For those of you who drove a Japanese import in the 60’s/70’s/early 80’s, did you get any heat from family/friends/coworkers/general public about your choice of car? How bad was it? What were some of the consequences and what was the most extreme example you’ve seen or heard of?
This question applies to americans as well as some western europeans, whose auto industries were also in decline with the exception of germany.
This discussion might also be a good predictor of what will await the first owners of chinese cars when they do arrive in north america.
My uncle was an early adopter of Japanese cars and lived in Oshawa, Ontario during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Oshawa has a big GM plant and obviously people there are very invested in GM, and I imagine there were a few people who were salty about Honda and Toyota in the 1980s. Nobody torched his cars but he did get a lot of comments like “why do you drive that piece of Jap Scrap?” and he once came out to find his Civic had been keyed.
The comments basically stopped completely after he moved to Peterborough (small city about 45 minutes northeast of Oshawa) and nobody gave a shit.