Image Courtesy of Casey Shain, Artandcolour.com
The 2016 Dodge Charger hunched in the driveway like an indignant, angry beast while its owner gently played the hose across the car’s brilliant red paint. The car was a work of art, long and lean with sumptuous body lines fronted by a wide mouthed grill that made one instantly think of some ancient predator from the Jurassic sea. The headlights added to the impression, sculpted and arched in such a way that anyone who wandered across the car’s path would instantly know the beast’s attention was focused fully upon them. It was, as one reviewer described it, a sculpture of pure adrenaline and aggression laid down in steel and set on 18 inch wheels. It was hard to believe that tomorrow would be the car’s 100th birthday. Read the rest of this entry »
[CraigInNC is a former GM employee, and has been sharing the benefits of his insider's knowledge and perspective since he arrived here at CC. In this post, which was originally a comment Craig left, he shares his thoughts on the external and internal forces at work during the crucial era that started with the OPEC Oil Embargo, and which he identifies as a key turning point at GM. The decline of GM is the biggest automotive story just about ever, and there obviously are many takes and perspectives to it. Feel free to agree or disagree, but please keep the tone civil. - PN]
GM’s downsized 1985 FWD C-Body cars (Cadillac DeVille and Fleetwood, Olds 98, Buick Electra) and 1986 E/K cars (Eldorado/Seville) represent one of the key turning points at GM. The situation with these all-new cars was not just confined to those models only, but was part of a broader set of directions that GM decided to take ten years before they hit the street. To say that OPEC had influence on this would be an understatement, but that affected all cars, most especially the domestics who built big cars. At that time, most of the imports were very small, with the exception of some Mercedes models.
As much as we blame Roger Smith for all of the troubles of the 1980s, he was only marginally influential in the process that got all of this going. He could have done more probably to exert pressure to tweak models, but the die was already cast before he assumed the chairmanship in the fall of 1980. The situation as I saw it was like this: Read the rest of this entry »