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American Cars in Japan

There aren’t a lot of American cars in Japan, but that doesn’t mean they’re not readily available to Japanese consumers. A small number of General Motors vehicles are marketed and sold by Suzuki in Japan, and some of them even get nationwide television commercial campaigns.

I was not fully aware of this situation until this week, when I happened to catch the following commercial for the Chevrolet MW, featuring popular model Izumi Mori (who happens to be half-Japanese, half-American):

Think that commercial is going to get many Japanese to buy American cars?

12 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - November 30, 2007 at 2:52 pm

Categories: Foreigners in Japan, Japanese TV Tags: cars, chevy, commercial, GM, izumi mori, japan, TV, video

TOP GEAR FTW!

Don’t buy them, they are crap.
http://gabuchan.wordpress.com gabuchan

I dont like american cars in Japan.
http://nonplayercharacter.blogspot.com/ NPC

Whoa, for a second there I thought I was watching a JR commercial.
gunmagal

i love my chevrolet cruze. i`v been driving it for almost four years. nice suzuki engine with nice american style interior. made right here in japan.
sumisu

The Auto Workers are always going on about how you can’t buy American cars in Japan, and that Japan is evil for not allowing a real market to develop. Funny since on my way to work I used to pass by a Ford dealership and a Chevy dealership in Nagoya (AKA Toyotaville). Maybe people just don’t want the cars! no wonder they have to market themselves through Suzuki…
kaito

American Interiors > Japanese interiors
American Engines < Japanese Engines
Bernt

American cars are crap. Thats the image most people have in Europe and Japan. Japanese buy more American cars than most European countries or more than France, Germany, Italy combined. I don’t have the data right here but read this some place.

Japanse cars look better and they are better than American cars. Japanese product design is also much better than American.
http://myso-calledjapaneselife.blogspot.com/ Shari

“Better” and “crap” are really subjective adjectives. I don’t see anyone providing any objective information regarding why American cars are inferior to Japanese ones. For the record, objective criteria include mileage, interior space and comfort features (seat design, adjustment, head room), car width and how it affects maneuverability in narrow Japanese streets, statistics on the number and types of breakdowns (not anecdotal or made-up experiences), etc.

Somehow, I think no one is going to manage to come up with anything more than a flip opinion offered with a verbal look down the nose at America.

annie

American cars are inferior to Japanese cars. I based it on the Consumers Report for the past couple of years.

RYO

Here’s a relevant link: http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2007/03/01/cars-consumer.html

A key passage from Consumer Reports: “For the second time in 10 years, all the magazine’s top picks in 10 categories are Japanese nameplates.”

From what I understand, Detroit has been steadily closing the quality gap but old perceptions die hard.

RYO

I should mention that the passage I quoted is actually from the article and not Consumer Reports itself.

Nick

I guess I’m 2 years to late to this conversation but I wanted to mentioned that since mid 90-s consumer report has been owned by Toyota. Not implying anything just saying.

American Cars in Japan

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