Is the automotive press part of Detroit's problem

That is a nice line, tulsa.
 
Let capitalism sort them all out. Those who can't compete will fall by the wayside for good reason.

C&D just picked the new GM pickup #1 in a major comparo.
 
Bottom line is it's the product, stupid. Quit whining about favoritism and work on the product.
 
When Ford sells us an ancient Focus on a prevoius generation platform, do you really think the press picks the Civic due to bias? Gimme a break.

When does this nonsense about gilding the lily stop? We had VP Spiro Agnew whining about the "nattering nabobs of negativity" (the media) during the Nixon administration.
 
We all know how that presidency ended, and whose fault was it? (Old Spiro though was done in by good old-fashioned corruption that came to light from his days as governor of Maryland.)

yeah the press is a problem you notice when domestics do something positive they rarely report it and when there is a recall on a non american car especially asian brands they don't report it. Yet when something bad happens with the domesics and only the domestics. They move in like a pack of hungry dogs to report on it. Its a big problem and something should be done to solve this problem

Although I know several friends who hold an anti-domestic bias in cars, I honestly don't see much anti-domestic bias in the car media. Most publications are simply reporting what they see. Some tilt towards fandom, always raving about how much better a vehicle is than the one it replaces, while others (like Edmunds) are better about comparing them to the current market. When you're doing meticulous comparison, and one model or make is simply better than the others, it may seem like there's a bias, but there isn't -- it's just the better product showing through.
  
By the way, my friends who are anti-domestic got that way because of experience. They were chased away by decades of stale products and poor reliability. It's a reputation problem that took years to create and will also take years to reverse. Domestics have to show sustained improvement, not just a few interesting models or 1 or 2 years of good quality, to win those folks back.

ateixeira,
Is that comparison in the April issue of C&D?

Image is not the fault of the press. It may seem like it, but it's not. It's very simple: the American auto industry, while catching up, is still behind.
And if you want to talk about bad publicity, foreign car brands certainly have their share. Toyota had a phenom of recalls last year. Honda had a sexual harrassment case. Hyundai's top execs underwent a plethora of fraud charges.

Just thinking that our "American Revolution" (the real one back in 1775-83) was fought partly for freedom of the press. How do you think Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine, and Patrick Henry would feel about the press going "easy" on the home team?

Okay if you think that the press is unbiased then you're just naive. The press in this country has never been unbiased. During the revolutionary war they were biased and they're biased today. They're job is not to offer you unbiased opinions, it's to sell papers and what sells papers generally bad things. That's why you see fewer stories about Toyota succeeding and more stories about GM and Ford (and now Chrysler) failing.
I work for Ford (yes that's part of my bias), we've done studies that show that if tell consumers our new vehicle is made by Toyota, it gets rated higher then when we tell them it's a Ford. I wouldn't say that's unfair, Ford created its own image, but the fact is that the press tends to be biased against the domestics.

Bias is based on reputation. It's earned.

While it is fun to cheer on conspiracy theories... The bottom line is, if you want a better response from the media, build a better product. I don't understand what is so hard about that concept (and thanks to Bob Lutz, GM seems to finally get it). As far as I remember, this country wasn't built on -giving- glory away, at home or abroad.