supplies steel to the auto industry, and 85% of it comes from Russia.
  So we have an industry where bodyworks come from Brazil, steel comes from Russia, interiors come from Mexico and India, plastics come from China and Indonesia, electronics come from Japan, Malaysia and Korea...and the contributing vendors like Moog etc. draw on a global economy to produce their parts and assemblies. The customer service center is a phone bank in India, corporate headquarters is in Frankfurt, and shipping is run from a building in Canada. 
  How do you think Mexico built VW bugs until two years ago? And where do you think all those relatively-inexpensive parts come from? Were Germans who make $60 an hour and getting 15 weeks of vacation a year building them?
  So now you can be absolutely sure the only part of the car that's "American " is the nameplate, and that is probably made somewhere else too.
  If absolute loyalty to American workers is your priority, you can't shop for much of anything any more. Do you suppose the strawberries your wife brought home yesterday grew in the US? Are the socks you bought your granddaughter from cotton ginned, woven and packaged in Georgia?  The plywood you cut up this weekend came from a Japanese company that cut the trees in a Canadian forest, milled and glued the veneers in a factory ship off the Vancouver coast and "imported" it through Seattle.
  I'm absolutely positive my Corvair was made in the USA, but not all the replacement parts were. 
   
  Chuck Kubin

mhicks130 at cox.net wrote:
  ------------------------------


I may be old fashioned but I 
refuse to drive anything but an American car. That does not include the 
foreign 
cars that are built here.

Ned (Geezer in training)


*************************************************

Does that include "American" cars that are not made in America? Lots of American cars are made in Canada and Mexico (and any day now, China). Since you don't care about the nationality of the workers who build the cars is your criteria then only the nationality of the CEO? 

mike


		
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