Industry sign banking new mexico last will and testament computer
hi I'm Peter Annette's for the next hour we're going to take you on an incredible journey it began with the dream of a genius a dream which we eventually all would share but the dream has faded the glitter is gone now it all began here Detroit Michigan automobile capital of the world for more than half a century at fuelled man's love affair with the automobile car makers became industrial giants Detroit became a boomtown but what once was the center of the world's automotive Empire has lost its crown the rich powerful often arrogant auto industry is now struggling for its survival and the new leader is Japan producing millions more vehicles each year than the United States and pushing them into markets once exclusively American even in the United States would be car buyers turned away from Detroit's products the people who are selling today's cars in today's recession are probably on the verge of nervous breakdowns the American economy is without a doubt in the most difficult period of time we've seen in decades there was a time when the US auto industry thought the world's love affair with the American car would never end after all Henry Ford put America on wheels with his Model T the world has seemed an order of the assembly line and its end product a car that people could afford foreigners copied the US industry scholars studied it through the years Detroit executives believed that theirs was an untouchable unstoppable industry and the public eagerly responded to the rapidly developing auto Empire the car but the glamour is gone now along with Detroit's long revered auto supremacy the reason is that the industry lost touch with the buying public I think that the US auto industry did go astray especially in the 70s I'm not certain I can tell you accurately all the reasons why when gas prices shut up to more than $1 a gallon after OPEC and Iran dashed hopes for endless supplies of cheap petroleum US car makers were caught short they were still offering the public low quality high priced gas guzzlers while the Japanese were offering what the American buyer wanted and needed a cheaper fuel-efficient well-designed car what happened when the oil shocks came the Japanese in their home market were already building the size car that we needed here in the United States and it takes us two to three years even now with the amount of government regulation we have four to five years to bring out a new car so the Japanese were sitting down in the end of the market with a quality product where we needed to get to a we're finally in 1979 that the import threat was serious domestic car manufacturers scurried to produce smaller cars when they finally moved into production in the early 1980s they were greeted by a fickle US market that no longer placed fuel economy as number one on its want list whatever hopes the industry still held for its recovery were dashed by continually soaring interest rates that decade-long record of miscalculation indecisiveness and misadventure shook the industry and the nation to the core the impact of the near collapse of the auto industry is no more evident than here in Flint Michigan and Auto City north of Detroit it has the highest unemployment rate in the nation in the shadow of the Chevrolet plant from which they were laid off unemployed auto workers gather along the banks of the Flint River there's nothing much else to do because it's doubtful they will ever get their jobs back I got too much time on my hands not enough to do that's why I'm wasting time down here what are you gonna do I hope to go back to school and a winner and maybe study computer technology or something like that as far as workers go the auto industry will never return to what it once was not at Chrysler not at Ford not at GM the calamity has swept away hundreds of thousands of other workers and related industries who are dependent on high productivity for their jobs the auto industry has stood still for nearly four years and 1982 could be the worst year for sales in its modern history the dealerships have had a terrific mortality rate over the past few years and unfortunately thousands of dealerships have gone out of business in the last three years they've learned the ones that have survived have learned how to do it on a much lower volume basis in this year alone another 556 domestic auto dealerships have been forced to close their doors yet during these same years import dealerships increased six-fold to 18,000 to cater to the American public's new buying tastes the poorer and humbled American auto industry now candidly admits its faults but it's not taking its beating lying down I think that the last three years particularly have been years in which certainly Ford and for that matter all of the US industry have taken a great many actions internally to improve very significantly our fundamental competitiveness in the case of Ford Motor Company for example just in the last two years we've achieved a an improvement in our overall quality of our products of 48 percent which is unprecedented politicians too are now involved in the survival of the industry and one of the things that's killing us in this country is the flood of foreign imported products that are coming into the United States foreign steel foreign cars foreign computers senator Don regal he fights for Michigan for the first time since the Model T the industry is seriously concerned about holding down costs we put our pricing down to where it should be on 1983 we've reduced or held the price on over half of our models and on the rest of gone up very modestly because we want to get our price down so that we can take advantage of the all the work we've put in to getting our models ready this is the year when everyone in the auto industry is trying to sell cars including the men at the top I think personally I might go for a hot red one with a little h:o engine to go with it well this is again about the element in our aerodynamics we even in this one have the hidden headlights which should flip over at night driving but are no aerodynamic drag during the day and of course you can see the silhouette of this car just about perfect in a wind tunnel it's going to be very hard to beat this guy we in the car industry must make made in America mean something again we ought to you so we invite GM and Ford to follow Chrysler but until they do if you can find better protection take it you can find a better car buy it these men at the top know that continued sales failure could have disastrous effects on them their companies and the nation so the American automobile industry is in deep trouble where do they go from here well industry leaders are hoping betting that American ingenuity will reimburse a new car is conceived in violence iron for its body is torn from the ground and fed to the steel smelters but between these primitive beginnings to the birth of streamlined models that flow across the nation's highways there are years of designing and decision making for a long time Detroit the automobile capital of the world has been making the wrong decisions this has led to a crisis of confidence in the industry Americans are turning away from their own country's most prestigious products and when you buy an old junker you get the clanging and banging well here I'm about I was driving the 17 or 18 thousand dollar Cadillac and getting the same clanging and banging a lot of people might be upset with me buying a Japanese car but they didn't drive this Cadillac that I had the thing that we really didn't do very well was the fact that we let our quality go bad and as the import started to come in after the oil embargo which of course was in the 70s it to a greater extent than they ever had before it was perfectly evident to the buying public that the quality of the imports was superior to the quality of those cars made in the United States the challenge to Henry Ford and his colleagues in the auto industry is to design and manufacture a car to meet the needs of modern America the industry says it has that car and it's 1983 models now in showrooms across the country the ideas for these cars were conceived several years ago by space-age draftsman pushing computer buttons for thousands of hours they were creating unique three-dimensional images of today's cars then it's to the drawing board to see if the computerized ideas will work CNN cameras were given a rare view of the Ford Motor Company's future design center but a man whose responsibility it is to see that this trojan task of creating a successful new car is realized thousands of designers and technicians are involved in the initial assessments once we establish the image and the basic assumptions for the car we here at the design center then set out and do what we call the basic package and develop the hard points which are simply the dimensions of the car the overall height the length the interior seating capacity the luggage capacity and wheelbase and where we work around these basic hardpoint dimensions and and develop the car to further examine their concepts of what will work in the market the engineers create claim models of the selected designs hundreds of them small Lodge up to full size as the final selections are whittled down to the very few when the engineers are satisfied the models are moved on to the next stage from clay to a fiberglass body it is at this point that another decision is made to produce it or dump it and start all over again but if the senior most executives commit themselves to going ahead the next and final version will be steel a multi-million dollar gamble that the ideas will work so from the raw earth to computer design from the drawing board to clay models from fiberglass to the steel of the assembly line finally it all comes together the hoopla surrounding the birth of a new model brings out bands it temporarily shuts down assembly lines as workers and even presidents of companies are there to share in the blessed event Ford President Donald Peterson has the honor of driving the first of the 1983 midsize cars off the assembly line at the company's Atlanta plant this newly born and millions of others like it are now in showrooms across the country everyone in the auto industry is betting their futures on the success of the new 83 models continued failure is awful to contemplate we have all the ingredients for a very significant improvement if there's just some improvement in the basic economy of this country the design change is now revolutionizing the auto industry are aimed at more quality and fuel efficiency and tomorrow's cars many of which are already on the drawing board some are nearer at hand such as the Ford Motor Company's tempo topes still under wraps this is Ford's 1983 challenge to Japanese dominance in the midsize car field these spy pictures of the tempo topaz were published in the prestigious trade weekly automotive news the car will not be shown publicly until next spring but CNN obtained permission from Ford to show for the very first time the first official pictures of the tempo topaz will the birth of these new cars restore America's confidence in its own automotive products we didn't lose our reputation overnight we're not going to regain it overnight but the fact of the matter is that the situation today is much better than our than it has been in the past and I think we are in fact better than our current reputation we've abdicated our position temporarily but I think that you'll see that with the new competition that's coming out from all the companies here in the United States that will provide some very stiff competition for the imports it is in crashes like these that more than 900 Americans die each week of each year the oil industry says that today's American car is safer than ever before it says that if people would only use their seatbelts something as simple as that then motor vehicle deaths would be reduced by half as the automobile age dawned at the turn of the century few could have realized the impact of the car on American life the automobile totally transformed this country it brought the farmer to the city and the city to the countryside it bridged the cultural differences of a continent but in helping to create modern society the automobile has exacted a price that few in the beginning could have foretold the people in this country ought to realize if they do buy smaller cars they better buckle up because that's about their only protection the first recorded automobile death in the United States was that of HH bliss who stepped off a streetcar in New York City in 1899 and was struck by a passing car when he turned to help a woman by 1951 1 million Americans had died in auto crashes more than all US deaths in World Wars 1 & 2 vehicle registrations more than doubled in the next 20 years and by 1974 the two millionth traffic fatality occurred autos also became the number one killer of America's young people analysts predict the 3 millionth American will die in an auto accident by 1990 there are always going to be risks you can never protect against a high-speed crash as my as my engineers tell me whenever we look at a at a fire case they say look you show us a car and we will make it explode we will be able to do to that car in an accident whatever is necessary to make it explode it is inherently a massive metal surrounding a quantity of an extremely volatile and or some circumstances explosive fuel commonly traveling at a speed that gives it a great mass in the mid-1970s safety critics pounced on the Ford Pinto as a dangerous car claiming it burst into flames and rear-end collisions Ford was found innocent of charges of reckless homicide in the deaths of three Pinto passengers but the company did make large out-of-court settlements in other cases and the Pinto died an inglorious death the industry felt unfairly treated and asserted that the Pinto was no more dangerous than any cars of its size and in the in the mind of the owners of the pintos it didn't seem to be that compelling although I don't think there's anybody in the United States who probably hasn't seen a Pinto exploding in full color on their television screen and yet only 52 or 53 percent of the owners ever brought the cars in to be fixed the Reagan administration's concern over the declining auto industry led it to dump modify or delay 34 environmental and safety regulations this will save nine billion dollars in the next five years for an industry whose health is critical to the nation's economy despite the safety cutbacks the industry insists it is doing enough to make today's car the safest in history the place where we did keep our leadership was the one thing that you said was safety the Institute for Highway Safety published a big ad that they had was a survey of how American and foreign cars stacked up in the safety element an American top 20 where all the leaders there wasn't one foreign car on the list the man who exploded the safety issue bombshell of a General Motors and the rest of the industry is still charging that not enough is being done to save lives consumer advocate Ralph Nader strongly supports the use of airbags as a way to cut down highway deaths Nader launched the consumer movement and his own career with his attacks on automobile safety and I will not purchase a car as I told the president General Motors once until they produce cars for the American people that will protect motorists in collisions up to 60 miles an hour which would save the bulk of the fatalities and serious injuries every year in America and they're perfectly capable of doing that if they had a humane attitude toward their products and he charges that General Motors is still the stumbling block to betta auto safety where is the real resistance against airbags coming from primarily in one man Roger Smith chairman of the board General Motors if he said go with airbags he takes a whole industry with him Ralph Nader told us that the industry would adopt airbags instantly if you as Tim to the board of GM decided to go ahead with well that may or may not be the case but let me say this all our studies that we have that we know about and believe me you're right we spent more than 100 million on this we want the best safest care for people but t
e system that we have in there now the current lap and shoulder belt system is much safer than air base if they're used Safety Administrator Raymond Peck argues that airbags work and he is convinced cars will have them by 1985 but the industry doubts that and says airbags will put $1,000 on the price of a new car in the end it will probably be the marketplace and not the government or the industry that has the final say Americans continue to ignore statistics which show they themselves are to blame for many of the deaths as long as people continue to refuse to wear seatbelts to drink and drive and to make mistakes on the roads thousands more will die violently each year no matter what the industry or the government does it didn't take long for America to realize that the automobile was here to stay there were its detractors those who believed it wouldn't work but there were others who knew it would and uare adorned for the world with the birth of the automobile in 1903 88 makes of cars were introduced into the United States the Ford Motor car was one of the few to survive and with its Model T it would leave few lives untouched for the Ford Motor Company the journey that began with the Model T expanded far beyond America with plants all over the world bound together by a vast communications network as the company grew so did its interests from the Model T to some of the most popular cars in history and two-port ventures and investments in outer space it all began with the vision of a Michigan farm boy by the name of Henry Ford and continued on with his grandson your grandfather founded the auto industry do you think he would have been surprised at the prominence of foreign automakers in today's market I think yes I think he would I think we all are I don't think you have to go back very far to see that in May of 1927 the 15 million smaadahl T rolled out of the plant and the assembly line closed down forever the world's most famous car was history in the years to come its steel would be scrapped for new models it was the end of an era the beginning of another the momentum generated by the Model T carried the company through the roaring 20s and the bleak years of the Depression the assembly line techniques developed by Henry Ford helped America mass-produce war materials at a time when they were most needed by meeting the enormous production schedules the developing auto technology helped us win the war years before that an infant henry ford ii would be groomed by his grandfather to one day succeed him the day came soon after World War two when the air was called upon to take over a company but suddenly was in trouble and we were in pretty bad shape back there in 1945 so at least we accomplished that one objective and I think the team that was put together we got ourselves back in shape as a viable operating automobile and truck company in the United States and abroad but in the 80s the bottom would fall out again course although he no longer has an active role in the company Henry Ford gives pep talks to the industry and remains deeply interested in its fate we cannot afford to give up our basic industries and with them the foundations of our industrial strength and our national security today top Ford management is aggressively planning another comeback for the automaker they fly all over the country to deliver the message that Ford is the people company that they care about their workers and their product and especially during these very difficult times I've made a particular point of trying to visit as many locations as I could Ford President Donald Peterson is on his way to an assembly plant in Atlanta Georgia even though the main purpose of his journey is to drive the company's first 1983 midsize car off the assembly line it is apparent that he wants to show by his personal appearance that top management has in fact come down from its ivory tower you have established a record of hard work and dependability that makes us very proud and I thank you by reaching out to its workforce this new management philosophy appears to be tearing down animosities that have traditionally existed between management and labor Ford is on his way back we're gonna do so well we're probably going to be on overtime the whole year we're going to beat everybody in 83 Ford's fight back parallels the rest of the industry unlike earlier setbacks this time the industry will bear permanent scars hundreds of plants closed forever thousands of workers laid off forever Ford and the auto industry will never be the same and it will be up to top management and the workforce to survive and fight back to an a better share of an ever more competitive marketplace at the end of World War two America committed itself to rebuilding Japan it's societies and it's industries today we've discovered we may have done it all too well as America scrambles to catch up from the ashes of World War two the Japanese have emerged as the number one car maker in the world they've turned the American auto industry upside down desperately US automakers are scrambling to catch up with them we forgot about what we do we got sloppy we got careless as I said and we built lousy quality cars and it was no excuse for it I guess we just didn't keep our eye on the ball we were in a slump and so now we're going to back to Japan and learning all over again what we taught them the man behind the Japanese success is ironically an American back in 1950 the Japanese were desperate to improve the shoddy international image of their products and they got help from the US War Department sent over was dr. Edward Deming a renowned industrial scientist whose ideas at the time were ignored by US automakers Deming eventually created a revolution in quality and production that lifted the Japanese car industry to the heights it's reached today ironically again Deming has become a guru but this time to the US auto industry General Motors paid a more than ten thousand dollars just to lecture these top executives in Chicago whose festive air vanished when he took the podium then it would have to do the job of management and now they know what it is they cannot learn it by experience you cannot learn it on a job they cannot learn it in school but they can learn it here this booklet contains the same 14-point plan he taught the Japanese 30 years ago it's a strategy that requires management to totally rethink its current methods Deming argues that the American management approach to productivity and Finance is wrong and as the basic cause of sickness in the US industry demi emphasized one of his guiding principles number 12 has removed the barriers by which the hourly worker cannot take pride in his work the benefits of the Deming plan to the Japanese car industry are clearly apparent his concepts have shaken the US auto industry to its foundations not only was a better car being built in Japan it also spotlighted the inefficiency of the American auto industry statistics like these show how the Japanese industry has moved ahead in quality only five of every 1,000 Japanese cars rolling off an assembly line are in need of repairs in America 300 of every 1000 cars have something wrong with them in productivity the Japanese can build a small car an 80 to 85 hours in the u.s. to build a comparable car it takes workers 140 to 150 hours the Japanese are more efficient too they spend 58 minutes each hour on the job while their American counterparts spend only 45 minutes one of the reasons why Americans spend less time on the job is because of equipment failures in the u.s. machines are down 40 percent of the time in Japan only 20 percent one of the major contributing factors to the high cost of US cars the industry admits are the rising numbers of unauthorized absences eight percent in the US only two percent in Japan one of the things Deming taught the Japanese was how to control production so that the market isn't clogged up with unsold cars the US auto industry has huge inventories this simple planning difference means that the average inventory cost added to each u.s. car is 750 dollars compared to 46 dollars for each Toyota and sixty dollars for each Honda Japanese workers get paid much less than Americans twelve dollars per hour compared with nineteen dollars analysts cite all these figures as being the reason why Japan can consistently produce and deliver to the United States a car fifteen to seventeen hundred dollars cheaper than a comparable American model the Japanese embassy here in Washington DC August rates their whole sales campaign through contacts with politicians and powerful bureaucrats the diplomats know what's at stake and they lobby constantly to make sure that they don't lose Japan's foothold in the United States is Japan willing to continue voluntary restrictions on imports for another year for a third year I don't see any reason why we should continue this thing if you could be king for a day what would you tell President Reagan to do to solve the problems of the auto industry we quit import all the cars in Japan mr. Miyagi what do you say to Detroit workers who charge the Japanese car imports are the main reason for the decline of the US auto industry we know that the resistant brought about 10.1 percent of unemployment and the unemployment within the part of the industry is very high so with every sympathy that we have with the unemployed people we still have to say that their despair has been misdirected to us but the man who made the Japanese auto industry great is now 82 a feisty loner he travels the world preaching his gospel of management efficiency that attracts an audience far beyond the auto industry as an American Deming is not at all apologetic for helping the Japanese overpower the United States in the struggle for auto production supremacy job no pays of guilt just to just Gilley's for doing a good job I mean did they do a good job it isn't i if the Japanese did it violence like this was once a way of life in the auto industry it was an industry that ruled by the iron fist work has died during bitter confrontations strikes were long and bloody and the lingering hostility on the assembly line made the industry from management to worker indifferent equality so aware of the problem were Americans that it became a standing joke that if you bought a car that was assembled on a Monday it might fall to pieces because the workers were hung over from the weekend and a car assemble in a Friday would be another lemon because everyone was in a hurry to get home in the days between you hoped your new car hadn't been sabotage Don the line amidst this painful ridicule and the invasion of foreign cars and heard of scenes like these are emerging afford union shop steward presenting to Ford President Donald Peterson a gift for his wife this is part of a new revolution taking place in the US auto industry that has overturned the long-held ways of conducting business I I couldn't be more pleased with the level of cooperation that exists among our employees the management of the company and the art and the Union the UAW top executives like Petersen and General Motors Board Chairman Roger Smith are buckling under to outsiders at what point did US automakers turn to you I've talked to chairman over the last three years can you tell me what they said actually don't Lee and I have to assure myself that they can qualify as a client that's not easy what does that mean did you go to work and you report to me at every visit how you're getting along what you're doing on my fourteen point I don't want an excuses if you talk like that to the Chairman certainly to Roger Smith well of course why not I have a job to do he has one too and how could he know what it is I know dr. Deming is credited with making the Japanese auto industry what it is today ignored by American automakers for 30 years Deming is now much sought after by Detroit and paid handsomely to share his ideas his concepts are being used to improve assembly line production but even more far-reaching are as arguments that management has been dead wrong in its in different treatment of the US auto worker and management is agreeing with him jeez dude look if you line up five Japanese there and five Americans there are you going to say that those people are superior to those people no way their management system might have been superior over a short period of time but I think with the help of dr. Deming we can change the management system get the people involved get them all part of the team and they're certainly nobody's going to say that the American worker can't do just as much or more than the Japanese workers one of the many auto factories where workers and management are enthusiastically cooperating is the General Motors engine plant in Flint Michigan EPEL years of better fighting the Union and management have not become a team or at least they're working very hard at it to the line personnel have got an input into the situation anytime you get input into something other you be in just a body you don't cry and when you develop pride you take more satisfaction on your job which gives you quality and quality is the solar once some si is the ultimate togetherness of union and management came with the acceptance by UAW president Doug Fraser of a position on the Chrysler corporations Board of Directors this move did not entirely pleased UAW worker militants nor did it help Fraser in his unsuccessful attempt to get worker approval of recent wage agreements with Chrysler if Fraser has led the Auto Workers Union through the most difficult time since the plant battles of the 30s they won some of those battles but now they're in danger of losing the war with more than 200,000 auto workers out of a job permanently Fraser believes that the Deming program now being followed by the industry works have you any examples of the effectiveness of Walker worker participation so far in the auto industry oh yes I think there's many examples and basically three things happen the visible elements that you see is lower absenteeism higher quality and lower grievance load so in the early days labor and management fought each other today it's a different sort of battle this time both sides realize they must unite to successfully compete against the Japanese here they break ground together for a new facility in Dearborn Michigan that will retrain auto workers who are on permanent layoff the union is betting that the new relationship will save jobs US automakers are betting that togetherness will bring high-quality American cars that will no longer be ridiculed and tossed aside it's been said that if man can build a better mousetrap he'll do it while we have learned that new inventions can be costly particularly when they take away jobs and what you're about to see left us wondering if any of us are safe from progress the imagination of America is reflected in its technological fantasies of the future this imagery of the future in space is part of the US auto industry's dream of creating the perfect car on earth from the beginning the industry relied on technological breakthroughs like the assembly line to efficiently mass-produce it took industry out of the cottage in a change is revolutionary in its time as modern man's voyage into outer space now it's crossing another revolutionary threshold so when the robots come in and take over a lot of jobs what do you see then I see a long unemployment line like it or not many Auto Workers will soon face the reality that their jobs will be gone and that they'll be replaced by robots a robot doesn't need a coffee break or a day off it doesn't take unauthorized absences doesn't complain and will never go on strike and the average robot that costs around eighty thousand dollars pays for itself in a year and a half we don't try to stop robotics robotics is another form of automation and it has traditionally been the uaw position that we do not oppose the introduction of new technology to improve productivity as a desirable goal our job is to make sure that the people who are impacted by it are taken care of robotics devices like these will displace thousands more workers from automobile assembly lines laid off workers hope to get back into the auto industry by joining t
e robots on the assembly lines as caretakers it's here they meet the enemy classrooms like these jammed with Auto Workers who have already permanently lost their jobs to a changing industry they're learning to serve the you assembly-line elite the iron collar worker upon whose ball bearing joints computer brain and power driven arm rest the hopes of the American car industry I did a lot of research since I've been laid off of what's the new thing and I read a magazine called the plain truth has said that 75% of the United States in nineteen eighty seven would be robotics and computers and if he didn't know any of that you'd be at a great disadvantage so so here I am learning robotics the age of the robot is here to stay not as sophisticated as those in science fiction but thousands of them are already taking over the production of automobiles thousands more are being created as man plunges relentlessly toward an ever more sophisticated world in which he seemed to play less and less a role so finally where is all this taken us well in the end to a conclusion that no one would have thought possible in 1955 the American automobile was unmatched at home and abroad and the biggest car maker of them all could brag that what was good for General Motors was good for the nation no one could foresee then that an Asian enemy so recently defeated in war would regain its lost power so quickly and again alarm Americans who see their place in the world threatened the casualties are already mounting in this economic confrontation that has thrown the auto world into panic we've always felt this country as citizens generally and the government has always thought that we're so strong which we've got such a market here that we can handle anything while we're starting to find out we're not that strong we're not that powerful we can't just open up our borders to everything the years of unchallenged success of General Motors the world's largest manufacturing company ended no longer can the company rely on subliminal advertising to sell its product to consumers something they've depended on since the early days of television it also symbolizes the way in which Oldsmobile has gone rocketing up new 64 Buick special but it's no longer that good old days and General Motors like the rest of the auto industry has been forced by the Japanese to retrench rethink and rebuild this once was pol town one of Detroit's oldest communities its homes and the church were cleared away amidst much local controversy now rising in that place is GM's new Cadillac assembly plants it's a multi-million dollar bet that Detroit will remain auto capital of the world it's getting to be a fantastic future for it and even now the newspapers that were once so critical of us are now beginning to see the benefits as construction workers jobs spring up and the perimeters of the plants as they always have around GM plants the captains of the auto industry have mobilized their workforce for an all-out campaign against the Japanese politicians are reinforcing the assault by demanding control of Japanese car imports so passionate is the cause that at UAW headquarters in Detroit no imports at all are allowed on the parking lot even the general public is joined in the melee destroying foreign cars and protest demonstrations but this public condemnation of the Japanese is being ignored in the privacy of the boardrooms of the major automakers where all sorts of deals are going down with the Japanese Chrysler owns 15% of Mitsubishi which produces and assembles in Japan with Japanese workers for chrysler models sold in the united states General Motors has owned 34% of Isuzu for 11 years and shares and their worldwide earnings the Ford Motor Company tried to negotiate a deal last year with the giant Japanese automaker Toyota to mutually produce a car but it fell through we noticed that GM is negotiating with Toyota I wonder if you have any regrets that Ford's talks fell through last year the at the same time we were talking with Toyota we knew that we all also had our relationship with Toyo Kogyo we owned 25% Toyo Kogyo and so we were watching the relative progress we were making working with them and it's been just outstanding Ford's growing relationship with Toya Cuchillo the company that manufactures the Mazda car helped cool Ford's efforts to deal with Toyota not so with GM all signs indicate an agreement is close with Toyota to build small Chevy's in Japan for Americans to drive in 1985 by borrowing Japanese design and low labor costs GM hopes to also buy time to design its own small car Toyota is also interested in building cars and idle GM plants allowing them to sidestep US import quotas so it's clear the suffering US auto industry has developed a split personality on the one hand at asks Americans not to buy Japanese cars on the other hand both us and Japanese automakers are involved in a growing partnership that in time made dim antagonism z' in other words if you can't fight them join them
