Hot Asian Cars, Designed In Detroit

You are correct.

The Kaiser industrial empire was mostly scuttled by the kids after
Henry J. died in '74, preferring to concentrate on the
Kaiser-Permanente health care system, the largest HMO in the US, and
one of the few non-profit ones. The Kaiser Jeep operation went to
AMC, the Fontana steel mill was sold to the Japanese and its Eagle
Mountain pit mine closed. It's quite a crime by them that they
allowed Kaiser Aluminum to fall into the hands of a greedy asshole
like Charlie Hurwitz, an asshole Texan who seems to delight in
screwing working people more than anything else...except for his love
of violating Federal laws. When Henry J. was still running things,
any Kaiser entity was known to be a great place to work with excellent
labor relations with their unionized employees. That still lives on
at Kaiser-Permanente, but died when Henry did at the other, cast-off
operations.

The Fontana mill is still operating, but no longer processes iron ore
into steel. After the SCAQMD mandated that Kaiser spend millions
retrofitting their coke ovens to cut emissions around 1971, which
Henry gladly spent, the family sold off the mill in '76 and shut the
mine, citing profitability problems. The real reason was the Nixon
Recession of '74, which had priced US steel much higher due to
outrageous interest rate increases, while the Japanese, due to Nixon's
"laissez-faire" trade ideology, were dumping cheap steel on our
markets daily. You'll also remember the shenanigans of LTV, Colt
Steel and US Steel about this time, when the old "blasters" of the
Monongahela Valley were finally shut down.

Later analysis showed that the Kaiser Fontana mill was still a
profitable operation when shut down as a mill and sold to the
Japanese, and it was obvious that the family members involved wanted
to get away from industrial operations and concentrate on non-profit
health care. However, in Pennsylvania, years of management neglect
and greed caused the old open hearth mills to continue on using 19th
century technology all the way into the '70s...they were set up to
fail, and greedy management ripped off the steelworkers' pension
funds. That's what caused the ERISA legislation of 1976, which Bush
Bird and his handlers have been trying to kill for six years, but now
have no chance..

Kaiser had converted to electric furnaces back in the early '60s, one
of the first US steel makers to make the transition. After the
shutdown/sell off, the former vertically integrated mill is now simply
a fabrication shop and rolling mill. After selling the mill, the
Japanese cut wages 50%, but were mandated to provide the same health
care through the Kaiser-Permanente system. After 20 years, the USWA
finally reorganized the workforce there, and wages are on their way
back up...a rare scenario these days.

The Kaiser mill was originally built in 1941 to provide steel for
Kaiser's shipyards on the West Coast. After the end of WW II, the
mill provided sheet steel for the GM Chevrolet plant in Van Nuys, as
well as the Ford Terminal Island and Pico Rivera plants. Once the
Japanese took over the mill circa 1976, they engaged in predatory
pricing of Fontana-rolled sheet steel, thus forcing Ford out of the
area, and forcing GM to cut back production at Van Nuys. GM did stick
it out until 1992 at Van Nuys producing slow selling Camaro/Firebirds.
The "new" Camaro of '93 was produced in Ohio at Lordstown, much closer
to domestic steel producers. This also was of dubious wisdom, as the
biggest market GM had for Camaros and Firebirds was...California! It
costs more to ship finished cars on auto racks 2500 miles than it
costs to ship sheet and coil steel from the Midwest to the West Coast.
Sure enough, the "new" Camaro/Firebird twins weren't profitable, and
GM axed the line rather than admit they'd screwed up...again....still?
The economic disaster that followed the closing of Van Nuys is still
being felt, as middle class workers were uprooted to make way for
hoards of illegal aliens.

GM...the worst there is!

 

I see you like a pissing contest... ;-)

Anyway, I was speaking of road-going trucks. A 320 load is illegal on
public roads even, I suspect, in the USA....

Whatever, any of these are 'proper' trucks, as opposed to the light,
pseudo-offroaders curiously characterised as trucks in the US...


DAS

For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling

 

Duh...these are MINE trucks, not highway trucks.

Correct about Japanese and US ½ ton "trucks," which aren't. For
decades, a ½ ton Ford, Chevrolet or Chrysler pickup was basically a
station wagon drive train in a truck body. When you got up to ¾ ton,
then things started getting more serious.