GM vs Honda

Growing up I've been surrounded by Hondas. My Dad is the conservative type. Likes to play it safe. Always bought a Honda. I use to love our Accord and when I got my license one of the first things I did was see how fast I could get our family sedan going on the high way. I think my parents have been through 5 or 6 Honda Accords. And none of them, have ever broken down.

I recently saw a Chevrolet commercial with our good ol football buddy Howie Long talking about I believe a car called the Element and how it has better gas mileage than Hondas. I've always wondered why car commercials talk about better mileage. I have no idea how many miles my car gets per gallon. I don't think I really care either. And then Howie goes on and talks about GM warranties and how they're better than any other manufacturers. Once again, some more confusing numbers that mean very little to me.

You know with the whole auto collapse, I was concerned about all of the GM workers here in Canada (still am), and I was really hoping that the company would put together a good plan/media campaign and show us Canadians the real reason to buy one of their cars but so far they've failed to do so.

To me it seems like GM is emulating the likes of crappy Microsoft commercials that attack a product that's much better than itself. In one of their latest ads, Mr. Howie Long takes a cheap shot at Honda and mentions how they make lawnmowers, and that it's something to be embarrassed about. Except what Mr. Howie doesn't understand about the average consumer is that we're smart enough to know that Honda probably makes lawnmowers that outlast GM vehicles. And if GM ever made a lawnmower, well we'd have a definite lawn crisis. The government would be bailing us out with student lawn mowing programs. We'd have a weed infestation that the WHO would probably declare as state emergency.

Here's the problem with GM. They have a terrible brand reputation of cars that break down. You see people count on reliability and routine. And if you sell a product that messes with both of those things then it leaves a bitter taste in your mouth. Now you might argue that they've built cars recently that are just as reliable. But what you haven't done is convinced me as a consumer that they've fixed their reputation. And you can't do that in the form of some warranty.

The difference between an American made car and a Japanese made car is literally a matter of inches. The root of all this actually goes back to when Honda was first in production. And in a form of irony, it was an American named Edward Deming who actually went to Japan and taught them how to produce automobiles of high quality. While westerns were busy producing cars on an assembly line, spitting them out quickly to make profits, Honda took their time and ensured all of their car parts fit properly and worked smoothly, all within a matter of inches (American engineers took apart Japanese engines and noticed the differences too). And slowly American consumers started to notice. And slowly they started buying Japanese. I also want to point out some more interesting irony: during WW2 Harry Truman was actually sending over metal supplies unknowingly to Soichoro Honda in the form of bombs! To which Honda would extract the metals from the remains of the bombs to build motor cycles. Priceless.

And speaking of motor cycles, I recently owned a Honda CBR that I loved. It didn't even come close to providing me any mechanical problems. Nor did I hear of any from reading the forums I was a part of.

GM's going to have to come up with something really extreme to convince me to buy domestic. Maybe it's a life time guarantee or something along the lines of free mechanical support for as long as I have my car. And if that doesn't sound like a good idea to GM, then maybe bankruptcy will. And remember GM if you take a cheap shot at Honda well really you're taking a cheap shot at Honda owners, and in the US and Canada that' s a lot of people (who are very sensitive like myself)!

Seriously Howie, don't mess with Honda.

So what do you guys think? What does GM need to do to save their company?