There have been quite a few diaries about purchasing American cars and many of them have been loaded with some very frightening comments. The hyperbole is flying with this topic, such as:
If you don't buy American you are a union busting, middle class destroying traitor!
Yes, something like that. I've read things about people just feeling good about their Prius purchase but that it really doesn't do much good, it's just to soothe the souls of those latte drinking, university attending liberals.
Really I think it comes down to many factors and that there are many things we do in our everyday life that affect our liberal status.
Gary, my husband and I, have made conscious choices in the places we shop. We don't shop Wal-Mart or Fresh & Easy. Those are the two local culprits that seem to come up the most when talking about poor wages, union busting and lack of benefits. We do however shop at Trader Joe's and Costco and I have to admit, I shop Target as well. BUT, we also go out of our way to go to locally owned businesses where they may carry more specialty items, like the food I buy for our dogs. Yes, crazy.
There are many things we do, the sum of our purchases and actions do leave a mark and there are some of us that leave a much bigger mark, I would reckon that I am one of them. There is even a whole segment of our population who probably still doesn't think of such things and who are not as politically aware as many of us at Daily Kos. And then you have those who just don't give a shit.
But there are many things that shape why we buy the cars we do. I grew up with a stepfather who bought nothing but American made cars. The first car I ever drove was an avocado green Barracuda. Seriously. My step father was raised on American muscle cars and this one was "cherry". I hated that damn car.
I did just fine and then I got in a car accident and was terrified to drive. I had only gotten a minor concussion but it was traumatic due to the fact that I hit the dashboard and wound up in the ER covered in Sprite (I was crammed in the front seat with three other girls passing a can of Sprite). Sticky, scared and having the worst headache of my life didn't help me feel confident behind the wheel. I was such an awful driver, the school's driving class barred me from learning. SERIOUSLY.
It wasn't until I was 19 and my Mother was tired of being my chauffeur that I finally learned to drive. I was much better behind the wheel and even heard sexist things from my instructor, "You drive well for a woman".
Need I even say it, yes, seriously. "For reals", as my five year old would say.
So the next thing was to buy a car. I had almost $3,000 for a down payment and picked out a used Honda CRX. It didn't have many miles on it and it was only two years used, so in 1989, I bought an '87 Honda CRX for around $9,000. Oh, I loved this car.
This was the car I put my first political bumper sticker on, it was a Clinton/Gore 2000 sticker that had prompted someone to kick my rear bumper in. Gotta love Orange County, CA!
But I refused to remove it of course and had added a nice "Morrissey" sticker to it later. Yes, I was and will always be a Morrissey fan.
So what is the big deal about this damn car? Well, I paid it off in four years from my work in retail while attending community college and living with my single mother. It got a good 40 to 50 miles per gallon and never broke down (Except for the times I left the lights on and the battery died, that happened one too many times, the worst being 1am in Santa Monica after a John Wesley Harding concert, by MYSELF).
It drove nicely and I hated to drive, so it was always helpful to say that I could only bring ONE person with me. Ah, a two seater, the best first car ever.
I left the car for my Mother to use when I moved to college. It was always there when I came home and ran great as always. It took corners tightly and it just hugged the road. Oh yes, did I mention it got 40 to 50 MPG? Seriously.
I got my car back when I came home from college in 1997 and drove it for another two years, even after getting married, the car came with me. It wasn't until 1999 we decided it would be nice to have something with more room.
So we traded Chloe in for a truck for my husband. The dealer wanted to buy it himself and paid us $3,500 in CASH which we used for our down payment. I had the car for ten years, never broke down and sold it for over a third of what I had paid for it. Wouldn't you get all warm and fuzzy too about your first car (AND, I'm sure there are stories).
I miss that car. And in 2002, I bought a used Saturn L series. Worst car I ever owned. SO many issues I don't even want to go into it, but it was traded when we bought my husband his next new car, a Honda CRV (He's a musician and he needs some room but we didn't want to get a monster of a car). We test drove the four other cars along with this one and it was the best for us in price and reliability. I am one of those losers who has a subscription to Consumer Reports online.
And sadly, I rarely see any American cars make their list for best buys. It happens, I am not saying it doesn't but rarely. And for us to buy a hybrid for $5,000 more just didn't make any sense. I don't even drive that much as it is and I'm quite happy with my Subaru Impreza, which came with AWD, automatic and all the safety gadgets for under $18,000, to me, a steal.
Cars are a personal thing and we've all bought them for different reasons. But there is one thing that is true and that is I will never buy a Hummer or ever have a need for a Canyonero.
It's always what I think of when I think of over-sized and obscenely made American cars. The other favorite of mine is a sketch from mad TV. I laughed so hard when I saw this, I cried, because I live in one of those areas where many housewives at the time were driving their, "2003 Earth Destroyer". Please, watch this if you need to laugh.
Here is the transcript!
MRS CAMPBELL: CAR ACCIDENT (#725)
Mrs Campbell: Stephnie Weir
Driver: Mo Collins
Officer: Frank Caliendo
Officer: Ma'am, are you all right?
Driver: No, im not. Im very Pissed off. I mean, when did they put a curve in this road?
Officer: Ma'am, the curve was always there
Driver: well, they should put up a sign
[Officer walks over to the vehicle and pulls sign from the area between the wheel and the car]
Officer: you mean like this one?
Driver: come on, thats clearly an S. Thats not a curve. I know curves
Officer: whats the make and model of the vehicle please?
Driver: its a 2003 Earth Destroyer
Officer: license and registration please?
Source
Go to the link if you want to read more...fair use!
There is a reason we have these stereotypes and unfortunately the car companies were slow to move to change our attitudes towards their cars. It's a complicated issue and it's not just back and white, is anything ever these days?
Will I buy American? Of course I will, if I can. I want to be able to do that although my husband said I can't buy a new car anyway until everything on my current car falls off, but I want that chance. I don't see how letting these companies fail is going to teach anyone a lesson, it will only punish unions and working families and destroy one of the few manufacturing sectors in our Country. We need more of that, not less and by bringing American car makers back to life, we can start making things again.
We also promised that our next cars would be either hybrids or electric vehicles, we're hoping by the time we need new cars they will be more widely available and somewhat affordable, although I'm not holding my breath.
But it's important that we don't see this as an either/or scenario and that there has to be a way to save what manufacturing we have left without rewarding those who put quarterly profits before what was going to maintain their companies for the long term. How we do this, I can't say, maybe we need to nationalize these companies so the cars that say made in America reflects all of us not just those who get their bonuses at the end of a profitable quarter.
As we all know, the UAW can't be blamed for the failure of the auto industry, only 10% of their costs goes to the cost of purchasing a car, it's impossible to lay all the blame on labor. We should also know that the American consumer is not all to blame, we have been trained and told what to want and buy and in the era of cheap gas, these behemoths were common place because they meant more than getting around town, they meant stature, they meant success and we've swallowed this for far too long, it was going to bite us in the ass sooner or later.
But some thing has to change and we have to start making things again in this Country or we will forever be low wage earning consumers while at the top are those people who shuffle around the useless paper (yes, I am one of the many who asked why the Financial sector wasn't scrutinized as the car industry was for their labor and pay practices).
Just because Shrub and everyone else who contributed to this mess was able to sink the unsinkable doesn't mean we can't make this ship float again, we can, it's just going to take a while and a lot of good ideas and hard work.