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Friday, March 2. 2007

Why my Dad still won't consider a Japanese car

Dissect them alive: A Japanese soldier remembers the war. If you have a strong stomach, read it...and enjoy your Lexus or your Toyota.
Posted by Bird Dog in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 12:32 | Comments (8) | Trackbacks (0)

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My Dad is the same way. No German cars either.
#1 Patina on 2007-03-02 12:43 (Reply)
Yeah, I should have said that too. No Jap, no German. He is getting old, but still drives. Sort-of. An old Saab.
#2 BD on 2007-03-02 12:46 (Reply)
Sort of? heh. I know what you mean.

My Dad can not drive anymore and it is the only thing he wants to do. We have to hide the keys. Cars were his thing and he loves buying them. Drives all of us crazy. I have spent many an afternoon driving him around to the lots. And he is so stubborn he can get his way. He lives with my brother and his family now and they have two cars, but Dad has a part time caregiver so now he says he needs to buy a new van for her to drive him around too. As soon as he gets used to one car he is shopping for the next one. He has always believed that it was his duty to keep the American auto industry working.
#2.1 Patina on 2007-03-02 13:15 (Reply)
It is amazing the cruelty humans can conjure up. I'll now go get into my Toyota and drive to lunch.

There is the old joke re "That guy changes his cars more often than he changes his pants." I had a father-in-law like that.
#3 Luther McLeod on 2007-03-02 13:44 (Reply)
My dad didn't see his parents for 6 years because of the Japs. Kids sent away from his home colony for fear of invasion. Family friends tortured, imprisoned, killed by the buggers. Other family friends and relatives interned for years by the Huns in Europe, none tortured, but all half-starved. Americans, French, Poles, Jews.

The message I was brought up with was that most apparently civilized people could go bad and commit atrocities. That who knew what our own people might do, given bad leaders and evil propaganda. We were warned not to be complacent.

I lived several years as a kid in a country where many Nazis had fled after WWII and flinched away nervously from all the German daddies of school friends, always (perhaps unfairly?) suspecting them of being former storm troopers...

Of course, I want to believe that things are different now. Just as most black people want to believe that we wicked white folk s are no longer Satan in human form. But have still never wanted to buy a Jap or a Hun car.

Was given an old German car by a relative when we couldn't afford to buy one ourselves, and always felt guilty driving it. Thinking that Mercedes trucks were used to gas Jews, and other kinds of people the Nazis murdered. Yup, a bleeding heart.

And tho I was briefly tempted by a Jap hybrid, they are too small for my large family and animals, aren't much use for moving stuff or schlepping baqs of manure and plants, and I still subscribe to the antiquated notion "Buy American, the job you save may be your own...". I am helped in this by the fact that I have yet to see a Jap car that makes my heart go pitter patter. Not exactly vehicles that you take a girl for a spin in to impress her...just reliable, practical, something for middleaged types to abandon all hope of vroomvrooming in...I am still in the throes of my midlife crisis so cannot yet stomach dullsville...

I freely admit to being inconsistent. I lust after many smaller Japanese made tech toys. Almost all cheap clothes are now made in China, ditto computers, etc. But I still drive an American car. Hubby will replace his dreary old minivan and buy a Jap hybrid soon enough, boring tin can. I just like big American trucks or station wagon equivalents with lots of power...rather like the kind of men I like...

So, a mix of frivolity and family history. Don't care what kind of car my friends buy, tho.
#4 retriever on 2007-03-02 18:32 (Reply)
When Mitsubishi started importing cars my first reaction was, "Hey they made the Jap -Zero fighter plane, one that my Dad diced with. I didn't like it.

Then I realized I was making the observation through the window of my Datsun 280-Z. It instantly became a "OK, they're not enemies anymore, in fact they're allies"
That moved to a nice Chinese lunch. American cheese sandwiches are still the best, and a PBJ is All-American!!
#5 Habu on 2007-03-02 18:52 (Reply)
retriever,
You said, " I freely admit to being inconsistent"

I think Americans are just practical ,fair minded people who are parsemonious on the one hand and extremely giving on the other.
I think our "inconsistency" is really just good old flexibility and a Christian attitude of turning the other cheek, and careful use of discount coupons.
#6 Habu on 2007-03-02 19:04 (Reply)
I won't buy or drive a Japanese car either. I'm only 50 so I wasn't involved in the war. I don't know where or when I inherited this preference but none of my family buys foreign cars. It's sort of unspoken. And the older I get and the more aware of history I become, the more concrete and supported that position gets.
#7 Spud on 2007-03-24 23:34 (Reply)

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