Yah, I actually have a little bit of respect for the guys driving around in Nissan Titans and Toyota Tundras, because it means they have enough brains to actually look at all the options and decide which truck is actually best for them, American name or no. What's more most of these vehicles are made in the US, with many US parts anyway. I think basically the most critical parts of the structure and powerplant are forged in Japan and shipped over, then the rest of the parts come from here and all the jobs come from here. Subaru does the same thing, and it friggin WORKS. (Are you listening Detroit?)
All this "gotta buy American" bullshit has got to die NOW. Get your heads out of your butts, flag-waving hill-billys. Time to get over the mindset that spawned window stickers with Calvin peeing on your hated rival truck company. Ironically, the company that makes the peeing Calvin stickers,is smart enough to realize that Ford, Chevy and Ram ALL deserve to be pissed on, but the drivers of the trucks still haven't made that connection yet.
It's called free markets and competition. Don't buy American unless the American product is the *better* product, otherwise they'll keep turning out shit. And judging by the maintenance horror stories I hear when I travel out west -where everyone owns a damn truck- Made in America still means "it's in the shop at least 2 weeks a year".
Strangely, I never hear stories like this about Toyota or Nissan trucks. Not that they're perfect, but Japanese engineering is Japanese engineering. They pwn us in pretty much all categories of automotive design and factory efficiency. You'd think after taking a few pages from their play book in the early 90s and changing our factories and such, that we'd put out equally high quality vehicles on average but I guess not. Ford took a $12B loss last year... obviously Detroit still has its head stuck in its rectum.
I have a friend who when buying a new vehicle for his growing family wouldn't even *look* at a Japanese car company. Somewhere along the line his parents brain-washed him and now he thinks it's his patriotic duty to buy American, otherwise he's "hurting our economy". Boggles the mind that people think like this. You want to help our auto makers? Give them an incentive to make higher quality vehicles, beyond just the way it looks. Buy Japanese.