alt Hacker News> Everyone's take on the 1980s
Nope, I was there.
You're generally agreeing with me? You're making an argument that American makers improved by exposure to Japanese makers, and yes I am suggesting they also need exposure to Chinese makers for the same reasons.
> Japan was making the king of low quality cars that people wanted
This is China today, except by all accounts they are simply inexpensive and not low quality. Your bit about buying a compact car in the 80s has echoes in American automakers largely exiting the market for cars. (IIRC it's only Tesla, Lucid, the Mustang, and a couple Caddy models remaining.)
The main point is that in the 80s we could all see for ourselves Japanese cars. We could talk to people about how they liked them. People working at Ford could drive a Honda and figure out how to compete against it. That laid the ground for the resurgence of the American makers. Protectionism is depriving the automakers of this opportunity to retool to compete with the Chinese.
>You're generally agreeing with me? You're making an argument that American makers improved by exposure to Japanese makers, and yes I am suggesting they also need exposure to Chinese makers for the same reasons.
Partially. I agree on the economic lines. But disagreeing on the oft circle jerked quality bit.
These were not "high quality" cars even in their day nor were they "higher than the competing product" on any non-subjective axis (the Japanese and europeans did make very different decisions than the americans on some preference based things though). By "low quality" I do not mea low value. I mean low end. These were not designed to be "nice" cars. They were built to a price. These were not cars you got into and said "man, everything I touch feels solid" and "this is a pleasurable driving experience". They got called tin cans for a reason. They were inexpensive compacts and midsize vehicles but what they got right was they nailed the contribution of attributes everyone wanted and so they sold very well.
I absolutely agree that exposure let the other OEMs get better.