An American assembly line worker at GM makes $14 - 38 USD per hour
A Canadian assembly line worker at GM makes $16 - $27 USD per hour
The cost of living in Canada is higher.
I think I would be happier South of the border.

Toyota/Honda aren't unionized, but since they have to compete, the wages will be similar.

There's much more to a happy worker than just money. American corporations are strictly driven by shareholder profit at any cost, be it human, quality, whatever. Which is why American companies do not, and never will be able to, compete with Japanese companies. It's a cultural difference as well as an economic one. In the case of Canada, Canadian workers make better cars in part because they are happy doing their jobs. The plants in Canada are not run the same management-wise as their American counterparts. There is more respect for the worker, which boosts morale, which makes them care about what they are doing and feel important...which they are. In America, it is very much "shut up and do your job, you get a check, right? Don't like it, leave. A million people want to take your place." It is terrible. Companies here have NO loyalty to their workers. After watching my Dad work for the same employer for 35 years before he retired and seeing how little respect management gave him and how they worked him like a mule his last few years just to try and make him quit so they wouldn't have to pay out his pension, I have no respect for corporations here. Zero. And I was already experiencing the corporate BS at GM when I decided to end my tenure there and work for myself. I know Scotty has had great success with Canadian built cars vs American ones as well as he has mentioned in multiple videos. It's just how it goes. And I honestly expect the gap to widen significantly as we move forward into more electric cars and higher tech solutions because that's the other thing American auto manufacturers do not do: innovate. They keep doing the same thing as long as possible so they don't have to invest money. It eventually always catches up to bite them. I wish American cars were built better, I really do. But it's never going to happen unfortunately.

> " The plants in Canada ... There is more respect for the worker"
What do you base this on?

Personal experience during my time with GM. But it is no secret the American way of doing things keeps workers unhappy. Here is just a couple of articles talking about it: https://www.businessinsider.com/unhealthy-american-work-habits-2017-11;     https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/differences-canada-us-work-2018-1%3famp.  

Also, this year Canada passed the USA for the world's favorite place to work: https://www.google.com/amp/s/finance.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/canada-tops-america-as-the-worlds-favorite-workplace-123516742.html

I don't agree with these articles for the most part. I don't think they describe the whole picture, and one compares USA to Europe which is completely wrong. I could talk about it for hours, but there's too much there to unpack in a forum post and I'm not typing it out. I'll just leave it with a parting thought ... Canada doesn't have it's own car.

It is a subject that many people could debate for hours, or days. But as with your thought, I'll leave this as mine.....America builds the vast majority of it's own cars in other countries, and when they try to build it here...for example the Corvette...it is a disaster.

I would love to hear your examples of this, and also how quality improved when production was moved from the US to somewhere else (other than Japan or Germany)

First of all, I trust Scotty when he says that cars made in Canada are well made.
One of the many examples would be where Toyota moved the production of its 2.4 engines from Japan to the US and they started to burn oil because of defective piston ring design. At the same time, the same models being made in Canada didn't have the problems (Matrix, Corolla...)

I see. When you made your statement, you made it sound as if you knew something, but you're actually just repeating what someone told you.
If a DESIGN is defective, then it doesn't matter where you produce that design, right? That would mean the designs Canada was using were different. Maybe the engineers (in Japan) changed it.

Fair enough, I shall quote my source:
Scotty Kilmer (2020): "[2002 Camry] has got the variable vvt-i system in it, but it didn't have the oil burning problems that some of the later 2007s had with the engines that were made in the United States. This baby was made in Japan!"
This wasn't my souce and I certainly wouldn't go off by a certain thread but here is a thread on the Toyota forum about it: https://www.toyotanation.com/threads/differences-between-japan-built-vs-canadian-built.1331833/

Another example would be the Kia/Hyundai engines. They had some engine problems solely because the plants in Georgia, US made them wrong, while the previous Korean (specifically Ulsan, South Korea) made engines didn't have defects.

I respect that you want personal experience, so might as well refer to my parents 2009 Kia Sportage. No recalls on this model, no bulletins, nothing severe and widespread about the engines. Go 2 3 model years later, and you are doomed because the engines were made in US.

Also, for the 2AZ-FE 2.4 engine, the oil burning complaints are mostly in North America with the American built ones, while the ones around the world (even the Chinese and Australian built ones) didn't have that many problems. Officially, according to Toyota, it only affects North American built cars.

I also want to say that the models previously made in Japan (lets take for example Toyota) had a reduction of quality, whether that be an effect or cause of US craftmanship, and that is evident.

Earlier ones had nice cloth and you could close the doors and open the cabin compartments and say its a Toyota and it was quality engineering, while the ASSEMBLY of the next generations were not near as good as the first. Pieces had more wholes in between them... more plastics AND the quality of the plastics were signifcantly less in the US derived ones then lets say the Japanese and Canadian derived ones.
Lastly, look at the Pontiac Vibe and Toyota Matrix. Mechanically they are identical, but cosmetically the Pontiac Vibe has a lot more paint chipping and quality issues than the Matrix. The materials are the same, so what is the difference? The only difference besides the AC/Heater unit being different is that the Matrix was built in Cambridge while the Vibe was made in Fremont.

I mean to be fair Scotty mentions Canadian and Japanese built cars are a lot more well made than American made ones.
I hope this was enough to convince you I wasn't making it up {black}:formalsmile:
Regards, Kerem

@mountainmanjoe bump

>"This baby was made in Japan!"
I can believe that the Japanese made cars are better. Which is why my questions said "other than Japan".
Japan has made high quality (and high priced) goods for some time. It's pretty commonly known.

>"here is a thread on the Toyota forum about it: https://www.toyotanation.com/threads/differences-between-japan-built-vs-canadian-built.1331833 /"
Heresay on an internet forum is not a credible source. I don't think your teachers at school would accept it either.

>"Another example would be the Kia/Hyundai engines."
There MIGHT be some truth there, however you say the quality dropped at a certain point in time which coincided with moving production. But we still don't know... if they had kept production in Korea or moved it somewhere other than USA, would those problems still have happened? If there were two separate production lines, in different places, using the same designs FOR THE SAME MODEL and AT THE SAME TIME, and you got different levels of quality, then that would be a convincing argument.

>"the 2AZ-FE 2.4 engine, the oil burning complaints are mostly in North America with the American built ones"
Was this caused by differences in design, materials, workmanship etc?

> "more plastics AND the quality of the plastics were signifcantly less in the US derived ones then lets say the Japanese and Canadian derived ones."
That's not something assembly line workers have control over. Those are design, engineering and supply management decisions. Who at Toyota made those?

>"Lastly, look at the Pontiac Vibe and Toyota Matrix. Mechanically they are identical"
Are you sure? The Dodge Sprinter was supposedly a badge engineered Mercedes Sprinter, but the similarities were only skin deep. The Dodge version was a bastardized, cheap knockoff with all kinds of cost cutting.

@mountainmanjoe
>"Lastly, look at the Pontiac Vibe and Toyota Matrix. Mechanically they are identical"
Are you sure? The Dodge Sprinter was supposedly a badge engineered Mercedes Sprinter,
but the similarities were only skin deep. The Dodge version was a bastardized, cheap
knockoff with all kinds of cost cutting.

Er, yeah, what I said about the Matrix and Vibe are true. Go do your own research where ever you'd like and you will find similar/same results. The MAIN difference was that the Vibe was made in the states and the Matrix was made in Ontario.

>"Another example would be the Kia/Hyundai engines."
There MIGHT be some truth there, however you say the quality dropped at a certain point in
time which coincided with moving production. But we still don't know... if they had kept
production in Korea or moved it somewhere other than USA, would those problems still have
happened? If there were two separate production lines, in different places, using the same
designs FOR THE SAME MODEL and AT THE SAME TIME, and you got different levels of quality,
then that would be a convincing argument.

One of the most affected engine families, the Theta II engine, was produced in Korea at first in models for example the Sonata with didn't have the same issues the ones produced in Alabama had.
>"here is a thread on the Toyota forum about it:
https://www.toyotanation.com/threads/differences-between-japan-built-vs-canadian-
built.1331833 /"

There are so many responses there, from lots of experienced people. The same arguement would be to this forum? Could you trust Joe's responses? Could you trust Kerems responses? COuld you trust X responses? That was ONE of the things I said about the forum, and I said you didn't haev to trust it and gave other details "This wasn't my souce and I certainly wouldn't go off by a certain thread but here is a thread on the Toyota forum about it:"

This is just some stuff I came up with other than what Scotty has said time and time again, that he sees Canada built cars have less problems than American made ones.

Another thing is, lots of Japanese cars that were built in Canada were very well made. The fact that production moves to the states show a dip in overall quality of the make/model and you might have more problems with an American made one than a Canadian made one.

Lots of examples out there with Toyota, Honda, Nissan...

I understand your arguement and some of it makes sense, but its too idealist to be realistic.

I feel like whether all of the evidence be valid or some of it, it still doesn't disprove the fact that generally all else equal, a car whose production is moved from Canada to US will have more issues due to quality control. I wanted to show those pieces of evidence just so I wouldn't only be using Scotty as a source but I guess it comes down to that.

> the Vibe was made in the states and the Matrix was made in Ontario.
Wiki says the Matrix was made in the USA and Canada, but anyway so far you've only mentioned one issue: paint chips, and I don't see huge numbers of those. Still, prove that it was craftsmanship and not engineering or supply chain. The accelerator pedal fiasco still affected the Canadian Matrix.

> Could you trust Kerems responses?
Sometimes

I get that you trust Scotty. I trust him too because he's a really smart and experienced man, but humans aren't perfect and everyone has bias. I trust hard data most of all, and so far I have seen none to support this argument. I can believe that there are some small differences, but I believe that they are greatly exaggerated, and not really worth paying attention to.

Fair enough. I'm not the best at debating. Maybe you should ask all the other people who said Canadians make cars better than Americans? {black}:idontknow: