Japan's barriers to American cars may be coming down a little, but a question remains: Does Detroit make anything the Japanese want to buy?
One industry analyst answers the question with a single word - "Nope."Other auto industry observers say the Japanese think American cars are not fashionable, not well built and not suited for Japan's driving conditions.
America sold about 30,000 vehicles in Japan last year. Half of them were Honda Accords built in Ohio.
President Bush's recent trip to Japan yielded an agreement to increase this to 50,000 vehicles. At that rate, every autoworker in America will be guaranteed a job - for less than a week.
In contrast, Germany sold more than 100,000 cars in Japan last year, most of them top-of-the-line Mercedes and BMWs.
German automakers can sell cars in Japan because they build what the consumers want, analysts say.
"Mercedes is a status symbol," said David Nash, an international auto industry analyst for AutoFacts, a consulting firm. Mercedes' image as a top quality car for the wealthy sells as well in Tokyo as it does in Los Angeles.
Nash said that American cars do not have a hip image in Japan, so trendy buyers don't want them. They do not have a reputation for fine quality, so value conscious buyers don't want them.
And Detroit has made little effort to find out what the Japanese consumers do want, Nash said. The Big 3 haven't done the market research needed to see what they could sell in Japan.
Not only do the Japanese automakers study U.S. consumers to see what they want, the companies are increasingly engineering their cars to meet American tastes. The Toyota Camry sold in St. Louis is visibly different from the Camry sold in Yokohama.
If anything, Detroit has ignored the preferences of the Japanese auto buyer and paid no attention to Japanese driving conditions, analysts say.
"We don't have anything to sell them from their perspective," said Maryann Keller, managing director of research for the investment firm of Furman Selz Inc.
She and others offer examples of how the Big 3 has closed itself off from Japan:
- Vehicles in Japan have their steering wheels on the right because motorists drive on the left side of the road. The Big 3 won't build any right-side-drive cars for another two years.
- Japanese automakers redesign their cars as often as every three years because consumers there quickly tire of old models. American automakers sometimes take 10 years to change a model.
- American automakers haven't spent the time needed to develop a distribution system in Japan. In Japan, some cars are sold door-to-door by salespeople who have served the same family for years. A close personal relationship between an auto sales person and a customer, common in Japan, is almost unthinkable in the United States.