Ford dealer blasts Japan cars as 'rice ready, not road ready'

In a blatant display of chauvinism bordering on racism, an incensed Ford dealer opposed the proposed bailout of American automakers, blamed Congress for the economic and financial crisis and mocked buyers of Japanese cars in a radio ad, calling the vehicles "rice ready . . . not road ready".

Car dealer O.C. Welch of Hardeeville, S.C., began airing the minute-long ad on a dozen stations in the area over the weekend. According to the Japan Times, the ad sounds more like a talk-radio tirade than a sales pitch.

"All you people that buy all your Toyotas and send that money to Japan, you know, when you don't have a job to make your Toyota car payment, don't come crying to me," Welch says in the ad. "All those cars are rice ready. They're not road ready."

Floyd Mori, executive director of the Japanese American Citizens League, said Welch's remarks evoked anti-Asian sentiments often aimed at Japanese and Chinese immigrants to the U.S. from the 1930s through World War II . Also, many Japanese brand cars are manufactured in America.

"It's a blatant, ignorant, racist remark from somebody who should know better," Mori said.

Toyota spokesman Xavier Dominicis said the company's cars consistently received high marks for quality.

The automaker employs 36,600 Americans, he said, and about 60 percent of Toyota vehicles sold in the U.S. were manufactured locally.

"How do you tell a worker in Kentucky who's producing a Toyota that his job is worth less than another American autoworker's?" Dominicis asked.

The car dealer claimed he had received more positive calls than negative ones and sold 15 new cars Saturday, so the ad was working.

Welch said he was furious at politicians, blasting them in his ad as only being good for "slinging mud and spending our tax dollars." He said the government should offer tax incentives for consumers to buy new cars rather than spend money bailing out Ford, GM and Chrysler. On the surface, this appears to be an eminently reasonable proposal, but in reality it will not be workable, for many reasons.

First, consumers have been turned off by American cars because they cost more than Japanese cars and they also consume far more fuel. Second, if the US government were to offer a tax rebate for automobile purchases, then why not for purchases of electronic appliances and clothes? And how would the government finance its budgetary expenditures?