What is it about Indian Americans and Japanese Cars?

'Not a single American Car. Not Suprising at all', the cab driver who drove me to the Hindu Temple of Kentucky, quipped.

After taking a customary glance at the parking lot, which was filled with Honda's, Toyota's and Nissan's, I was perplexed too. I just had completed one week in the US and still was contemplating whether to buy a car or not. Not to mention that I am no expert in understanding the purchasing patterns of Indian Americans.

'Why?', I asked him.

'Is it not apparent? Quality and resale value'. The cabbie indeed appeared very smart.

'If they want to make money, they better put excellent products in the street. They can't keep begging the labour unions for long' he completed.

I remembered reading in the Wall Street Journal, a few weeks earlier, the cost rationalizatons Ford and Chrysler were trying to accomplish in an attempt to bring them back to black. My respect for Yellow cab drivers went up by several notches.

Are American car manufacturers so naive that they don't even realize things that is so apparent even to a cabbie? The efforts to cut the extra flab is good. But it cannot extend beyond a point, when the knife starts cutting the muscle. I am sure American car makers know this.

Portugese and their brass monkeys

'Its cold enough to freeze the balls of a brass monkey'. Sounds hilarious. Isn't it? Well! the truth is slightly different. In the 18th century Portugese navy ships, they used cannon balls. These cannon bals were generally left lose in the top deck. Hence, whenever the seas got rough, these balls swayed from one end to another and broke the sideboards. As a result, they decided to keep these balls in a tripod made out of brass. They called these tripods as monkeys. And during the cold seasons, these tripods became so rigid that they were unable to retrieve the balls. Consequently, the saying came into existence.

Chinese are smart investors

When the Haier Group, China's largest home-appliance maker, withdrew its $1.3 billion bid to buy Maytag Corp, the Iowa based appliance manufacturer, it indicated one thing very clearly. Chinese will walk out of a deal, if the deal is going to break their bottom line. Unlike their Japanese counterparts, Chinese have learned one thing clear. No place for sentiments and emotions in business.

Japanese, during the 80s, made big ticket prized acquisitions. The acquisiton of American media companies by Sony is a case in point. Most of these acquisitions made by Japanese companies during the period were at substantial premium and did not add get the acquirers the desired returns.

The Chinese seems to have read the history carefully and learned from it.

The ways of Japanese

Perhaps, one of the most interesting, but intriguing aspect of the Japanese rituals is 'Sepukku', a method by which a samurai commits suicide. If a samurai is disgraced in a fight or if he fails in a given task, he commits a self-righteous suicide known as the hara kiri or sepukku. '47th ronin' is one of the most beautiful stories of japanese literature, where 47 samurais committ sepukku after avenging their master.

The modern day equivalent will be suicide attacks that were conducted by the kamikaze japanese pilots during the second world war. Later the Japanese realized that there are better ways to beat their enemies. During the 1980's, they were literally trying to eat everybody's economic lunch. Lee Iacocca, the legendary car maker, in his book wrote; "Japanese have a clever way of smuggling steel into America. They paint it, put it on 4 wheels and call it a car". Just hilarious.

But off late, it seems like China is on its way to upset the global economic order. Last year, they bought over $200 billion worth American bonds. In other words, Americans are bridging their fiscal deficit using Chinese money. Any sharp shift, in the movement of funds (lets say China decides to invest all the inflows in their own infrastructure, instead of baling out) can be catastrophic to the Amercian economy.