Opinion: China’s cars, can we compete?

When I was growing up, there were many automobile manufacturers in the United States, some of their names will not be familiar to most people who are reading this column. But even those of us who were not raised in a car culture knew that the “Big Three” were General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler. Over the years, smaller companies like Nash, Packard, Studebaker, Kaiser-Frazer, and American Motors folded their tents and disappeared. 

It was probably around 1955 when I first saw an imported car. My friends and I were walking along Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn, NY, when we spotted a car parked on the other side of the street. While waiting for the light to change, we argued about which was the front and which was the back of the little vehicle. You’ve probably guessed that it was the iconic Volkswagen Beetle. The U.S. started importing the cars five years earlier, but this was the first one to show up in our neighborhood. Today, Toyota is the top-selling auto in the U.S. But you might be advised to learn the brand: BYD.

The world’s factory

Writing for Moneywise, Becky Robertson states, “China has long been considered not only an ever-more-efficient manufacturing force to be reckoned with, but the ‘world’s factory.’” She points out that more than 30 percent of total industrial production is done in China. And when it comes to automobiles, the Great Dragon may be on the verge of cornering the global market.