At auto show, Obama takes swipe at Romney

[HopeHoops]

16. Ford did the same thing with Mazda - used them as an "R&D wing" so to speak.

The Probe was essentially an MX-6/626 and built in a US-based Mazda plant. Same with the 91+ Escort and (I believe) the 323. There were a lot of crossovers, both as complete vehicles and basic technology. In some cases the only difference was whether the bolts were metric or US standard heads. The threads were the same.

But yeah, I suppose they would go with China instead of Japan now. Japan's power as a manufacturing country is on a steady decline and I'm pretty sure it was within the last couple of days that I read they had a trade deficit for the first time in 31 or so years.

On Edit: The original "Probe" name was from a prototype in the early 80's, as was the Saturn. Neither turned into anything close to the prototypes. GM had a small image of the planet Saturn in the corner of all of its billboards. The original Probe prototype looked almost exactly like the 91 Escort wagon but had flexible wheel well covers on the front and solid ones on the rear. It's drag coefficient was comparable to fighter jets. The Saturn prototype was a James Bond sort of car with gull wings and a tiny sliding window for going through drive-through windows. Not very practical. It had a similar but slightly higher drag coefficient.