just hit you squarely on the head. Sincerely, Steve" Detroit is thirty years too late. Growing up in the burbs outside of Detroit gave me a strange split personality about cars and the auto industry. My brain categorizes cars automatically. I can tell you the make and model of almost anything on the road at considerable distance... at night. It's a sick preoccupation of my brain. Unconsciously, I associate everyone at work with what car they drive. I love cars. I share the same distant Miami Vice love affairs with Lambos, Ferraris and Porshces. But as much as I love cars, car companies make me sick to my stomach. Japan has been eating our lunch for years. The American car companies seem unable or unwilling to adapt to the marketplace. This article makes it sound like they're listening, but I question what will actually come from it. People I knew at GM used to hassle me about driving a toyota. They actually wanted me to feel guilty for buying it because not only was sending my money outside of Detroit, Michigan, and the USA, but that I was doing it twice! I was buying a car (a toyota) that would last twice as long (they said it, not me) as a similarly priced Chevy. They were admitting that I was buying a superior product, that it would last twice as long as the Chevy, and that I should somehow feel guilt because I didn't want to support the local car company and it's workers. I would love to buy American. And as soon as they have a product worth my money... I will consider it. They've made some progress lately, but as a whole, the big three are still years behind in my book. You know what people want out of a car? I'll tell you what I want: I want it to work - and I want it to work for more than 2-3 years.
I want to be able to afford it - it shouldn't be unreasonable to pay off in the same 2-3 years that it is reliable.
Get the computers out of the car. I disagree with the direction toward touch panels in the console. Just give me a car that works (see first point).
I want to feel relatively safe, but I don't need 72 airbags and ABS brakes. - get over yourselves, no amount of airbags is going to save me when my 1988 toyota meets the 2012 Escalade - that's just physics. I wish GM, Ford, and Chrysler could turn it around... but it doesn't seem very probable.