Bush sent US cars to japan? I can't see that working well, the steering wheels would be on the wrong side for a start...
(1) If your study the firewall hole patterns you'll note that American cars have, for years, been capable of left or right driver placement.
(2) Martin Brown is like MooseFET... makes things up as he goes along. ...Jim Thompson
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Liberals are so cute. Dumb as a box of rocks, but cute.
It didn't. The automotive parts supplied were low quality too.
Not actually a barrier to entry in the Japanese market. Left hand drive to show it is a foreign car was popular with some car owners. But being oversized gas guzzlers with poor steering was a huge disadvantage in a country with very expensive petrol and tiny roads. Only Yakuza bigwigs could afford to run them and they already sufficient for their needs. And rich non-Yakuza did not want to buy them...
You had to feel sorry for Japanese chauffeurs in left hand drive luxury cars like Rolls-Royce (UK manufacturer so right hand drive by default) when they reached the many automatic ticket barriers. And it was even funnier with traders in low slung Italian sportscars during monsoon season.
However, the quality was so dire they were fit only for landfill. They had to bribe dealers to take the things.
And Jim Thompson is a pathological dittohead liar. Lets see him point at something that I have "made up" and demonstrate his evidence for this outrageous claim. Where is his proof?
I am not making it up. As part of his extensive sales pitch Bush(I) showered the then Prime Minister Miyazawa of Japan with projectile vomit at a state banquet. See for example:
I can't find a full news archive online going back to 1992 but the events I describe did happen. I was working in Japan at the time.
Regards, Martin Brown
However, I do remember the news bit from the 1990's that the Japanese laughed at and did not buy Cadillacs or whatever they were because they were sent to Japan with the steering wheel on the wrong side.
Nowadays, what have many "American" cars been for years? Made in Japan and assembled in USA, though with some "American flavor". May as well get a USA-assembled Honda, they even came with UAW union label under the hood along with more-Japanese suspension characteristics. One of my brothers has an older Honda Civic, capable of driving like a bicycle messenger and also out-accelerating anything nominally more-American with front wheel drive and most other more-nominally-American vehicles with double or triple the engine size.
- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)
Although the first Bush was well enough known/"known" to do that, to the extent that the Japanese coined a new word ("bushusuru"), I don't see much relevance here to national cultural attitudes in automobile engineering.
- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)
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