I haven't written anything on this blog for a long time, and I'm amazed I'm taking a few minutes to do it, but I read an article this morning about John McCain owning 13 cars and the negative fallout from it. It's not that he just owns 13 cars, it's that he also owns 2 foreign cars - a Honda and a Volkswagen. This, according to McCain-haters, shows that he's (a) a liar because he said he only drives American cars, (b) out of touch with the average American who probably only owns one car, and (c) destroying the American auto-industry because of the two foreign-made cars. There's also outrage from the UAW because McCain may have purchased a Toyota Prius for his daughter (or, it's possible the daughter bought it herself... that's still unclear.)
What is clear, however, is that McCain's own driver is a 2004 Cadillac CTS. The other American-made cars in his fleet include a 2007 half-ton Ford pickup, a 1960 Willys Jeep, a 2008 Jeep Wrangler, a 2000 Lincoln, a 2001 GMC SUV and three 2000 NEV Gem electric vehicles. But the killer is a 2005 Volkswagen convertible and a 2001 Honda sedan. So, that's 2 foreign cars to 9 American-made cars. Now, that's only 11 cars, but they're also counting the Prius that McCain's daughter drives, and a Lexus that Cindy McCain drives, but is actually owned by her beer-distributor company. So, worst case, that's 4 foreign to 9 domestic.
And, apparently you have to forget that Honda employs over 25,000 Americans, and VW will soon open a plant in Tennessee that'll employ another 2,000 people. But those employees are not UAW members, so they're both bad employers and probably bad employees too.
As the owner of a 2006 Honda Civic Hybrid, let me just say one thing to the UAW and the American auto industry in response to the Prius issue. IF YOU WANT ME TO BUY AN AMERICAN-MADE HYBRID CAR, BUILD SOMETHING THAT'S NOT A LARGE SEDAN OR A SPORT-UTILITY VEHICLE! I'm not interested in going from a giant gas-guzzler getting 12 mpg, to now getting 19 mpg. Nor am I interested in a sedan that goes from 22 to 29. Honda realized that people don't want that, and ended their Hybrid Accord. If I'm buying a Hybrid car, I want 40 to 60 miles-per-gallon.
I had made a decision, based on my driving requirements, that a small hybrid car made sense. That limited me to a Civic or a Prius. I personally liked the design and style of the Civic over the Prius, the cost was lower, and the government tax incentive to buy a Civic was better. That's right... the U.S. government incentivized the purchase of my foreign car in the name of global warming. So, which is it... buy green, or buy American?
I can't begrudge McCain's family for either owning 13 cars, or owning a few foreign ones in there. If anything, the McCains have done more than their fair share to support the American worker. I would bet that if you really looked at those foreign cars, you'd find they were either assembled in America, or included a lot of American-made parts. More and more, foreign car manufacturers are recognizing that they have to manufacture their cars closer to the market. Toyota, Honda, Nissan, BMW, Subaru, and lots of other foreign car companies build cars right here.
In a 2007 USA Today article, How American is that car?" there's a great list showing the percentage of American and Canadian made content, plus which cars were assembled in America. A great indicator of how ridiculous this argument is is the Honda Acura TL (as an example of a Honda sedan). The 2007 Honda Acura TL was made with 70% American/Canadian parts and assembled in Ohio. This was also the case for the Honda Accord. My own Civic Hybrid is 55% American/Canadian parts.
Let's drop this one as a topic of debate. Just because a car has a foreign badge on it, does not make it un-American to own, nor is it contributing to the downfall of the American auto industry. The unions and car companies are doing a fine job of that on their own.
