Red Light Drama - Has something like this happened to you lately?
 

I'm sitting at a red today, minding my own business when this Cadillac pulls up next to me in the other lane. Guy looks at me and yells "My father used to shoot those down in World War II." So being the wise *** that I am yell back..."I didn't know cars could fly" Then hes like..."No I mean the Japs" (apparently he didn't recognize the sarcasm) Light goes green and he guns it....

Honestly, wtf is that all about? It made me laugh more than anything else. Anyone else have any stories like this?

You had the best comeback EVER! Too bad the guy was so stupid that he thought he needed to correct you. Have piece of mind that you made the right comment back.

best is not to aggravate the moron.......that was a good reply

I remember when I was a car salesman years back (99-02), and I usually worked at domestic dealers because the economy was relatively good then and this was prior to gas hitting $3+/gallon. Full size SUV's were the cars to sell then, because everyone leased them and you made pounders off them.

This old school white guy comes into the Dodge dealer I worked at to shop for a full sized truck, Dodge 3/4 tons or higher. And this was when Dodge did the face-lift and had their new-gen engines in their 2002 Rams i.e. 4.7 V-8 and on, the 318 and 360 engines were gone now.

To make the long story short...I told him our turbo diesel dually would outpull, outhaul any truck out there on the market: including the new Toyota Tundra and Nissan Titan (these came out around then and other customers cross shopped them). Then the old school white dude said something like, (in a rednecky twang) "I don't buy Jap-junk, tie-yo-tuhs, nih-sahns are nothing but regenerated scrap metal..."

I just thought it was funny because we're in S. Cali, and if you're square and stuck in the past, you ain't gonna make it here.

I think it is known as "atavistic behavior" whereby an individual is an evolutionary throwback to some previous age because of their inability to adapt to their new environment. What is very ignorant about these types regarding your particular situation is that the Japanese people have sworn their honorable continuiiong allegience to the United States after WWII.

The reason being is that the Japanese people have alw3ays considered themselves the greatest warriors. They never thought they would ever meet an advesary that could fight as fierce as they are historically known to be. They also never expected a culture could be more deadly savage as them. That all changed with our dropping of the two A-bombs.

Then after their surrender we turned around and rebuilt their country for them and restored it way beyond its time which allowed Japan to become a world-class industrial power.

For these reasons they have forever pledged their alliance to US in times of real wars. So we really have no good reason to turn on these folks as they have always been in or corner since the end of WWII.

Unfortunatley some of the US folks of the later wars (i.e. Korean and Vietnam) mix the people of Japanese decent up with the other asian folks that are not of Japanese decent. And then these butt-heads propogate that hate to their children which creates the situations you just described.

They really have no clue about history because they sat in school with the heads up their *** most of the time and learning nothing but their present day "good ole boy" habits....which has teh physical impact of making their arms longer so that they knuckle-drag when they walk.

I seem to get "revved" at quite a bit.

By what vehicles?

I'm getting an "Off Topic" vibe from this. But in related news, I did have a Camaro rev very aggressively at the red light last night. I'm still breaking in the engine, so I was game, but...yeah, nothing as serious as a racial comment.

Me, too......especially by mini vans. What's up with that? :confused:

Did you ask who's doing the warranty work on the Cadi when GM is done in the next few months? The Japs :)

:icon18: :owned:

Yes its Japanese but totally the wrong company. Mitsubishi was the type of engine in the Jap Zeros that his father shot down. So whatever, grow tough skin and don't let comments like that get to you, being PC is so lame, just say what you mean, and mean what you say.:icon23:

You younger guys probably don't get it, but there are a LOT of people around who's views towards Japanese products are influenced by WWII - either their own experience or their parents'. It's real, and there are hard feelings about it across the US. You should hear some of the comments that I've gotten from fellow Corvette owners... Sheesh...

I think this is going pretty off topic for some of you. Really the only question was, has anything similar to this ever happened to you. I have had a lot of different imports and jut about every time I ventured out, I had some stupid comment or some jack *** revving his motor at me. It's the nature of the beast unfortunitely.

The automotive manufacturing business today is TRULY global; people who don’t understand that and what it means are either too stupid to understand, don’t care, or refuse to understand so as to remain confident in their wrong thinking.

What makes such people laughable is that they’ll rail against “foreign” cars and how people should “buy American” while concurrently loading up their Chevy or Dodge pick-up with Chinese made crap they bought at Wal-Mart.

By any objective measure you want to apply; most “foreign” nameplates are, as a whole, as “American” as are GM or Ford (and even the throw-backs can’t argue Chrysler is “American” with a straight face anymore)…if you look vehicle by vehicle, many “foreign” nameplates are more “American” than “domestic” brands. But those who think the like the guy you encountered at the red light are never going to let logic or reasoning or facts get in the way of their opinion.

I can understand the feelings of those who actually lived through/fought it WWII – if I had had some Japanese soldier shooting at me or had a friend or loved one die from a bomb dropped by a Japanese pilot I’d probably wouldn’t feel all that warm and fuzzy about products coming from Japan either but for the rest, for those who weren’t “there”; those feelings have more to do with just plain hatred and very misplaced patriotism than anything else.

I will say that I've never had anyone be this blatantly ignorant with me in person but I sure run into it all the time on forums!

I guess I can empathize somewhat when my Japanese-American friend made some negative insinuations about Harley Davidson in how it used the name "fat boy" for one of its motorcycles. This name was a diffusion and "refusion" of the names of the 2 bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Anyways, when I told him Honda held Harley for a few years i.e. trained them in efficient production processes, my friend sardonically wished that Honda would've let Harley sink to the ground.

jajaaja wow stupid people..amazing comeback +1

what did the corvette owner say? if u dont mind me asking.

I like this quote. I came from a FORD family and my father had always bought Ford (I still remember riding around in the original Bronco as a kid - Oil burning smell and all). But when his F-150 died, he and the mother did the research. Hardly any Ford Trucks are actually manufactured in America anymore. To cut costs, most of the assembly is done down south of the border. However, the Toyota Tundra is assembled here. And to add to this Toyota is continuing to BUILD plants here in the U.S.

So while the American manufactures have been out-sourcing their parts/labor it seems that (in Toyota's case any way) the foreign manufactures are taking interest in manufacturing over here.

It's very likely this year that more "foreign" nameplate vehicles will be manufactured in the U.S. this year than will be manufactured by the so-called domestic manufacturers combined...in fact it's been true for several years now that most of the foreign nameplates build in the U.S. most of the vehicles they sell in the U.S.

It was multiple owners, and they were criticizing me for not buying American.

Things like "Why didn't you buy a Corvette or Camaro instead?", "The Japanese people thank you for your support", "You're un-American.", "People like you are responsible for the American auto industry going broke.", ... You get the idea.

I thought the "Why didn't you buy a Camaro?" one was funny, since I'm pretty sure that the new Camaro was designed in Australia and is being built in Canada.

Even more interesting is that all of my previous cars, except for 1, were American (I even owned an American Motors Rambler back in the day)! I bought a 1987 Pontiac Trans Am during the first time that GM was trying to convince people that they made cars just as good as the Japanese - man, what a piece of crap that Trans Am was!

and it wouldn't surprise me a bit if their other car was a Porsche, Lexus, BMW, MB or Acura. :)

It sounds like some guys off the Corvette forum :) Buy American or else (funny thing is that some of their "American" cars were built in Mexico).

Oh yeah, they probably don't realize GM asia is a huge part of their profits, let's get the Chinese to stop buying the Buicks!

Ding, ding, ding - we have a winner! You are correct!

And it would surprise me even less that their restored and/or restomodded Corvettes are full of parts made in China, Taiwan, Mexico, ... :rolleyes:

you should've been like "i guess he didn't shoot down enough"

gotta have a come back that shuts up the crowd.

It appears my car is starting to get some attention... mainly gawking while stopped. My gf points it out. I can't be her because the shoulder line is well above her boobs to be noticed ;-)

Actually Nakajima manufactured the majority of the Zeros engines. ;)



PC is lame in most cases no arguement there. But saying this or any other racist remark directly to someone (esp nowadays )is pretty freaking stupid.

LOL I got some japanese american (ones a CHP officer)friends who would rip ya a new one if you said Jap to their face. :icon17:

"No I mean the Japs" :rofl2: LOL What a tool.


Good comeback though :tup:

Another possible retort.. "Well my dad used to shoot holes in those with his Panzer" And then give a loud Sieg Heil!! ;)

lol.

I just get looks. Weirdest thing that's happened so far is a girl coming out of Subway asking to touch it. :nutswinger:

I think you are not understsanding the full implication made by the original poster whether it was his intentional or not. This isn't just about engine revving...the point was made by the poster as well about how the guy revving made some off-color remarks as well.

As long as there are segways in a posting that offer up the potential of a variety of answers and interpretations then I think no one here has any grounds to try to confine anyone's answers to a certain part of any posting. This is a discussion board and that is exactly what is being done so far with the responses that have been occuring.

I was turned away from a number of "Any make and model" car shows when I showed up with my previous 350Z.

i'd say thats racist in the car world

This bothers me a lot, for example; had a new camaro pull up next to me - both the (I am guessing) husband and wife gave me this disdainful look and proceeded to chuckle, for the next 5 miles the guy matched my speed and kept stroking his beard while revving/ trying to get a race out of me, eventually they got bored and took off.

The guy is lucky you didn't take him up on his "offer". In any case, I'm not sure what he was laughing at...fairly big price tag, an unfortunatley cheap interior and no better/perhaps worse performance compared to the Z (in fact the Camaro isn't even in the same league as the 370 on anything other than a straight road).

From C&D...
CAMARO
0-60: 4.8ssec
1/4 mile:13.3

370Z
0-60: 4.6 sec
1/4 mile: 13.1

Obviously results like this will vary from magazine to magazine; driver to driver; day to day, etc but it's at least apparent the even the "top dog" Camaro (at the moment anyway) has nothing on the 370.

I've owned three Firebirds (1973 Formula 400; 1976 TransAm; 1979 Trans AM) and one Camaro (2001 Z28) so I've nothing against the F-body and I'm glad the Camaro is back but facts are facts.

it'd be interesting to see a race between the two...at the track of course ;)

This is an interesting point. A few years back I went to Hawaii with my grandparents, my grandfather who fought in the Pacific asked an odd question to me while we were there of all the Japanese people there. And for those of you who don't know there are a LOT of Japanese vacationers on the islands. Anyhow he asks "Do you think they wonder if this could be theirs?" To which I said "They're probably looking for their next Mi-Thai." It's definitely a generational thing.

I've read through most of these and I look at where posters are from and I have to ask do you all live out in like the ex-urban, rural hinterland? I live inside the beltway here in DC and can't tell you the amount of nice foreign cars there are floating around. If something like this happened my head would actually explode. While I love our Z's they're nowhere near the nicest foreign cars anywhere around me.

This is a window into the microcosm of nativist America. As a plain white guy myself it's so disappointing.

Same here, man. There's a huge mix of folks out here.

I know a couple people out in Haymarket and those folks really can't stand being anywhere near the more urban areas. Too many foreigners! :icon18:

spoken like a true auto enthusiast!

the facts are why I chose the z over the camaro, mustang, and challenger...

the z simply out performs them all...what can I say the z is my "poor man porsche".