I ran across this mesmerizing General Motors production the other day and thought it was interesting that GM definitely internally acknowledged the import threat quite early in the 70’s. I think it gives a lot of context to the time for those that were living in areas where the domestics ruled at the time. If nothing else, the excellent footage of fleets of early 70’s Datsun pickups and workers unloading VW 412s and Audi 100s via dock crane is worth seeing, along with new Vegas folding into their trains. As are the images of small import dealerships such as Stevinson Toyota in Denver, which is now a mega-dealer around here.
Growing up in SoCal, I thought it was normal that the imports seemed to outnumber the domestics on the roads. Not until I was a little older, when I had reason to visit the American MidWest did I realize that the situation was drastically reversed in other places. In high school and college in the 80’s to early 90’s, for example, I did not know a single person that owned a Chevy Cavalier. When I happened to get one as a rental in the early 90’s, I was sort of thrilled, it was a new experience!
GM was obviously well aware that the imports were starting to eat their lunch, and this video is a fine piece of internal education that does two things – First, before travel became very easy and cheap, it explained what was going on at the edges of the country to the internal workforce, much (but not all) of which obviously worked in the MidWest. Second, it verbally acknowledged that the competition was not in fact junk and was in many cases very well built and exhorts the GM workforce to work hard and take pride in their product. Left unsaid but clearly implied was that things needed to improve or the situation would deteriorate more and quicker than it already was.
What a great video! Also a great counterpart to today’s 1980 “GM-can’t-find-its-own-ass-with-both-hands” management article from the New Yorker and Paul’s tale of the horrible ’71s. GM had the plot, knew the issues it faced, and then management fumbled the ball repeatedly until they weren’t even in the end zone, but a few miles away from the stadium.
Also, I know a fellow who worked at one of the plants shown in the video, assembling Camaros and Firebirds around the time this was shot. I’ve forwarded this on to him- I hope he gets a kick out of it! Thanks for finding and posting it.
If you could build a great industry on stirring propaganda, the Soviets would’ve won the cold war. The film identifies the problem, but offers the wrong solution (exhortations of pride and honor). A new system—kaizen—was needed. Making that case is much harder than begging people not to take their sick days. That took 10 more years to figure out, and about more 30 to implement.
How ironic! This film is beating the drum about the workers doing the best job that they can, and to build a quality product, but shows the workers building the Vega.
Thank you. Does not mater how good assembly is, if the products bad….
Same thing in the UK. Remember the Marina!.
GM was good at pep talks. Actual execution in small cars? Not so much. I wonder how different things might have been had GM’s corporate headquarters been on one of the coasts.
I owned a 72 Vega, I think GM executives should had been made to drive a Vega for at least 1,000 miles…as well as it’s competition. Yet, I have to wonder if that would have made any difference.
I find it to be a tremendously anti-labor (unionized and non-union). “Hey, if you do your work better and quit calling out sick, we can beat these foreign cars.” No acknowledgement from management that they have any responsibility whatsoever. Not to manage efficiently, not to design cars people want to buy, nothing.
Just like the New Yorker article linked in another post today, management never wants to assume responsibility for failure; they just look for someone else to blame.
Exactly. That “If you see something, say something!” line in the film is laughable. For the Vega lines at Lordstown, production was projected at 100 Vegas an hour (one every 36 seconds!). Originally, workers were grouped in “fours”, where three performed the tasks assigned, while the fourth rotated out to rest. Within the first year, GMAD imposed more rigorous expectations and cut costs by dropping the fourth “extra” worker. Management accused workers of slowing the line and sabotaging cars. Workers said GMAD sped up the line and cut staffing.
So what does one do if you “see something”? Speak up to either a.) risk being fired, b.) have your union co-workers bust your head up for being a snitch, or c.) shut the fuck up and continue to put food on your table? I can almost feel the eyes rolling from those forced to watch this back in the day.
I think that attitude is because this film was made to be shown to the rank and file. Period. A quick mention of the office support staff, but 99% of the film was aimed at the assembly line worker. No sense in diluting your message, because you’re still having to try to get it across to a lot of employees who aren’t going to take it as seriously as the filmmakers intended.
And I get the feeling this film was made in ’71 – before the serious labor troubles got started.
Actually, GM had a huge, sixty-seven day strike in 1970 that led to a 1.5% drop in GDP. The Lordstown strike in 1972 was particularly nasty. GM’s serious labour troubles were like, well, forever.
I don’t think GM ever liked the idea of actual humans having actual physical limitations and thus the inability to do the proscribed labour operation in the allotted time. All lines move relatively slowly until the workers get up to speed on their job. GM never seemed to understand that this had a finite limit. They also didn’t remotely care what any line worker thought about anything.
Change is hard.
GM’s CEO and executives made good money. UAW workers made good money–as much as a college-educated public school teacher.
In the 1970s, Vega excepted, GM’s cars were still “good quality” and “good cars”. By the late 80s, the General couldn’t compete.
Yet despite that, it took a bankruptcy and federal bailout for GM to be able to make the hard choices needed to survive. GM’s management (75% of the problem) and the UAW (25% of the problem), as late as 2000, not to mention 2007, couldn’t do it.
And internally, they knew. The Salaried workforce knew.
Change is hard.
Today, gas prices are low. Yet the world is one stray or deliberate bomb (it could be in Syria. Or Saudi. Or Iran. Or Ukraine, Or North Korea) from having the house of cards fall.
When if does, GM will be geared to make lots of trucks, SUV, and big CUVs that people won’t want.
And unlike 1973, now, it’s much harder for the General (and all car makers) to change their model mix on short notice, because everything from design to production is more automated and outsourced and requires more lead times.
Sixties/early seventies GM (and by extension the other domestics too) seemed good at identifying the base problem – growing foreign car sales – but incredibly naive when it came to a response. “They should have been our customers” – that whine is so wrong! The US was a free market, and people had a choice. Other countries had ramped up car production to the point where they could now, perhaps for the first time, export their product. With an open market, the customer can choose.
By making their ‘standard size’ cars so ridiculously big, while dumbing down their smaller cars to try to influence the customer to buy the big high-profit model, US makers had shot themselves in the foot, big-time. Incidentally they’d also severely limited their own foreign sales as well.
They missed identifying what made people buy foreign, and seemed to be still trying to manipulate the customer into buying their product, rather than treating the small-car buyer as an intelligent person and making the product these people were looking for. It seemed to “Quality OR smaller size – but you can’t have both.”
No wonder the customers walked.
Say, Jim (Klein), this post is giving me a strong case of déjà vu for some strange reason. ;^)
Argh, Paul and I discussed it before posting and he thought the video was somehow familiar but we couldn’t locate it as having been posted! Sorry!
I knew we had posted it before, but I couldn’t find it via Google searches of the site.
That’s ok; our readers have short memories. 🙂
Short memories of what?
Ahem…our readers have short memories?
Sounds like the type of excuse that you would have expected from a major car company back in the day!?
( Sorry guys…. couldn’t resist!? )
In 1977, no one other than British Leyland made this film about quality control. It’s actually a great watch, despite the tragic end
https://youtu.be/xRyN4XhJ_ms
That was scary and sad.
While it seems the intended audience of this film was assembly-line workers, and thus the emphasis on more careful labor and less absenteeism rather than improved management, GM clearly didn’t “get” why imports were smothering Detroit’s market share. My parents were in the market for a small, inexpensive car in 1971, and nothing made in America even made the shortlist. Why? There were three kids to tote around, so they wanted something with 4 doors, like those Datsun 510s. We knew nothing of the Vega’s problems yet; we only knew it didn’t have back doors like Toyotas, Datsuns, and Fiats did. Likewise the Pinto or Gremlin. All three of those American efforts also had miserable rear seat space once you managed to work your way into the seat.
The same could be said about all of the other “foreign” cars shown. GM simply had nothing whatsoever that competed with any Audi or Benz just as they had no alternative to the 510 sedans and wagons or Toyota’s Corona and Crown. Cadillac made nothing but lumbering land yachts in 1971; no alternative to the smaller yet pricier (and sportier) alternatives from M-B, Audi, BMW, or Jaguar. VW’s Beetle and their larger rear-engine cars were about to fade in relevance, but the Dashers and Rabbits that would replace them had no real U.S. competition either. No amount of careful workmanship on the part of labor could fix that.
Ah, the drama of the video… Did anyone notice the invoking of the famous “Doomsday Clock” at the 7:57 mark?
I was only 11 or 12 when this video would’ve been made. I’d even toured * Baltimore’s * Broening Highway General Motors Assembly Plant by then. It’s featured in the video with the truckload of Bugs going by on a car carrier. (2:50 mark)
Sure, you heard all the hype back then from the old timers about how un-American it was to buy “one of them foreign jobs”. Many (including my great uncle who fought in Germany in WWII) would be incensed if you pulled up in a VW Bug or Toyota Corona. I am in no way dissing the greatest generation who fought for our right to choose, but the later generations were less in tune with this mindset, and enjoyed the right to choose.
By the late seventies and early eighties, resistance was futile. If the Japanese and Germans were offering up a better product, then that’s what was going to sell. My Dad had that “Buy American” mindset until he was in his sixties when he bought his first Japanese car, an Acura RL; 2002 I think. His last American car was his 2014 Mustang, which he traded for a Honda Accord of all things. He drank the Honda Kool-Aid. His other car is an Acura RDX. He’ll probably never look back.
I had that mindset, to a point (57 going on 58 here), but finally bought my first Japanese car in 2016 at 56. And it wasn’t really all that ingrained in me to buy only American cars for myself; I just always did until purchasing my Civic. But through my wives over the years, I’ve had a Toyota Celica, a Nissan Sentra, and a Mitsubishi Lancer – all of them pretty neat cars.
The point is, we’re in a global economy now, and it’s put up or shut up product-wise at this point. And all in all, I think we Americans are putting out a decent product now. My 2007 Mustang is the least problematic Ford I have ever owned. From what I understand even GM products have come a long way since their dark days. The build quality on the new Impala looks great (to my eyes anyway). Too bad that latter product is not long for this world, though…
* Another obscure Baltimore reference in the video * – At the 6 minute mark or thereabouts, Mark Belanger, No. 7 of the Baltimore Orioles was catching that fly ball ;o) when the narrator was talking about baseball.
I was surprised at the negative tone, and the “all we have to do is turn up to work and do the job” element, which places all Detroit’s woes on the guys on assembly and the girls in the office.
Even the most diehard GM fan would admit that there were some product issues by 1970, wouldn’t they?
As has been noted, it is similar to some of the reporting we saw in the UK, about the only issues BL having were the unions. “How many people work at BL?” “About 4 in 10” “Workers to sign the visitors’ book, not the timeclock” and so on. Wasn’t true here, and there was more at play in GM in 1970 too, I suspect