(first posted 4/13/2018) This week’s Curbside Classic has been filled with posts packed full of data and thoughtful perspectives on the decline of Motown’s fortunes through the years. Well, roll the clock back fifty years, and the handwriting was already on the wall, courtesy of Brock Yates in the April 1968 issue of Car and Driver.
While it was easy to bash Detroit as the epitome of closed-minded corporate arrogance reinforced with closed-minded social circles and groupthink, Yates was clever to draw an analogy with the railroad industry from a previous era. “Hubris comes before a fall” is an age-old problem, effectively captured in Greek Mythology and thriving ever since. In the context of current times, simply substitute Atherton, Los Altos Hills and Palo Alto for Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills and Grosse Pointe to see another wildly profitable “world changing” industry whose navel-gazing is legendary, and we’ll once again see if history repeats, or at least rhymes.
As for Detroit’s specific fall, which would agonizingly play out over many years following this 1968 exposé, the most telling indicator was not just in Yates’s article, though he certainly was effective—and bold—in covering the mostly self-inflicted issues facing Motown. Rather, look at the Toyota ad on the last page of the “Myopians” article: there was an economy car offering great gas mileage, hardtop styling, well-equipped with niceties like standard reclining bucket seats, all for $2,055 ($15,039 adjusted), perfectly suited to handle the driving needs of many Americans and completely unavailable from Detroit. Turns out, the Japanese quickly developed a better handle on the needs and tastes of Americans than the domestic brands, and it would literally take decades for Detroit to even be able to clearly see the problem or fathom how to properly respond. Myopians indeed, and though not a species solely indigenous to the Detroit area, certainly a prime example of the breed, and a story of hubris for the ages.
Yes hubris is the reason for domestic car companies fall. yes the Electra 225 is one helluva car. no Chevy was not jealous of Pontiac it was the other way around. Pontiac always wanted what Chevy had. and they were pissed that they coul’nt get a Corvette. and yes the Japanese got a clear handle (only because of the gas crisis)on what America needed. they did use smarts in building cars to last for many many years after they were paid off by customers. and finally, yes i would love to own that corona.
An interesting read, particularly with 50 years of hindsight to filter it through.
It would be a really interesting alternate history if auto building in the US had taken hold in two or three regions of the country instead of just one. There were some pretty good “little” auto industries in cities like Indianapolis, St. Louis and smaller ones like South Bend and Kenosha. But they were all in the midwest, so there was no different mindset that would accompany an industry centered on the east or west coasts or in the deep south. And even AMC eventually moved its HQ to Detroit. What actually developed was a one-industry town and a one-town industry.
Even today, drop into Grosse Pointe on Google Streetview and you’ll see an almost creepy-parallel-universe preponderance of domestic-brand cars.
it’s the same for pretty much the entirety of southeast Michigan. I don’t know why you’d find that creepy or strange.
It is to those who only inhabit coastal cities like Los Angeles or New York, and can’t get their mind around the fact that such places actually exist.
I remember going on business trips back in the 1990s to places like Michigan and Georgia and making the same observations. In Georgia, I was amazed to see several privately-owned Crown Victorias in family-duty service. Where I live, only the police and taxicabs used that model.
And in Michigan while at the pancake house having breakfast, I would sip my coffee and marvel at the number of Cavaliers and Impalas driving by on the state highway – something just not seen where I live.
“It is to those who only inhabit coastal cities like Los Angeles or New York, and can’t get their mind around the fact that such places actually exist.”
well, that’s their problem, and that arrogant insularity is why I don’t like going to those places and would never live there.
I thought it was kind of ironic when I rented a car at the Detroit airport circa 2004 and received a “Chevy” Tracker, in other words a badge-engineered Suzuki built in Canada. But it had a Chevy bow tie on the grille, which I guess was the important part.
Well duh, it’s SE MI.
THANK YOU. Been looking for a copy of this article for the last year.
It’s also reprinted in the Brooklands Books Impala & SS Muscle Portfolio 1958–1972.
Interesting… I’m not much of a Chevy guy so I am not familiar with that book, but from the Amazon page it looks pretty neat!
Once again, thanks for posting this. We in the biz in the 70’s contended that the greatest favor the domestic manufacturers could have done for themselves is move headquarters out of Detroit and relocate in… Newport Beach, maybe?
Road & Track, an early adopter of some fresh thought about autos, was based in Newport Beach. Much better weather than Detroit too….
I do love that the article’s last page shares space with an ad for a Toyota.
Margret Mead’s quote struck me too. My nickname is “Data Dan” but even W. Edwards Deming (prophet of Continuous Improvement) opined: “Not everything is quantifiable.” & “We should eliminate management by quotas.”
yeah, that Toyota ad on the last page really put a fine point on it.
I’m sure that ad placement was a deliberate editorial decision.
It is probably telling that Toyota was willing to take out a half page ad to fill an opportune space. No U.S. company would have at that time.
It’s not like any of the Detroit 3 would place an ad next to such an article.
“…the fact that the electrical, chemical and aerospace industries stand as great rivals on the transportation horizon.” In fact the electronics and chemical engineers would save the modern car in the seventies and eighties with electronic fuel injection and catalytic converters. And the revolution in computer-aided design made it possible to engineer a car body to handle crash safety without the brute force mass and huge bumpers once feared.
But then the PC and the internet came along and Detroit was no longer selling what excited people the most. Now internet taxi services (so-called ride sharing) are threatening the need for some people to even have a car at all.
“And the revolution in computer-aided design made it possible to engineer a car body to handle crash safety without the brute force mass and huge bumpers once feared.”
more than that, the “brute force mass” and huge bumpers didn’t make those older cars safe. the whole point of modern body design is to *control* the crash energy as much as possible, and *dissipate* as much of it as possible via heat in the crumple zones, and finally have a rigid passenger cage to try to prevent intrusion.
those old cars with frames and thicker sheetmetal would just buckle and fold up in a random, uncontrolled manner and allow the passenger compartment to collapse. Injuring and killing the occupants.
Now hold on there – you are overstating things by a fair bit. Our 1971 Ford LTD had S-bends (looking down from above) in the front frame rails such that it would absorb energy in a crash, and engine/transmissions were designed to be pushed down and under the firewall, and this was stuff all designed back in the 1960s.
And you obviously don’t seem to understand how stout many American cars were with respect to how well the passenger compartment held up in a crash. There’s a darn good reason why the full-sized 1975 Chevrolets are the #1 pick for demolition derbies nationwide.
+1 They were absolutely less safe than today, and crash performance was usually quite unpredictable, but structures varied model to model, and bodystyle to bodystyle – a pillared coupe/sedan passenger would most likely fare better than a hardtop – there just wasn’t a set standard that there is today, where there is little variance model to model, brand to brand in structure. A long heavy car may not hold up to today’s soft celled crash pods, but you’d stand a better chance of survival in an Electra 225 than you would in a VW beetle in equal scenarios. In grizzly terms the lighter car you collide with will become your heavier car’s crumple zone.
Bumpers have little to do with occupant safety in a crash, they protect the car, not the occupant, and only at very low speed. The 5mph(later 2.5) bumper laws were enacted for consumer protection, standardizing placement, reducing repair costs for both owners and insurers in common minor collisions, and allowing safety items like lights to operate unscathed after a low speed impacts, which previous small bumpers rarely protected effectively. Big battering ram bumpers should not be considered indicative of your safety in a car with or without them.
I’m wrong because “S bends?”
modern structural rails are designed to collapse like an *accordion* bellows in a collision, because the rapid CONTROLLED plastic deformation of the metal creates a tremendous amount of heat. Heat which represents crash energy *not* being transferred to the occupants. Your revered “S bends” would just buckle over and not dissipate much energy.
“how stout many American cars were with respect to how well the passenger compartment held up in a crash.”
Huh, so why was the on-road fatality rate (deaths per million vehicle miles traveled) 4 times higher in 1971 than in 2016, despite people driving 3 times as much in 2016? PROTIP- evaluate those “Stout American Cars” in an offset frontal or any other collision scenario besides a perfect, straight head-on collision. If you’re in one, you’re toast.
“And you obviously don’t seem to understand ”
I understand things just fine. Making assumptions about others’ knowledge rarely ends well.
and as for you trying to point to demolition derbies as proof, you realize those cars aren’t going more than 10-15 mph, right?
For one thing, in 1971 many people did not wear seat belts and cars older than a few years never had them to begin with.
Also figures from 1971 would involve a good number of cars on the road that dated from the early 1960s if not before.
Significantly safer highways as well, which is often overlooked.
The statistics don’t lie, but they don’t paint the full picture, and for much of the public it has become quite apparent that a well reported four fold reduction in traffic fatalities over 50 years has empowered a lot to be ever more lax on their driving attentiveness.
Back then it appeared that the future could look like this AMF safety car from 1970. It weighed 5791 pounds and those bumpers had 30 inches of travel. (From Ran When Parked) This terrified anybody who cared about cars.
Wow! I remember that AMF. Thanks!
Now if Yates had been able to foresee “ride-sharing” and autonomous vehicles, which threaten the existing car business model more than anything ever, then he really would have been prescient.
Bob Lutz just predicted again that car dealers will be obsolete in 20-25 years, because the manufacturers will be selling huge fleets of autonomous pods to operators like Waymo and Uber.
Really that last paragraph isn’t far off, mentioning the threat of computerized, electronic vehicles – not just electric vehicles, but *computerized*(self driving?) electric vehicles – and an autonomous Waymo and Uber could legitimately be considered ultra sophisticated mass-transit systems.
Considering he wrote this fifty years ago, Brock Yates really did see what was coming, in the market short term and the technology long term. And to think I mostly remembered him for the Cannonball Dash.
Too bad he became such a curmudgeonly crotchety cantankerous old SOB. I was a C&D subscriber in the 1990s and I couldn’t stand to read Yates in that era. But I thoroughly enjoyed the piece above.
One editorial in C&D by Yates was calling for “more freeways in LA”.
i.e. “a freeway every mile”. He hated public transit and gung ho for, in my opinion, “paving the earth”.
As proven, can’t relay 100% on a car in large urban area. Yates and others at ‘buff books’ really thought that transit was a “failure”, and pushed for sprawl and concrete.
I was thinking exactly the same thing. His later articles were practically unreadable, but the man could really write back in the day.
One editorial in C&D by Yates was calling for “more freeways in LA”.
i.e. “a freeway every mile”
Would there be any city left at all, at that point?
“Too bad he became such a curmudgeonly crotchety cantankerous old SOB.”
he’d fit right in with the “B&B” at a certain other site.
@Matt: Agreed. And I give him a lot of credit for that. he was getting mighty close to the specifics.
Back in 1990, C&D predicted that “everyone will lease a car” and just get update every 3-some years. Lots of sky high predictions never come true.
I’m older now and probably won’t buy too many more fun cars (though I’m occasionally tempted), the self driving car on call may actually be a better alternative for near-future urban lifestyles. When I travel and visit other cities (London, Rome, NYC, DC) I really don’t want to hassle with owning, repairing, or parking a car. Just get me there….
You reap what you sow …
Cars should not be sold by the sq ft or by weight …
Detroit – “The electric motor is 20 years off, and it’ll never be able to do the things our present internal combustion engine can do”
Japan – “Hold my delicious tasting Sapporo beer”
THAT was the C/D I was used to, albeit much diminished by the time I started reading it in 1982. Yates was prescient about well, practically every factor that dealt the death blow to Detroit except for the ’73 oil boycott and the rampant inflation of the 70s.
Amazing article. And relevant thoughts for more than just the automotive industry – my corner of the world (radio) is going thru some major upheaval as well due to hubris from the top…and thinking that Pandora/Spotify/etc will be a passing fad (not to mention FB and other social media eating into local ad budgets.
Sadly Detroit still seems to resist change – instead of small car, it’s electrics this time.
“instead of small car, it’s electrics this time”
What’s your expected aolution to the refueling time issue?
Further development of battery technology, which is on a steep improvement curve.
Here’s one example from Toshiba: “New battery realizes driving range of electric vehicles boosted to 320km on 6-minute, ultra-rapid recharge.”
There are other such developments announced regularly. Regardless of whether any single report from the lab pays off, progress is made in the long run. Production EVs that recharge in 5-10 minutes are probably about ten years off. Common in twenty years.
In the meantime, those of us lucky enough to have a driveway connection spend essentially no time recharging. Just plug it in and go inside.
Refueling time is only really an issue on road trips. Most electric owners quickly get the habit of plugging in at home and their destination.
I see no reason at all for this near-fanatical push towards electric vehicles.
A good EV is fun to drive. They’re cheaper to fuel and maintain. Purchase prices are dropping, eventually they’ll cost the same as gas cars. Climate change.
Been looking for this for a while; thanks for posting it.
These prophetic sentiments were even better (and more humorously) described by John Jerome in the 1972 book, “The Death of the Automobile”.
Most businesses run on the principle, “What’s important is what’s happening now” (to quote Frank Lloyd Wright). I doubt if Cmdr. Vanderbilt or the Detroit executives of the ’60s would have cared about Yates’ and Jerome’s criticisms. As long as things are good now and the money’s coming in, and I can retire to my Grosse Pointe mansion in a few years, who cares? The future will take care of itself.
In the late ’60s-70s, all consumer products became cheezier and more cheaply made, thanks to the use of more plastic and the rise of “cost engineering”–shaving away material to save tiny cost amounts per unit–times millions of units.
Cars are reflective of the culture that produced them, and this was a time of “malaise”, although some interesting models were created during this period, despite all the problems.
Even as a kid there was something quite provocative about C/D. Yates turned out to be fairly prescient in this essay.
“Turns out, the Japanese quickly developed a better handle on the needs and tastes of Americans…”
Yes, but it wasn’t a question of small vs large or economical vs wasteful. Toyota and Datsun really took off AFTER Detroit tried to answer those specific questions.
The “needs and tastes” that Toyota answered were much simpler. Americans want a car that runs every time you NEED it. Or even simpler, Americans want a CAR.
When Detroit answered Toyota’s cars with “technically advanced” disasters like Vega and Pinto, the contrast between car and disaster was sharpened, and we turned even more to Japan.
Yes, but how many people realize how obsolete the technology was in the Japanese cars, still using ignition points, carburetors and manual chokes (Subaru) well into the 1980s? Granted, the quality control of their parts was better than ours, but their technology was seriously lagging in many ways when compared to the American cars.
While in high school auto shop, I was working on a 1976 Ford Courier and was shocked to find out that its four wheel drum brakes had 1) a single wheel cylinder per shoe (so eight wheel cylinders total on the vehicle), and 2) non-automatic adjusting brake shoes! My 1941 Chevrolet had more advanced brakes than that!
Honda’s 1975 CVCC engine was more advanced than anything coming out of Detroit at the time.
The Toyota Celica had electronic, multi-port fuel injection in January 1974.
The thing that always frosted my cookies was how long it took the Big 3 even to adopt TBI across the board. They were still building carbureted engines into the 1990s.
And let’s not forget about disc brakes. The ’66 Toronado, a couple tons of iron with a 300+ hp V8 used drum brakes on all four wheels. Every contemporary test said “this thing’s insane” because of the brakes. Yet on they went with their low cost drums on their high cost cars.
Nutty.
The first Toyota with EFI was a Supra in 1979.
Digging deeper I see the 1974 Celica EFI was in Japan only, so point taken. The larger point in reply to redmondjp is that Japanese car makers had the technology. If any Subarus, etc., were shipping with obsolete tech it was their choice, presumably for cost or durability.
The temperature swings and vibration under the hood are hell for electronics. I think any maker’s slowness in deploying EFI was due at least partly to getting reliability at an acceptable cost.
In the US, that’s correct. Our Celica diddn’t go EFI until 1983, but in Japan, yes the Celica (and other select models) became available with fuel injection in 1974.
The temperature swings and vibration under the hood are hell for electronics. I think any maker’s slowness in deploying EFI was due at least partly to getting reliability at an acceptable cost.
I don’t want to make excuses for automakers dragging their feet with EFI but there may be something to that. In the Northeast and the Midwest they potentially could have been maintenance nightmares. Weatherpack connectors came a long way before suppliers perfected the seals sealed and durability of the plastics in such close proximity to the engines.
Good point, base Corollas had 3 speed automatics until ’97? And still had 4 speeds til recently. But, they started and ran and ran…
“No, the car won’t run…but if it DID your headlights would dim automatically and the electronic climate control would keep you at a nice 72 degrees!” -Detroit, 1975
Agree with ‘polistra’ that buyers are wanting “cars that run … ” and aren’t clamoring for “small fun to drive” cars that the magazines claimed for decades would “take over”.
When Camry and Accord grew, so did their sales. CR-V and RAV4 are now big sellers, and auto enthusiasts are going nuts, “why are people not buying manual trans station wagons, instead of CUV’s?”
Also, in Yates book, “… Big 3 do not understand why some do not aspire to a Cadillac…”. Well, the same Boomers that clamored for small cars back then are now in huge 4 door pickups, the “big Cadillacs” of today.
Point is that while Yates, C&D, and many blame decline of Big 3 on “not making better, fun to drive, small cars”, reality is just not making cars/trucks that start and run, for well over 100-200K miles
I find it interesting that, near the end of the article, he points to Pontiac as an example of what Detroit should be doing.
But, from the vantage point of a half century later, Pontiac management was using handsome styling, astute marketing and razzle-dazzle advertising to sell the same basic car as every other GM division. Pontiac did a very good job of selling the sizzle, not the steak. Pontiac’s approach ultimately wasn’t what the industry needed as it headed into the more environmentally conscious and consumer-oriented 1970s.
His 1983 book, The Decline and Fall of the American Automobile Industry, was essentially an expanded version of this article (granted, Detroit gave him plenty of additional fodder for the book in the 1970s and early 1980s). Interestingly, in his book, he dismisses of the popularity of full-size pickups (the Ford F-150 was already the nation’s best-selling vehicle by then).
Over the long run, it wasn’t just Detroit management that failed to keep up with changes in customer tastes.
Pontiac broke internal GM rules to sell that sizzle, that’s what set them apart from the other divisions. The steak was juicy and tender in 68, so that didn’t matter as much as the presentation. Add that up with appealingly styled cars across the board, some forward thinking technology (OHC 6), and a firm tap on the youth market, who would ultimately abandon Pontiac, GM and all domestic products in the coming decades, the future of Pontiac was still possibly bright circa 1968 with the right management.
Ultimately grey men in the executive suite did indeed put and end to Pontiac’s shenanigans and stomp out Delorean only a few short years after this was written. In the 70s the OHC was dead and all Pontiac had that was fresh in the lineup were retrograde badge jobs like the Ventura and Astire, the very segments where they should have had natural BMW fighters. Pontiac of the 70s devolved into discount broughams, basically an evolution of where they were in the 50s, and only the Trans Am retained any of that 60s spirit, but because it was a 400 cube 3700 bruiser, it was frozen in time in a different era of performance.
They could have kept their core buyers and even grown had they stayed as in tune to the youth market as they were in the 60s. Itwas a fatal mistake creating cars like the Grand Ville at the top of the line to go against Olds and completely treat the compacts and subcompacts as penalty boxes. Pontiac in the 60s never did that, they put effort into every body to make them special.
Yes, F. James MacDonald who followed DeLorean at Pontiac beginning in 1969 was right off the GM management rack.
They could have kept their core buyers and even grown had they stayed as in tune to the youth market as they were in the 60s.
Easier said then done. In the 60s, that was largely possible thanks to Pontiac’s sizzle, which it really was with little exception. The OHC six was essentially a failure. The GTO benefited from being first one out of the gate, and good looking and with the right marketing.
But by the 70s, many of the kind of Americans that were attracted to Pontiac because of its image were already moving on, to imports. What was Pontiac to give them, other than badge-engineered Vegas and Novas? GM was not going to let them develop their own BMW and Datsun 510 fighters. Pontiac was screwed in the 70s, and not just because DeLorean left. The youth market is fickle, and much of it was now into imports. Of course MacDonald made things worse, but I have a hard time seeing what DeLorean could have done.
What did DeLorean do at Chevy that was so brilliant, in terms of the youth market? Yes, you could say the LS6 SS454, the uber-GTO. But that market was quickly imploding.
Sizzle worked in the 60s, but not after that. Folks were looking for steak, even if it was a small one.
The youth market may be fickle, but what did Pontiac do to keep their attention? The Grand Ville? Pontiac gave up on the youth market, not the other way around. The youth still bought up old used GTOs well into the 70s and 80s, so the brand still had equity with them, but their products at that time weren’t even a shadow of those cars.
Delorean’s tenure with Chevrolet was significantly shorter than Pontiac which was over a decade if you count his years prior to being general manager, and he had his work cut out for him with Chevy just getting the messy organization and production issues sorted out, and by the time that was rectified he was promoted to VP and effectively shut out. And really, Delorean wasn’t infallible, nor was he the only one responsible for Pontiac’s 60s sizzle, but he wasn’t succeeded by anyone even close in spirit to him to keep the inertia going. The supposedly fickle youth that moved on to foreign brands, didn’t leave the foreign brands.
The OHC was a failure in a market where 400 cube V8s were the bar for performance engines, it had no chance to shine, it was a technically advanced engine filling the role of a base engine. It barely even had the tooling broken in before it was cancelled, it never got refinements or upgrades because it never had the chance to. The Vega 2300 engine was a failure, yet it remained in production twice as long as the OHC 6, which whatever issues it had weren’t even close to as bad. That engine could have been an asset in the 70s when fuel cost became a factor and in a smaller H body based car it could have been the next GTO to a new generation of buyers, or at least been cut down into an inline four, which would have been more advanced than any four GM would have for years to come, but the division was no longer run by anyone who could imagine it, it wouldn’t go with the discount Oldsmobile image they were trying to cultivate.
the “youth market” disappeared when they stopped being able to afford new cars.
and every silly attempt by the car companies to court them has failed. e.g. Scion; Toyota thought they could capture the “youth market” with quirky B-cars and a toaster on wheels and wacky marketing. yet the average Scion customer was 43 years old.
the “youth market” wants a decent 3-7 year old used Honda Civic on credit with an affordable monthly payment. Unfortunately the automakers don’t sell used cars.
That’s very true today, obviously, in the muscle car era where Pontiac was it’s strongest, there very much was a real 20-30 something “youth market” buying those cars. In the modern era it’s a futile effort, well paying jobs for a high school graduate are non-existent and those who snag well paying jobs out of college (also barely existent) are weighted with enough debt where a depreciating asset isn’t exactly tantalizing to pile on top of it.
On top of that, used cars today are every bit as good and as brand new cars, and don’t start showing their age for a decade or longer. Not so in the 60s, where factory paint jobs would dull and fade instantly without constant waxing, engines would equally need constant maintenance lest they wear out from poor running, and the styling changed so frequently one would be seen as a social outcast driving a jalopy if someone bought something as old as the current “youth market” often drives now.
The automakers are totally out of touch with it though, Pontiac in the 60s, or Ford with the Mustang, predicted exactly what would appeal to the youth of the day right on time. In recent years they only seem to observe what’s hip at a moment in time, and 4-5 years later they have exactly what would be appealing. Scion is the biggest case in point, extreme marketing, X(treme)B, X(treme)B naming scheme, it was right on the tap of youth culture……. from 1997. Scion’s early marketing was cringe inducing for anyone who was an actual youth at the time.
Thanks for posting this. Very interesting. Great to read again. Great comments too, with so many things that could be commented on.
Yates quotes GM’s Kettering: “It isn’t that we are such lousy car builders, but rather that they are such lousy customers.” To each their own, but to me few statements sum up GM’s attitude even to this day better than that (even some of the latest Chevy ads with the bragging presenter quizzing the unknowing customers seem to suggest that).
This whole article, even with it’s faults, is the type of thing you don’t see enough of anymore. Yates goes on with some more of this in his book “The Decline & Fall of the American Automobile Industry”. His lists of the best and worst cars toward the end of that book are very interesting.
One last thing, related to some of the comments. The feature I think it’s amazing it took the Big 3 so long to make common is disc brakes. No less than relatively inexpensive British cars like the Austin Healey Sprite and MG Midget had them in the early ’60’s. I don’t remember seeing them too often on American cars until sometime in the ’70’s.
The Chevy “Real People, Not Actors” ads (along with the Apple “What’s a Computer?” kid) are a real glimpse of what they see as the ideal customer; someone who isn’t globally stupid, but clearly doesn’t know enough about *their product* to dig deep on it at all.
The slowness of Detroit’s move toward disc brakes was sort of a chicken-or-the-egg problem. The smaller solid disc brakes used on a lot of British or European cars by the early ’60s didn’t have the swept area or heat dissipation capacity for Detroit cars weighing well upwards of 3,000 lb. Since there wasn’t yet a big manufacturer interest, suppliers weren’t strongly motivated to plow money into developing suitable brakes or sufficient tooling support putting them in large numbers of cars.
Also, the Big Three were afraid to promote disc brakes as a safety feature because they didn’t want to impugn the effectiveness of the standard drums, marginal as they often were.
One thing I’ve always wondered about: In the 1970s, cars such as the Seville, Versailles, Eldorado, Imperial, LTD and others were available with four-wheel disc brakes. But when they were downsized or redesigned in the ’80s, they reverted to rear drums. I never understood why,
rear brakes do about 20% of the total braking. drums are “fine” for that application, so long as you include ABS. Especially if they’re lockup-prone self-energizing drums.
Detroit wasn’t as slow to adopt discs as some people make it out to be. Remember, even vaunted exotics like the 300SL in the late 50s still had them.
The earliest disc equipped car I can find by research is the Jaguar, with Dunlop discs in 1959. Yet this was at the top of the market. It took many years for them universal in European cars. Even the base Rabbit-Golf in 1975 still had drums. Meanwhile, back in the big PX, the first American car with discs was the Avanti in 1963, only a 4 year lag time. Here again, it took years for them to trickle downmarket, but Ford helped there. They were standard in 1965 Lincolns and T-Birds, and optional in Mustangs. In 1966, they could be had on big Fords and Mercuries. By 1968, discs were standard on any power-brake equipped Ford product. Let’s not forget Chevy, the 1965 Corvette had 4-wheel discs standard. And Bendix-sourced discs were available on all Chrysler products starting in 1966. Yes the take rate was low, but that’s the customers fault, not the manufacturers.
Interesting.
“Yes the take rate was low, but that’s the customers fault, not the manufacturers.”
That sounds a lot like GM’s Kettering: “It isn’t that we are such lousy car builders, but rather that they are such lousy car customers.”
It’s as if to the Big 3, those that wanted things like disc brakes, well they could pay extra… or maybe just go import. That’s part of, or related to, Yates’s point.
Interesting examples too. I just couldn’t recall disc brakes on very many mainstream American cars before the ’70’s. IIRC, Jaguar won LeMans with disc brakes in the early ’50’s (53?). Anecdotal, I know, but the first American car I owned with disc brakes was a ’72 Ford Torino.
Kettering was right, in a sense, but I wouldn’t put it so harshly. it goes back even further; consider the early ’60s Tempest:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1963-pontiac-tempest-lemans-pontiac-tries-to-build-a-bmw-before-bmw-built-theirs-and-almost-succeeds/
here was a GM car with 4 wheel independent suspension, rear transaxle, 4 cylinders, optional aluminum V8. in *1961.* But as with so many things, customers vote with their wallets and they made it quite clear they were perfectly happy with everyone else’s iron V8s, live axles and leaf springs. So that’s what Pontiac had to go back to making since nobody would pay more for their neat new stuff.
Ford was out front on discs among the big 3. I remember noticing that special disc brake pedal in an increasing number of Ford products by the late 60s. GM and Chrysler were slower to promote them.
iirc Imperial had optional discs as early as the late ’40s, but the take rate was low.
Crosley had 4-wheel disc brakes in 1949.
The first car with what we would recognize as disc brakes is considered by many to be the 1902 Lanchester:
https://www.hemmings.com/magazine/hsx/2011/04/The-first-car-with-disc-brakes-really-was——/3698201.html
My 1964 Austin Mini Cooper came with disc brakes. Many other European cars had disc brakes standard by the end of the 1960s.
I almost forgot that Chrysler offered an early version of disc brakes in the early 50s. I think it was offered on the Imperial only for a short time.
AUWM, nifticus, jz78817- Yes, great points, I agree.
That suppliers had factories tooled up for drums, etc. is a big reason they used them for so long. Even in design, drums are typically easier (and cheaper) when it comes to things like emergency brakes (part of why they were kept on the rear wheels so long… even now). It really comes down to cost.
And that it would have made the old ways look bad is a great observation.
A few days ago we read on this site about the Olds Toronado and it’s bad brakes. And with smaller more efficient cars, the Big 3 would have had the opportunity to do some of this type of thing (disc brakes). In fact, part of the problem with some Big 3 downsizing efforts was that they tried to use too many existing heavy components.
But all this doesn’t make it right, at least in the context of this article. It’s really all part of the short sightedness and lack of foresight, the myopia, that Yates talks about.
yeah, I’ve had vehicles with rear discs and both styles of common parking brake setups:
1) mechanical actuation of the rear caliper piston. Great braking/clamping force, entirely usable as a means to stop the car in an emergency, but costly and complicates brake pad replacement somewhat
2) “drum in hat” which puts a small dedicated mechanical drum brake inside the “hat” of the brake rotor. Cheap, “good enough” for a parking brake, but utterly useless for trying to stop the vehicle in an emergency.
I think there was also some resistance to the significantly higher pedal pressures of discs. American drivers had become used to the feel of self-energizing drum brakes which require less effort from the driver.
Toyota made a leap in reliability when it replaced mass production with lean production. This was innovative because it achieved reliability gains without added cost.
At that same time, Mercedes-Benz was achieving top reliability results for the time (hard to believe, I know) through more costly, less sustainable methods — they spent more on labor and quality control.
Because the Japanese and Europeans had no choice but to make more fuel-efficient cars (which is what happens when you have very little or no oil), they were ready for the OPEC crisis. The Big 3 were not and the fuel crisis gave some consumers an impetus to do their car shopping elsewhere.
When your Corolla or Celica turns out to be reliable and efficient while your neighbor’s or co-worker’s Vega/Pinto are not, others start to notice. And that was when the story was guaranteed to end poorly.
50 years later, and nothing much has changed, has it?
Well, Pontiac is GONE, but other than that, almost everything else Yates wrote in that article is still around, in one way or another.
GM went bankrupt once, Chrysler went bankrupt twice, Ford came close to imploding, and the import automakers are now building vehicles in the US.
A lot has changed.
Strictly speaking, Chrysler went bankrupt once and got government guaranteed loans (which it paid back with interest) once.
Also, strictly speaking, Ford has nearly cratered twice since 1980.
And American Motors was in “bare survival” mode by the mid-1970s and nearly-bankrupt when French government-owned automaker Renault became its majority owner in 1980. But Renault also lost money with the AMC deal and sold the operation to Chrysler in 1987, which wanted AMC mostly for the Jeeps and the “cab forward” design of car building that AMC pioneered with the 1975 Pacer. The demise of AMC was the result of 1. Discontinuing the Rambler nameplate in favor of the corporate title. 2. The ill-fated deal with GM to buy Wankel engines for the Pacer. 3. The high costs of building the ’74-78 Matador coupe and ’75-80 Pacer as both cars had many parts, aside from drivetrains, that could not be shared with their bread-and-butter cars such as the Matador sedan and wagon, Hornet, and Gremlin.
A footnote at the end of the day: Neodymium permanent magnets, which are at the heart of nearly all modern EV motors, were discovered by General Motors in 1982. (Sumitomo independently discovered them at about the same time.)
Tesla Models S and X use induction motors naturally, but even Tesla switched to permanent magnets in the Model 3.
There have been a lot of good comments but what is really quite unusual is that C/D could print four pages of nothing but text and expect people to read it. I wonder how many subscribers today would bother to read so much verbiage?
Thankyou for this, GN, as good as your word.
Does anyone remember a post here a while back asking what we would each do if head of our chosen car company? Anyone who put even moderate thought into answering would’ve found the task was no picnic. I’m not excusing Detroit, particularly as regards it’s disgraceful and niggardly safety failures, but Yates article shows that prognostication is no science.
It is hard in this sometimes-wearing age of the freely-given opinion to think of how gutsy this piece was in 1968. Most mags and reviews then were pretty insipid. Yates is not just saying that one particular car is a pile: he is saying to an extremely powerful industry group that they are blinded, incestuous buffoons. And that they preside over a dealer system that is corrupt. He is saying to them that you are planning and manufacturing and marketing for some 1950’s America, which, insofar as it ever existed, is gone for ever-increasing numbers of folk. That you do not understand reality if you think the market is a postcard from Grosse Pointe.
For all the failures in his predictions, he was right. The great ship they piloted was subsiding at the helm. The looming Japanese onslaught of reliable cars was to prove the public were willing for better. In response to which, Detroit spewed out the Malaise era.
Thinking of the article from the 1980 New Yorker a few days ago, I doubt any of these executives would have even understood the article. Any who did would have dismissed as the ravings of a boozed-up hack. Probably a good thing. If they had realized how presciently he showed the nakedness of these emperors, they’d have had him lynched.
As a footnote, I agree with those here who’ve said Yates later became unreadable.
the interesting thing is that Japan is slowly going through the same steady decline, only in electronics and tech. The same kind of inertia and denial of reality which kneecapped the Big 3 (“Why would anyone want to buy one of those tin can foreign cars?”) has Korea and China ready to eat Japan’s lunch. In the ’80s, Sony was the standard of the world. Sharp, Sanyo, Panasonic, Toshiba, et al were almost as well regarded. But over the last decade, things were pretty grim. Sony shed whatever it could in order to stop losing money. Sanyo tanked and had to be bought by Panasonic. Sharp had to suffer the indignity of needing foreign ownership (Foxconn.)
if you don’t understand why your competitors are taking your customers away, you’re doomed.
Yates lost me in the mid-80s when he snidely referred to Canada as “Third World”.
Oh, hey, thanks for posting this. I’ve been wanting to read this piece since I first learnt of its existence sometime in the last year or two—even though I take a very dim view of Brock Yates in general—and I’ll do so here as soon as the present workload reduces enough to allow it.
Detroit management made plenty of mistakes, but they were mostly logical given the times. That Corona that so many commenters write so kindly about probably sold 10,000-15,000 units at the time in the States, which was less than Corvette volume. No way a low priced, low volume car could be made profitably in the States with UAW labor, and unlike Japan that found open markets in the US, Detroit couldn’t generate higher volume by exporting small cars to Japan or Europe because of the high tariff and non-tariff barriers everyone except the US had at the time. The Corvair was better than ANY non-exotic European or Japanese car of the early 1960s, but more Americans bought the boring and conventional Falcon. As the US compacts of the 1960s got bigger in size and power with each refresh they sold better and made more money, what manager in his right mind would try to fight that market preference? Pontiac tried real hard to sell the OHC-6, which C&D compared favorably the the Jaguar DOHC 6, but hardly anyone bought them because the 389 V-8 was only a few bucks more and nobody cared about fuel economy when gas was 25 cents per gallon (and I suspect the 389 was no more expensive to manufacture than the 6). It is also important to remember that the imports were only a niche dominated by VW until the first fuel crisis in 1973-4, and their volume prior to that point basically came from the defunct US independents such as Studebaker, Hudson, Willys (cars), and Packard, who went out of business because they couldn’t make a profit on their small volume. Why would the Big 3 want to put resources into unprofitable niches? And don’t forget that GM was under anti-trust pressure from the 1950s to 1980s, so they couldn’t get too aggressive at taking out competitors without risking being broken up. What Detroit did made perfect financial sense, and if gas had stayed cheap they would likely still have 80% of the US market and probably much bigger chunks of Europe and Asia than they do today, because none of their foreign competitors would have ever had the money to improve their products without their post fuel-crises profits from the US market.
That Corona that so many commenters write so kindly about probably sold 10,000-15,000 units at the time in the States
Umm, what makes you think that? Actually, it was closer to 100,000. And in 1969, Toyota sales jumped to 155,000.
if gas had stayed cheap they would likely still have 80% of the US market and probably much bigger chunks of Europe and Asia than they do today, because none of their foreign competitors would have ever had the money to improve their products without their post fuel-crises profits from the US market.
Of course! Thanks for setting us straight. 🙂
The coupe is the one is the ad, and there is no way they sold anything close of 100,000 of those. Even the sedan didn’t get close to 100,000, because in 1968 there were about 800,000 foreign sales in the US, and close to 600,000 were from VW, so I don’t think the Corona had almost 50% of the remainder – particularly since Toyota sales were split among the Corona, the Corolla, Land Cruiser, and pickup.
As for my 80% estimate, you might check your history, but virtually all the displacement taxes in Europe and Japan were implemented to keep Ford out of the market and protect local producers. Without the “anti-American” taxes and other import duties, the Ford T and the A (and Plymouths, Chevrolets, and Studebakers) would have decimated the mainstream European producers in the 20s and 30s, because there is no way they could get the same economies of scale. I expect Packard, Buick, Cadillac, Chrysler, etc. would have cleaned up the European Rolls, Daimlers, Mercedes, Hispano, etc. on the high end of the market as well, because they were generally more advanced in design and much lower priced if not larded up with protectionist tariffs and displacement taxes. And certainly the Hudson Jet, Rambler, Corvair, Falcon, Mustang would have done very well in postwar Europe and Japan if unfettered by all the taxes designed to keep them out.
US Toyota sales in 1968 were 96k, of which the overwhelming majority were Coronas.
I didn’t realize you were singling out the coupe; I doubt it cost Toyota much to put a different roof on it. There were numerous hardtop coupe versions of US cars that sold in similar-low numbers. The Corvette was a totally unique vehicle. There’s no valid comparison. The Corona coupe was just a Corona with a different roof and longer doors.
VW did not sell 600k Beetles in the US in 1958; not by quite a margin. VW’s highest sales in the US were in 1970, with something less than 500k, of which there were quite a few Square backs, Fastbacks and buses.
Lots of “ifs” in your speculations. The world was, as it i was. And i don’t agree with many of your speculations.
I wrote 1968 not 1958. According the link below, VW sold 569K units in the US in 1968. Unless you have the sales figures, I am doubtful about the Corona being so popular, because as late as 1965 the Land Cruiser was the best selling Toyota in the US, small trucks were also coming on strong in the late 60s, and the lower priced Corolla was a brand new model in 1968.
You can certainly disagree with my speculations, but I think I am on pretty solid ground to think that most pre-war Brits that could afford a car would have chosen a Model A Ford or Plymouth P-series (with hydraulic brakes and IFS by 1934) over an Austin 7, which would have been about the same price without any distorting taxes. Similarly I suspect most Italians would have chosen a Studebaker Champion versus a Fiat Topolino.
After the war, a Rambler, or Hudson Jet, or even a full-size tri-five Chevy would have frequently been preferred to a Jaguar Mark 7 or Mercedes Ponton or Citroen DS or Volvo Amazon, as they would have greatly undercut those cars on price in a “free-market”, and were available with options like A/C (Rambler since 1954), power steering (Chevrolet since 1954), and Automatic Transmission (Chevrolet since 1950), which weren’t available on even most high end Europeans until the late 1950s to late 1960s. A Chevy V-8 or Twin-H Power Hudson would also easily outrun any 1950s European sedan on the autobahn, and probably get about the same or better fuel economy if equipped with available overdrive. And how many middle-income Europeans would have purchased a Beetle or Mini or Dauphine or 600 if they could have gotten a Corvair for about the same price, and available with A/C, automatic transmission, or even turbocharging? Remember parking wasn’t a big problem in those days (because there weren’t that many cars), so the slightly larger US footprint wouldn’t have been such a problem for Europeans wealthy enough to buy a car in the 1950s and 60s.
And if the European’s weren’t selling many of their bread and butter sedans, they also wouldn’t have likely had the resources to develop the TR2-3, Austin-Healey 100/3000, MGs, 190/230SL, Jaguar XK, etc. that used the same mechanicals. The history of the automotive world would have been very different if not for the policies of governments around the world to protect their home automobile industry from the Americans.
“1958” was a typo; I meant 1968. In 1968, VW sold 420k Beetles in the US. http://www.autonews.com/article/19960626/ANA/606260773/vws-beetle-made-america-think-import
I assure you that the Coronal made up the bulk of Toyota’s sales in 1968. The Land Cruiser was an outlier, in terms of volume.Here’s a direct quote from an autonews article: In 1968, Toyota sales reached 72,554, almost entirely because of the Corona.
http://www.autonews.com/article/20071029/ANA03/710290307/after-toyopet-trauma-corona-got-toyota-up-to-speed-in-u.s.
And in 1969, Toyota sales took a huge jump upwards, to 155k.
I’m not going to debate your opinions, but will challenge your facts. From the get-go your argument about US manufacturers not being able to build a hardtop coupe version like the Corona was totally off-base. So you lost me right there with your opinions. Sorry.
I certainly never said Detroit couldn’t build a small 2 door hardtop, I only said they wouldn’t be interested in such a small volume low profit vehicle. If the Big 3 didn’t think they could move 100K+ per year, it wasn’t going to get built unless it was a premium priced vehicle such as the Corvette or Imperial (and despite being profitable the GM beancounters were still constantly trying to kill the Corvette). Toyota could sell 100K+ Coronas in Japan, and whatever extra they sold in the US or elsewhere was pure gravy, but such export options weren’t available to the Americans due to regulations and taxes designed to keep American built cars out of Japan and Europe.
I certainly never said Detroit couldn’t build a small 2 door hardtop, I only said they wouldn’t be interested in such a small volume low profit vehicle. the Big 3 didn’t think they could move 100K+ per year, it wasn’t going to get built unless it was a premium priced vehicle such as the Corvette or Imperial
I could find you dozens of examples that contradict your assertion. For example, the 1963 Rambler American 440 and 440H hardtop coupe, which were made for one year only (!) and their combined sales were 14,850.
What about the convertible versions of the Falcon and Chevy II (and other compacts)? These all sold in the teens or twenties (k) per year. The same goes for pretty much all convertible models. Why did detroit bother to build them?
The reality is you obviously are not knowledgeable about car production. To build a different body variant like a hardtop takes very little incremental cost, and they are profitable even in modest production numbers. How? Because the development cost of the rest of the car is already a sunk cost; the only cost is the incremental cost. That’s why car companies made all these body variants. Many body variants (station wagons, hardtops, convertibles, 2-door sedans) didn’t sell nearly 100k units of many of Detroit’s vehicles.
This article reminded me of the quality and substance found in magazines such as C&D and R&T fifty years ago. I can’t see the likes of Brock Yates or David E. Davis being allowed to publish their sentiments today that everything has to go through the PC filter.
They weren’t perfect but they had “cojones”.
There is no PC filter. Car magazines print what sells. So lots of articles about boy racer models and racing and racing drivers, not serious analysis of anything.
The CAR magazine mentioned was very British and quirky and featured beautiful photography but later merged with another magazine put out by the same company which was about racing and hot cars etc. It hasn’t been the same since.
“Automobile” magazine in the US started out explicitly as an American version of CAR. It was never as good, and a few years ago it underwent some kind of corporate coup and most writers disappeared. About the only interesting thing remaining about it is Cumberford’s design analysis of a particular car in each issue and Jamie Kitman’s column. Subscriptions, unlike for CAR, are cheap though.
oh, more “PC” whining from an old man.
C&D was the s**t back in the day because of guys like Yates and the fact that they had real, live automotive engineers like Csere and Bedard on staff who knew their stuff and could write well. They truly knew and cared about the vehicles they reviewed.
the car mags stink now because most writers are low-knowledge droolers who barely know a seatbelt from a supercharger, and are only in the business so they can drive cool cars for free and feel important. then they barf out word-smithed press materials sprinkled with flowery prose about a car’s handling “at the limit” when they’re too scared to even approach 30% of the car’s limit.
I find it humorous that you follow up the deriding of PC whining with name calling someone old man. Sort of the classic “I don’t tolerate intolerance!” approach to so common in these weird times.
But I think PC is the wrong word(or acronym) to describe what is missing from automotive journalism. Just as you say, the writers want to drive cool cars for free, and the key for that to continue happening for them is to gush all over them and not offend the companies themselves that will provide them those cars. So what’s lacking isn’t colorful and inappropriate language to describe cars, it’s actual legitimate criticism towards the automakers where valid, for the reader. There just aren’t many mags or blogs you can trust to do that anymore.
When you look at the success of the Clarkson/Hammond/May iteration of TopGear, the key to their success was not kowtowing to BMW or the like because they’re so grateful they let them drive their sacred brand of driving machines. Instead they actually pointed out genuine deficiencies they’d find in the models, and actuall relay them to the public. For myself that was incredibly refreshing, I was a massive fan of that show because it was everything every car related show prior wasn’t. Of course they(particularly Clarkson) were also un-PC in the bad way, which ultimately led to many controversies and the demise of that TG era, but that’s another story…
When you look at the success of the Clarkson/Hammond/May iteration of TopGear, the key to their success was not kowtowing to BMW or the like because they’re so grateful they let them drive their sacred brand of driving machines. Instead they actually pointed out genuine deficiencies they’d find in the models, and actuall relay them to the public.
You must be kidding. That show is 100% show biz, and not one aspect or detail can be counted on to be factually correct. All of their exploits and tests and such were carefully scripted, and the outcomes decided well before the shooting started. They consistently rigged cars in order to have the outcome be what was predetermined.
If you like it for entertainment, fine, but please don’t try to tell me that they were “telling it like it is”. That couldn’t be further from the truth.
It’s not that writers today want to drive cars for free; they want to get paid for doing it. And writers have been doing what they do forever, meaning fawning over cars. Patrick Bedard of C&D admitted recently that their review of the X-Body cars was totally off-base, and fawning to the extreme.
Car magazines have always indulged in that; nothing new.
Here’s the real reason car magazine articles are mostly positive and not very critical: because cars mostly function at incredibly high levels. It’s an extremely mature technology, and there’s little difference between competing models. Could you really tell the difference between a Camry, Accord, Altima and Fusion if you were driving blindfolded? 🙂
It’s not like in 1968 when cars were still far from mature, and the differences between imports and domestic cars, and even among domestics, was vastly greater.
Who wants to read about cars’ entertainment/nav systems? That’s about the biggest difference in cars these days.
I fully admit that Top Gear is entertainment first and foremost, I didn’t mean to make it out as anything but that, but that’s exactly what people were craving. New car reviews, like the cars, are boring, because the only real way to separate the new model from the last model is to reference many statistics containing decimals into the thousandth, which automakers themselves strive to better in order to come off well to the serious publications.
Top Gear may have been scripted and faked, but it gave me a reason to sit through 10 minute segments on cars I never really would buy, where’d I’d listen to the ramblings and watch the silly tests they’d conduct with them in either beautiful places, or better yet places well outside the vehicle’s intent. And just as it did for the viewer it gave a different exposure on cars and than what the automakers expected.
You are also correct in that Top Gear’s new car review segments often did come down to just that: fumbling with entertainment systems and electronic interfaces and whining about them. But they managed to make such minutiae watchable, even if they don’t make the difference to the viewer in buying a new car. Their ridicule of a bad interface is embellished but real enough where you can’t help but chuckle and relate when you personally experience it. They took out the life alterning seriousness of car reviews and managed to make made cars fun for an hour.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I shall posit that much of those other things would NOT have mattered had Detroit made reliability job 1. People who grew up in the US back then – mostly surrounded by US-made cars – will find it hard to believe how glaringly superior American cars were in the reliability stakes when compared with most of everything else. Yes, there were things like Mercedes Benzes and Volvos but in Israel where I grew up, Israeli Pound for Israeli Pound they offered less with the comparable American cars and, in the case of MB, reliability was not a given unless you religiously followed manufacturer recommendations (which only the main dealer could comply with – at main dealer prices). As for the others (including the early Japanese) mostly they were in a different league, often being worn out after 50,000 miles.
The Vega and (later) the Citation would have been landmark cars had they possessed the same reliability as the 64 Nova, and that would have been at the cost of the Japanese.
I reckon you’re mostly right. In Aus, people wanted US cars because they were so much more reliable and tough than the English stuff that most could afford. Our “local” GM, Ford and Chrysler cars when they came were essentially American, but scaled differently and with economy suited to a land of (relatively) expensive fuel, and so they were huge hits. Pretty basic engineering, but understressed.
But the Japanese cars from the late ’60’s on were clearly much better built and mostly turned out to be just as tough, and their quality showed up the lack in the locals. Until such time as people were choosing Japanese cars for that very reason. People loved their Holdens here as much as Americans loved their Chevvies, but they were burnt away by quality disappointments. (I say you’re “mostly right” because there were also a lot of myopic decisions as well).
Btw, I agree entirely about “legendary” MB reliability. Great engineering for sure, but ultimately no longer-lived than a good US-style car of the time. The legend was as much a product of the expensive initial price and subsequent careful ownership, with plenty of expensive servicing.
Mercedes got it’s “legendary” reputation for reliability from the W123 and W124. It was all downhill from there.
Paul—-thanks for putting this out there. I mentioned in a post here back on 4/9 but could not find my print copy to refresh my total memory of the piece. All is now well……
All this stuff about US cars being unable to access European markets is ridiculous. US cars were good for US conditions, wide open spaces, long distance travel and cheap fuel. Conditions in Europe were completely the opposite. Furthermore it completely ignores the fact that, just like the Japanese these days, the Americans built cars within the tarrif barriers, Ford of Europe and GM with Vauxhall and Opel, cars that were highly competitive and suitable for European conditions. Talk about myopic views. The US was in favour of free trade in the 50s and 60s for the same reason Britain was in the 19th century, they dominated world trade.
I think many American observers are too close and emotionally enmeshed with their cars to see them as others did. From this side of the pond the output of the Big 3 all looked the same. A huge herd of bison roaming the plain with zilch individuality or differentiation. A brainwashed bunch of consumers who are jerked about by skindeep variations on the same antique platforms. The ‘don’t rock the boat’ mentality of corporate stultification is obvious.
It was common for European car companies to use external design houses or employ star designers for their ability to provide something different, something the Big 3 would never admit they needed. Look at the glorious cars penned by the Italian design houses for the mainstream European manufacturers.
This hubris is not unique. The British motorcycle industry did the same. Both countries disrespected the Japanese and paid the price, just as the Japanese are doing now for their attitude towards the Koreans. I suspect we’ll all be driving Chinese cars and flying in Chinese airliners in the near future.
Brock Yates. Maybe not a genius, but certainly very bright and a gifted writer for a time. Supremely entertaining many times.
Detroit. I’ve never been a fan of their products, but I spent a little time back in Mi in the mid 70s and came to the conclusion that their cars worked much better back there than they did in California. Bends in the road, not twisty canyon roads. Rises, not 7K mountain passes. No 105 degree days on end, let alone the rare 115 temps. Perhaps us coastal dwellers are arrogant in not accepting what Detroit had to sell, but they were the ones trying to sell to us, not the other way around. And that was before quality control went completely in the tank, let alone design.
I must have missed this first time around. The Detroit executives still haven’t learned because I see the same themes in Peter Dilorenzo’s Auto Extremist posts in the early 2000s. The insular nature of the auto exec is shown by thir belief everyone loves golf, so Tiger Woods was to be Buick’s marketing savior.GM still shows almost Hapsburg like ability to make the wrong move like canceling the Bolt just as low cost EV demand was ramping up, and offering the bloated Hummer EV instead. Ford and Chrysler have done no better
I don’t know if he wrote it but “The Last King” made a lasting impression on me and some of my Detroit Deserting friends
“It’s almost ready for paint.
Red, of course”
Here’s a 1968 Corona in real life, I loved it.
The insularity cited in the article cuts both ways, though. The bi-coastal elites that demonize automobiles, spend billions of our tax dollars on railroads and subway systems, that don’t even want to leave the house since they discovered telecommuting, are every bit as isolated and insulated as the Detroit auto executive. In many ways, each side views the other not as fellow citizens of the same country, but as an alien invader to be destroyed. It explains the great political divide that our current president, Joe Biden, and our former President, Donald Trump, represent. The MAGA Republican conservative reactionaries, versus the Godless, Communist radicals, led by the Obama wing of the Democratic Party. Neither side is interested in actually listening to the other side, only in demonizing them, while the country’s problems continue not just to fester, but multiply. Meanwhile, the vast middle is slowly being destroyed as the wealthy elites consume even more of our country’s wealth, while the poor are bribed with ever more generous handouts, to ensure their support and their silence. Tell me we’re not on track for the Apocalypse! Please! And make me believe it!
Still holds today. Just as the US is teetering on recession, the Big 2 + Stellantis dropped all of their economy and mid-price sedans and put all their eggs into the baskets of CUV, large, loaded pickups, and expensive EV.
Meanwhile, the Japanese and Koreans can barely keep thier Elantras, Corollas, etc on the lot, because folks are being cornered into whatever has the lowest payment. Meanwhile at Ford, their lowest-priced entry, the India-built EcoSport was so dismal that they quit making them. The cheapest “car” you can now buy at a Ford dealer is now a pickup truck.
I’ll take a Toyota coupe just like that please, make mine Periwinkle or Pea Green and fit the ‘Toyoglide’ (GM Powerglide under license) slush box and the AC (? Dealer ? Factory ? I no longer remember, it replaced the entire glovebox) and some gas shocks, polyurethane bushings and good quality radial tires, I’ll run the wheels off it and love every minute .
“well, that’s their problem, and that arrogant insularity is why I don’t like going to those places and would never live there.” ~ oddly enough I’m pretty sure that’s what the ‘Coasties’ would say, exactly the same thing .
Having lived in the Country, on Dairy Farms and down dirt roads I don’t really understand why ‘Coasties’ make such a big deal out of their abject fear of ‘Flyover Country’ .
“Now internet taxi services (so-called ride sharing) are threatening the need for some people to even have a car at all” ~ sacrilege Sir ! watch your filthy mouth please .
“but you’d stand a better chance of survival in an Electra 225 than you would in a VW beetle in equal scenarios. ” ~ having crashed a few early Beetles at speed I can tell you they’re passably safe until you’re hit by a larger object .
“I understand things just fine. Making assumptions about others’ knowledge rarely ends well.” ~ the reality of collision safety is only seen by the survivors and those who work in the junkyard / towing industries .
Yes, old tanks are stout, _NO_ you certainly don’t _EVER_ want to have a serious crash in one, I know this all to well .
“While in high school auto shop, I was working on a 1976 Ford Courier and was shocked to find out that its four wheel drum brakes had 1) a single wheel cylinder per shoe (so eight wheel cylinders total on the vehicle), and 2) non-automatic adjusting brake shoes! My 1941 Chevrolet had more advanced brakes than that!” ~ you couldn’t be more wrong . the Chevy automobile and light duty trucks from 1937 ~ 1950 used “HUCK” brakes that were barely adequate in 1937 for a coupe . the dual leading shoe design of your Courier and the Datsun 620 pickups were _FAR_ superior in spite on minimally more complexity .
-Nate
Commodore Vanderbuilt was in the same business as GM, Ford or Toyota – the transportation business. He went from ferrying folks across the Hudson and the East River in and out of Manhattan, to railroading folks across the US. Had he been able to keep the idea that he was in the transportation business – he could have very well moved right into the automobile industry.
Detroit thinks it is in the car business. It isn’t. It is in the same industry as Vanderbuilt. How you get paying customers from one place to the next, and return – is the entire point.
With the right mindset, you can better understand the business you are really involved in.