Do you really hate Microsoft 5109

It the "good product" part that really helped them. A few years ago, when it was time for a new car, and I was thinking an SUV might be interesting, I went to all the American companies and checked out their SUVs. The damn things were too small inside. I'm a big man, and wouldn't fit, and I'm not talking about a beer-belly problem. I'm talking about I was too tall, and my legs were too long. I'm only 6'1" tall (that's about 185 cm for you metric folks). That should not be too tall for a large SUV!

Meanwhile, over at the Honda dealer, I checked out the new SUV they were introducing that year. The CR-V. It was quite a bit smaller than the big American SUVs--and had so much room that I could have almost lived in the thing.

I noticed the same thing with regular non-SUV cars several years before. Honda and Nissan and Toyota made compact cars that I could fit in comfortably. Ford and GM made much bigger cars that I could barely force myself into, and not in any way drive in a safe manner.

So I put all the blame for the decline of the American automobile industry squarely on the idiot designers. The American workers can build a great car. The various Japanese cars I've had over the years have sometimes been built in Japan, and sometimes in the US, and I've never seen any difference in quality between them.

(The Japanese designers do make some questionable decisions, though. The CR-V EX and special edition models have a moon roof. That lowers the interior ceiling by enough that I would not be able to drive one without bending my neck constantly. They should have made it so the adjustable seat could be lowered a little farther on these models, to compensate).

-- --Tim Smith