[My442]

Originally Posted by Ben M.

Would you have paid twice as much to have it made in the USA?

Yup

I will pay Americans to rebuild/refurbish GM parts, or I will buy USA made at 2x or 3x the price.

Flame away......

[Ben M.]

Originally Posted by Ed Fitzgerald

Both rotors were shipped to GM plants in the US and he said the bleeder screw was left untapped or threaded and was finished in the states. He said because of this it was considered an unfinished raw part and because the last set of hands that touched it was American it could be sold as American made. How true this was /is I cannot attest to the validity but it would sure make some sense 30 yrs later. Ed

This is true. You are allowed to bring in certain parts and have them touched up or finished by American hands, and thus label it "Made in the USA." Some places have taken to saying "Made in USA with foreign source parts" to distinguish, but many don't.

Originally Posted by My442

I will pay Americans to rebuild/refurbish GM parts, or I will buy USA made at 2x or 3x the price.

Flame away......

No flames here. That's nice that you say that, but 99 out of 100 Americans will not do this. Listen to how often people on these forums complain about the price of restoration parts and how often "great ideas" to reproduce certain items that the market REALLY wants don't get off the ground because no one wants to pony up $350-500 for the part. We pay lip service to wanting American made parts, but when the chips are down most people won't pay the money for them even if they were available - even from China in some cases.

[Lemans64]

Was looking into 1/4 panels for my lemans, tried Goodmark and others, both were made in Taiwan. No choices.

[4GTOSplus]

the starter of one of the largest Pontiac repro parts co back in the late 70's began to search for suppliers in the US and was set back mostly because the quantity of parts were not large enough or simply did not want to do it. Also all the us company required a blue print of the part. He did reproduce a large number of pieces on his own. After much frustration he was told to go to Tiawan, there are people there that will make anything in any quantity so he did. He gave them the part to repro and after a few tries and tweeks an exact piece was born without red tape.Thus the start of many repro parts we have on our cars today.This thing about overseas parts in not new it's been going on for a long time. Now for me just seeing a tag from anywhere but China is refreshing. When was the last time you got a part from Japan or Mexico? Consider Taiwan as close as you can get to a American part for an older restoration.

[arbys]

On another Forum that I'm on one of the main contributors, a GM employee, was assigned to China for 2-3 years to get them in compliance with what necessary to meet the GM criteria. He stated that they can manufacture any part, not body parts, to the highest level possible if they are given the correct parameters and are willing to pay the cost. It doesn't have to be junk and the suppliers need to communicate that. Another problem that they had initially was conversion form metric to the US Customary system and how far do you carry out the decimal point.

[FrankieT/A]

I don't know how many people know this, but Walmart as of a couple of years ago made up over 2% of our GNP. That's huge! And nobody really comes close. Where do you think a majority of their products come from?

Do you guys remember when something made in Japan was garbage? Nowadays you can't even find anything made in Japan!! Ironically they feel it too. LOL