I guess my point is this. We (many of us) purchase according to price. How many people have bought those cheap vietnamese seats that are crap when pretty much every town has an upholsterer. We do it purely because of price. Corporations and even small businesses like mine are no different. I comparison shop and look for the best value of quality and price. If a product I need can be imported from indonesia for less money and is of the same or better quality than I could get here then I get the indonesian product. Same thing with american motorcycles and japanese motorcycles. As Mary Tyler Moore said, life goes on...
Yep, I understand what you're saying Brad, and the buying public can make or break a particular manufacturer, and the buying public are a fickle lot. At the moment in Australia, Ford's "Falcon" (their main "Family car" model here since the 1960's) has become a sales liability, because the buying public has fallen head over heels in love with SUV's. Mitsubishi fell out of favour with the buying public a couple of years ago and continued to produce the car they wanted to build, as opposed to the car we wanted to buy, and went broke, shut their factory in Adelaide, and now only import vehicles into Oz.
Small Japanese "econo-cars" became popular in the 1960's because they offered a (much) cheaper alternative to large gas guzzling family cars, and even though the first Toyotas and Datsuns were poor quality POS', they improved greatly over a decade and firmly established themselves as a viable alternative to the local product, at a cheaper price.
As I said earlier, the buying public are a fickle lot, and here in Oz at least, many of them think that our local product is of poorer quality than anything we import, which is rubbish. I was listening to a Mercedes owner waffling on about how much better his "Benz" is than our Fords and Holdens (GM Australia) and I explained to him that in Germany, his model "Benz" is used as a taxi, police car etc, and is nothing special at all, and I did a quick parts price comparison between parts for local cars, and his wonderful "Benz", and he almost fainted. Its that classic "Grass is greener on the other side" attitude that the buying public uses to justify not supporting the local industry.
I see the same anti-Harley bullschidt all the time here and on other motorcycle forums I'm a member of, all written by folks who've never owned one, comparing Harleys to their new Japanese bikes, and still using the "Oil Leaking, unreliable, poor handling" stereotypes to justify, once again, why they might wave their American flags on the 4th of July, then run down to their Honda shop on the 5th, to keep all their Japanese friends in work. Yes, I understand that not everybody wants a V twin cruiser, but what really sickens me is looking at pictures of American "Bikers" proudly displaying their American flags on their Japanese V twin cruisers, that's just pathetic.
I can still remember a letter to the editor of Popular Mechanics magazine back in the early 80's, that talked about this very subject. The author's final words were, "Are you unemployed, broke, homeless and hungry? Then eat your Honda". Cheers, Terry.
