HMMA: This is just Pissing Me Off!

[jmowreader]

Remember a couple months ago, I was ranting on about Fayettenam's plan to remarket itself as America's Most Patriotic City? (That effort has stalled, incidentally.) One of the things they talked about doing was issuing fake tickets to people driving foreign-made cars in the downtown core. And I wondered how they could justify having a cop get out of his Mexican-made Ford Crown Victoria or her Canadian-made Chevrolet Caprice Classic to hand a fake ticket for driving an unpatriotic car to the owner of an Ohio-made Honda.

It's getting worse.

HMMA=Hyundai Motor Manufacturing America.

Hyundai is the largest manufacturing company in the Republic of Korea. They make everything you could ever imagine. In automobiles, they're the seventh-largest manufacturer in the world. (Hyundai sells two brands of cars in the US--Hyundai and Kia, and if they'd get off their ass and bring the Kiamaster, which is a pickup with a 16-foot drop-side bed (and seating for 20 Korean construction workers, or at least that's about as many as I ever saw riding in the back of one) that you can load with a forklift anywhere along its length, to the US they would OWN the light truck market.)

They are currently building two facilities in the United States: a design and engineering center in Detroit, and what they claim is the most advanced manufacturing facility in the world in Montgomery, Alabama. I know that they went to Alabama in part to escape the UAW, but Detroit? That's the UAW's FRONT yard. In Alabama and only in Alabama, they're going to make Hyundai's best engine, which is completely new. This will probably be exported to Korea.

Now let me get this straight: GM, Ford and Chrysler need to cut costs, so they build car parts in China, India, and every other no-wage shithole on earth, crank out cars in Mexican maquiladoras, and throw Americans out of work by the thousands to minimize costs (and they're STILL going broke!), and Hyundai, which is headquartered in a Korean port city, builds their brand-new, state-of-the-art, super manufacturing plant in the United States?

What the FUCK is going on here? These people are going to make car parts in the United States and export them to Korea for use in cars they're selling in India, and our own automakers are going to make car parts in Korea, export them to India for use in cars they're selling in the United States?

I'm not pissed off at Hyundai. They're showing that they believe in the US market so much they're willing to drop $2 billion on a factory here. I'm pissed off at our own automakers, who are showing they believe in the US market so much, they're willing to drop 2 million American jobs.

Remind me not to buy a American-badged car, m'kay?

[kaygore]

1. Alabama now is home to several foreign car manufacturers

and Mercedes is doubling the size of its plant in Tuscaloosa. Most foreign cars you see in the U.S. are built right here: Alabama, Kentucky, etc. Toyota is talking about building its hybrid Camry in Kentucky.

[Ioo]

2. I agree

I have always said, the most American car on the road is the Toyoda Camery, and the Handa Accord, I have been told I was lier, and un-American.

[jmowreader]

4. It's the other way around, but you're on the right track

The Accord contains more US-manufactured content than any other car sold in this country. The Camry is number two.

The fuckers who are un-American are the ones running around in a Mexican-made pickup with a Chinese-made engine (the Chevrolet Colorado, the worst piece of shit ever made) flying six flags from the stake holes in the bed yelling "hoo-ah hoo-ah buy American!"

[Tux]

3. Ironic

That foreign car makers have more trust in American workers than American car makers.

[yankeedem]

5. Boy, if a cop ever pulled me over

to give me a "fake ticket" and wasted my time, he will wish he hadn't.