Drive Drive Drive - Is the UAW making it difficult for GM to compete with Toyota? Or is it that Toyota cars are better engineered?

Is the UAW making it difficult for GM to compete with Toyota? Or is it that Toyota cars are better engineered?

Public Comments

no. GM, Toyota,any car makes decides and how and what material to make their cars. toyota understands the customer needs and makes quality cars so it last longer. GM uses cheap parts to mass produce and build cars that will break in 2 yrs. BMW use very high quality(expensive) parts to make their cars the best in luxury,value, and performance.
interesting that Toyota only has 1 on the consumers reports list this year & GM has 3
$28 an hour to be a line worker is a lot, not to mention the costs of their benefits. This is their problem, not their quality of vehicles.
GM is still number one. They sold more cars in 2007 than any other manufacturer. Toyota are better engineered, but that is not the reason why UAW is giving GM problems.
Toyota is definately engineered better. They put more quality in their cars and they are more reliable. GM tends to use cheaper materials that fall apart easily.
There are many models that toyota and other "imports" make right here in the U.S. and have done so for years, decades for Nissan. Toyota seems to compete just fine with vehichles assembled in america by americans. Just a lame excuse.
I have a Toyota and I must say I can understand Why they hold there price....I`ve driven practically everything on four wheels and the Toyota is the best engineered vehicle I have come across...
Love it when people say GM uses crap parts while Toyota quality parts,the parts for GM,Ford,Chrysler,Toyota and Honda come from the same vendors and a lot of times built at the same plant.So why would these vendors build quality parts for Toyota and not for GM?I don't believe it is the UAW fault that GM can't compete,it is just bad management.
The reason GM and Ford are struggling now is largely because of the Unions but also their research and development. Toyota and Honda came along later and have always imitated the technology developed by Ford and GM. Their cars are not any more reliable and are always at least a year or two behind Ford and GM in terms of technology. I personally think there are only two reasons to buy any Japanese or Korean car, you don't know any better or you don't care.
Toyota and GM share a lot on engineering and other resources. Which has resulted in Toyota quality failing and GM's quality getting better. This will reach equilibrium some place in the spectrum (but most likely with both being built at a lower quality the a present day Ford). It is not the UAW, it is the fact that many manufactures elected to go capital intensive years ago. In order to get the Unions to agree to a loss of jobs they elected to make concessions in lay off benefits and such. The laborer on the production line could be laid off in the 50's and this would result in an immediate cost savings. But now the production lines have all those robots. When they are idle the payments must still be made for them,and this results in a fixed overhead. This fixed overhead is GM's problems. It has not helped that for every employee that was laid off ceased to be a buyer of GM's cars. ROBOTS DON'T BUY CARS PEOPLE DO! (that is the problem)
both are good manufactrers, but i have theory about it that evry one is going to bash me on, when we run out of oil china will try to take over the world and since japanese are number 1 in us we wont have eney factorys to make war materials in that is if ww3 hapens and japan is neutral affcourse they could side with us but they probably wouldnt. and the money made from japan cars made here goes right back to japan and the U.S. does to have a tuner its called geometro. go ahead bash me.
the uaw contract with gm and toyota are very different toyota workers have much lower pay and retirement benififts than gm or ford or chyrsler gm retirement benifits cost gm over 1500 a car it is not that gm or toyota makes better car it is cost of benefits etc if toyota made better car then why are some toyota cars made in gm plants and share gm made engines and trans toyota and other jap cars were junk till after war and us mfg helped them with mfg and tooling etc