photo by Curtis Perry
The big RWD car was once the iconic symbol of America, where everything was big, and the bigger the better. America’s post war optimism and global economic dominance combined with jet age styling trends to create ever longer, lower, wider and heavier cars. Until 1960, that was the only kind built by the Big Three. And they continued to be built until the last Ford Crown Victoria ran off the lines in 2012.
But they’re gone, forever.
So who or what killed them? Was it the two energy crises and resultant spike in gas prices? The government, via CAFE and other regulations? The Japanese invasion? The Germans? FWD cars? The Trilateral Commission?
All these (except one) were accessories to the murder, but the biggest killers were much closer to home, right under our roofs even. And that’s who we’re going to expose here, along with some of the other perpetrators.
But first, let’s take a graphic look at the extinction of the species. We’re talking about the large RWD (Rear Wheel Drive) car lines commonly referred to as “full size” or “standard size”. Here’s their annual share of the US passenger car market (1950-1996). Yes, the two energy crises (1974 & 1980) both knocked them down, about 10 share points each time. And the big switch to larger FWD cars by GM and Ford in 1985-1986 took a final big bite.
But by far the biggest hit to big cars came between 1956 and 1962, six years during which their market share plummeted from 95% of the market to 56%. And although there was a bit of an upturn for a year or two, the steep decline soon continued, down to a scant 35% just before the first energy crisis (1973-1974).
Those are the years (1956-1973) we’re going to primarily focus on, as this all happened during a time when gas prices were actually declining, from $2.80 to $2.18 per gallon in adjusted 2019 dollars. This period was instrumental in making big cars a minority player as well as giving them their less-than stellar image, which snowballed into an ever-bigger negative as the years went on.
The full chart stops in 1996, the last year for GM big RWD cars. After that, Ford’s Panther cars soldiered on yet for some years until 2012, but their sales number and market share slowly headed to zero. And an ever-increasing percentage of later year Panthers went to fleets. (I left out the current Chrysler 300 and Dodge Charger since they are a good bit shorter than all of these large cars except the ’55-’56 Chevy and Ford).
Which raises another point: Big RWD cars were always the mainstays of fleets, including police, taxis and company cars, although the latter became diffused with time. This undoubtedly helps to explain why big car sales did not fluctuate as much in annual sales numbers as the market overall, as shown on this chart. Just how big fleet sales were back then is a good question, but it clearly was not an insignificant factor. Lacking annual fleet sales stats, the market share numbers are inflated by them, and substantially overstate actual retail sales. Without fleet sales, big RWD car programs almost certainly would have died even earlier.
This chart shows that in terms of volume, big cars had two huge drops: from 6 million in 1956-1957 (it was even higher in 1955) to 4 million in 1958. And from 1958 through 1973, big car sales stayed fairly steadily in a rough range of 4-5 million units per year. But market share dropped during this period, because the market overall grew so strongly during that time, and that growth was in every category but big cars
Between 1973 and 1975, as a consequence of the first energy crisis (long before CAFE went into effect), volume crashed by over 50%, and never really recuperated. Volume increased some from ’77 – ’79, thanks to the new downsized big GM cars and a better economy, but never broke 3 million units. And of course the second energy crisis and related recession (1979-1981), when gas prices rose even more strongly, dropped 1980 MY big cars sales to a mere 1.2 million
But enough of the preliminaries; let’s unveil the chief culprits:
Women.
Yes, women; who almost universally didn’t like how big cars got after 1955-1956, and eagerly snapped up smaller cars like this Corvair. Doesn’t she look happy?
And their kids. Along with a major assist by the beatniks, or the Beat Generation of the 1950s, the precursors to just about everything that happened in the sixties.
Although the profound societal changes that would change the country (and the car market) forever came to full flower in the 60s and 70s, they can be traced back even further to the bohemian arts scene in Greenwich Village in the 1910s-1920s. The Beats just picked up where that scene left off during the Depression and war, and then became a highly visible influence in the 1950s. It soon engulfed the country in the 60s and 70s, and affected women disproportionately more then the rest of society, for all-too obvious reasons.
So let’s focus on the women initially, keeping in mind that what changed them—and in turn the car market—was also changing society at large.
Does anyone actually think that most women were genuinely happy behind the wheel of really big American car? Of course there were some, most likely in less densely populated parts of the country. But as our cities and suburbs grew and women started to drive more, increasingly out of necessity, they became increasingly unhappy with the increasing size of the standard American car.
Keep in mind that power steering was far from universal in the ’50s and first half of the ’60s. As cars got bigger and heavier, the steering got slower to compensate. And the ever-lower seating made it disproportionately more difficult for shorter women to see out. Watching a short or small woman struggle with a big car was something I witnessed quite a bit firsthand as a kid, and I felt genuinely sorry for them.
Let’s get this over with as delicately as possible: Big cars were 100% a guy thing. Our cars got bigger and bigger as our collective male egos got bigger and bigger during America’s Exceptional Period (1945 – 1973), thanks to having won World War Two and the resultant global dominance of our economy. Driving a big car or truck gives guys a sense of power, dominance, prestige and control It’s a very visible extension of our manhood—not necessarily in the genital sense, but certainly in a broader psychic context. And of course, there’s the presumed sex appeal. American women may not have wanted to drive them, but a big new car was presumably a key symbol of reproductive fitness a man could readily acquire.
So naturally, the more the better. Detroit’s ability to mass-produce ever-bigger and flashier cars for a reasonable price made American guys feel like a million bucks. By 1957 or so, the template for the big American car had been set. As in, longer, lower, wider, finnier and with lots of chrome. Bling, in other words.
Try to find a vintage shot of a woman loading the trunk of a big American car. It was brutal, as all the luggage had to be lifted over the back end of the car, and then pushed forward in what was typically a very shallow but long and convoluted space. And one had to mind the trunk lid that was all-to eager to inflict a gash on one’s forehead. This was a job for the man, not the little woman. And it only got worse after those huge protruding 5 mile bumpers arrived in 1974.
But women did the grocery shopping, and that’s why supermarkets had bag boys. They loaded up the trunk with all those heavy bags. But mom still had to wrestle them out at home.
But they don’t have bag boys to at Costco.
This is how it’s done nowadays.
It wasn’t just the excessively long, low trunks either.
It was also the long, huge front ends; about twice as long and big as actually necessary. There’s room for two, maybe three V8s in here.
Speaking of length: the new 1957 Plymouth wagon, at 211″ long, was a full fourteen inches longer than a 1956 Chevrolet wagon and almost as long as a 2019 Chevy Suburban. Plymouth had been the first low price brand to break the 200″ barrier in 1955, and only two years later, they broke the 210″ barrier.
It wasn’t just the length, but the excessive width. You really think this is what most women wanted in a car? And that they enjoyed driving this to the store parking lot? And to parallel park downtown in front of the beauty parlor and the department store? And pay to fill up the 26 gallon tank to feed the big V8? Gas wasn’t cheap at $2.80 a gallon (adjusted), wages and purchasing power were lower, most families had a single income, and these big cars got crummy mileage. You think women cared about big V8 performance while running to the school a mile away to pick up the kids on a rainy day?
When did women start becoming unhappy with American cars? Up until the 1920s, cars were rarely targeted at women. But the booming economy and the changing norms of the 20s made cars increasingly accessible to some women in affluent households, and suddenly car makers saw an opportunity to expand sales. But invariably, it was the smaller cars that were advertised at women. Her husband undoubtedly drove something much bigger than this tidy little Chevrolet.
Until the post war suburban boom, most folks lived in close-in traditional and dense neighborhoods like this, or even denser in inner cities. Women didn’t need to drive, and many never did. There was a grocery store a block or two away and it delivered, as did the the milk man and the bread man. The kids walked or rode their bikes to school.
But the huge boom of suburbs in the late 40s and 50s changed that dramatically. Women almost had to get a driver’s license, and many either drove their husbands to the commuter train station in the big car or were stranded at home. Or got themselves…a smaller second car.
I learned all this very quickly on our arrival in the US in 1960. My dad’s boss and his wife came to pick us up at the airport in Cedar Rapids in their two cars. Guess which one was his and which was hers. I was a bit surprised to see her driving such an old car, but she loved it as it was so compact but tall and roomy.
It’s not a coincidence that this 1949 Plymouth wagon has almost all the same dimensions including height, width and length as a RAV4, the most popular car with women today.
Within a few months after our arrival, her old Plymouth wagon was replaced by a new 1960 Falcon wagon.
And the DeSoto was replaced the next year by a 1961 Galaxie sedan, for him. If you look at vintage ads and brochures, inevitably the men are shown with the big cars vs. women with the smaller cars, for all too obvious reasons.
The family two houses down from us had these two cars. Guess which one I rode in many times on on the way home from school on rainy days, jammed in with about a dozen other kids? And which one I never rode in? I can think of numerous other similar examples in Iowa City.
Here’s one more: Mrs. Lloyd-Jones, who drove a Corvair Greenbrier, America’s first minivan, a mere 179″ long. Her husband drove a big late 50s Plymouth sedan. She wouldn’t touch it.
And in Towson too. My best friend was one of ten kids in his family. Guess which car his dad drove to work solo every day, and which one his mom drove. She didn’t care how many kids were piled in with her, but then kids weren’t really ferried around as much like nowadays. She loved her little Estro-Dart but wouldn’t drive that big Ford wagon. That was strictly “his car”, used to take the family to church on Sundays.
I could go on…
Of course there were exceptions, including my own family. The ’65 Coronet wagon was bought in Iowa, and initially was our only car. But then it was only a mid-sized car, and about as small as three seat wagons got back then. When we moved to Towson that fall, my father needed a car to drive to Hopkins, and bought himself a Kadett. But then he was never going to buy a big American car. And he was a European.
The ’65 Coronet wagon was replaced by a ’73 version. But in 1981, after the kids were all gone except for one, my mom traded it in for a 1981 Escort wagon with a buzzy and feeble 70hp 1.6 L four and the jerky automatic it was teamed with. Did she miss the power of that fine 318 V8 and the smooth Torqeflite in the Coronet? Not the slightest. She loved that Escort, because now parking in the crowded A&P lot or at Towson Plaza was a breeze. And she loved the Honda Civic that replaced it even more. Much more fun to drive, she always said.
American cars got progressively bigger throughout the 30s, 40s and 50s. The last new full sized car by the Big Three to still be a reasonable size was the 1955 Chevrolet. Its wheelbase was a tidy 115″, width a modest 73″, and over-all length was 195.6″; that’s just a couple inches longer than a new Camry.
The 1955 Chevy set an all-time sales record for any brand of big cars: 1.7 million. And the ’55-’57 Chevys quickly became the most sought after and highest priced used cars after it was replaced by the much bigger ’58s.
By 1959, the Chevy was now 211″ long and 80″ wide. And several inches lower. You think this guy cared about what his wife really wanted?
Some men knew what women really wanted, even in 1958. And that was the year Rambler sales exploded, up 65%. The common explanation for that is that 1958 was a recession year, and folks wanted cheaper cars. That argument is as weak as women being the weaker sex. The cheapest ’58 Rambler actually cost more than the cheapest big Chevrolet. Ramblers back in the 50s actually had an image of being somewhat upscale, and their buyers were too.
No, it wasn’t price; by 1958, there simply were no more reasonable sized cars from the Big Three; 1957 had been the last year for the Chevrolet. Not coincidentally, the Rambler’s length (191″) and width (71.3″) were just a hair less than the ’55 Chevy. In other words, the sweet spot.
Cars like the popular Plymouth Suburban (’49 top, ’57 bottom, Rambler in the middle) had become huge, growing over two feet in length. Yet its interior dimensions did not keep pace, especially in seating comfort, as passengers were now squeezed between the much lower roof but the still high floor due to its massive frame.
Rambler sales kept right on exploding through 1959 and 1960, which were strong years for the economy. And then they started dropping in 1961, which was a recession year. Why? Because of the huge onslaught of compacts from the Big Three in 1960 and 1961.
Domestic compacts weren’t exactly new to the market in 1958 or 1960. Back in 1953, Willys launched its excellent Aero compact sedan, almost the exact same size as the Rambler and Ford Falcon, and it was a flop. The same year, Kaiser’s compact Henry J arrived, and also flopped. And also the Hudson Jet, which flopped even worse, if that was possible. Why did they all fail? The all-too obvious reason is because there wasn’t yet enough differentiation between them and the standard-size cars from the Big Three. A few inches here and there didn’t justify the fact that these compacts generally still cost as much or more than a low-end Chevy. But by 1957-1958, it was well worth it, as cars had suddenly gotten too big.
And all three of these early compacts lacked flair and style. They were men’s ideas of what a smaller car should be.
There was one exception: the little 1950 Rambler, a compact convertible sedan and wagon, heavy on style and flair, of the kind that very much appealed to women. It started the whole compact revolution, and by 1960 Rambler was the fourth best selling brand.
Studebaker read the Rambler tea leaves, and in 1957 rushed out their drastically-shortened compact Lark for 1959. It was a genuine hit, and was the only thing that kept them from going under, for the time being.
There’s surprisingly little difference in usable interior space between these two. Which one do you think women would rather drive to the store?
Kids, wave goodby to Daddy as his plane is about to crash
Of course it wasn’t just Rambler, the Lark and the Big Three compacts in 1960 that caused this huge drop in big car sales. Imports had been growing steadily since the end of the war, but their combined market share was still in the low single digits. But suddenly in 1955, import sales began a rapid growth fueled by an explosion of interest in the VW Beetle, and after 1958 the Renault Dauphine came on strong too. By 1959, the imports’ market share topped 10%. This coincided directly with the period (1955-1958) when American cars started getting too big.
Statistics of the share of women drivers of imports back then would be interesting to examine if they could be found. Undoubtedly their small size, low initial cost and thrifty operating costs made them very attractive to women, who on average cared about these qualities more then men.
Of course, the same applies to the domestic compacts. The percentage of ads and brochure shots for the new Big Three compacts targeting women is exceptionally high.
The 1960 Falcon was a huge success, selling 436k units. But big Ford sales dropped that year by 474k units. Coincidence? For 1961, Falcon sales increased again, and big Ford sales decreased again. Coincidence, again?
1960 Valiant sales were 194k. 1960 big Plymouth sales were down by 207k. Also a coincidence?
Chevrolet knew what women wanted.
And they got it.
But what they wanted even more was a bit of sporty flair and bucket seats in their compacts. And they got that too starting in the spring of 1960 with the madly new successful Monza coupe. The Falcon, Valiant, and every other car line in America quickly followed suit. The Monza was a huge turning point in the market: no longer would smaller American cars lack style and flair. The Falcon’s sales soon withered.
The Monza’s success led directly to the Mustang, which targeted younger women shamelessly, with a six cylinder, no less. And it was of course madly successfully with younger women. And some older ones too.
These make a perfect study in contrast to Dodge’s colossal blunder in trying to target women ten years earlier with its ridiculous La Femme. By now you know the answer as to why it really bombed: it was a whopping 212″ long. It was expensive. It was pink. And it was…lame; a bunch of marketing guys’ idea about what women wanted. As if they had a clue.
Despite being largely tone deaf, Detroit got the very powerful message about its big cars having gotten too big. The sales numbers spoke very loudly. GM was the only one that could afford new bodies for 1961, and across the board, they were a bit trimmer but roomier on the inside and lost the crazy fins. “Parkable size” suddenly was a selling point.
Cadillac went even one step further, offering “short deck” versions of its sedans. Women had been complaining for years about how difficult Cadillacs had become to drive and park, and this was the half-assed solution, for a couple of years anyway.
It was a pathetic sop tossed their way, and women quickly gravitated to Mercedes and BMWs; with a vengeance, if they could afford them. And an increasing number could.
If Cadillac had actually built a Seville in 1965, they might well have staved off much of the inevitable erosion of the brand. And when the semi-compact Seville finally appeared in 1975, it had an exceptionally high percentage of women buyers. But by then, all-too many were happily driving a Mercedes, BMW or other import. The right size, and gobs of instantly recognizable flair.
Chrysler, which got much of the blame for creating the longer, lower, wider and finnier format in 1957, saw sales falter after the first year and reacted even more radically. They ditched their planned new family of large cars for 1962 and created all-new 1962 Plymouths and Dodges that were 8″ shorter and 7″ narrower and sitting on a 116″ wheelbase, bringing them back to the format of the 1955-1957 Chevys.
Although considered flops, they did sell almost as well as their 1961 predecessors. Their controversial styling did them no favors, and their sales improved each year as their styling was sanitized in 1963 and 1964. And although there were new large C-Bodies for 1965, sales volumes for both Plymouth and especially Dodge large cars would never again be truly competitive. These smaller cars were re-positioned as mid-sized cars for 1965, and contributed substantially to Chrysler’s improved market share starting that year. The Coronet handily outsold the new C-Body Dodges.
Between 1963 and 1967, big cars lost almost 11% of their market share, dropping from 58% to 47%. This wasn’t so much from a drop in their sales as from an explosion of smaller alternatives including imports, especially the VW. Ford sold no less than 680k ’65 Mustangs in an extended year. Compact sales were still steady, and mid-sized cars were in ascendancy. There were lots of attractive smaller options.
Pontiac unleashed a monster with its 1964 GTO, which put smaller cars in the spotlight for both performance as well as just for youthful image and sex appeal.
Quite the contrast in the choice of female models to appear with Pontiac’s finest from just one year before. 1963-1965 was a critical time of change, as the first baby boomers were just hitting the car buying demographic. A high school kid would have liked nothing more than to borrow Dad’s Grand Prix for the school dance. A year or two or three later, all he could think about was his own GTO or something comparable. The GP quickly became a has-been.
The baby boomers unleashed a tsunami of new buyers into the market, which increased the total market by some 50%, from about 8 million in 1964 to almost 12 million in 1973. And how many of them bought a new big car? I don’t think I’m going on a limb when I say effectively zero. In fact, during this huge expansion of the market big car sales dropped by some 20%, and lost almost half their market share. But I’m sure you’ll remember someone who did.
The times they were were a’ changing, and ever faster at that, as import sales zoomed upwards again in the second half of the 60s. For the most part Detroit was oblivious, as they would continue to be for much of the following decades until two of them went bankrupt and the other barely squeaked by. Grosse Pointe Myopia was the collective disorder, so well chronicled here.
Meanwhile women were increasingly coming out of the closet—or kitchen, more specifically. The percentage of women content to stay home and cook and iron and clean was dropping, fast. Many who did but weren’t happy doing it self-medicated with alcohol or Valium. I had no less than three grade school friends whose moms were severe alcoholics. It was very depressing to go to their houses after school.
Traditional norms and expectations were being turned upside down. The divorce rate soared. Feminism was on the march, along with other long repressed groups. America’s patriarchal society was beginning to crumble. And no, women who were expressing (or demanding) their increased agency weren’t buying big American cars, if for no other reason than for what they had come to symbolize.
The whole essence of the huge changes sweeping society was the rise of self-expression and non-conformity, a splintering into ever more smaller groups and self-identification. And the impact on the automobile market was enormous. The market fragmented into ever more segments, beyond just the compacts, pony cars, intermediates and imports.
Already in the mid 50s, pickups like the 1955 Chevy Cameo Carrier were breaking out of the workman’s truck image.
The 1964 Dodge Custom Sports Special took it to the next level, with bucket seats, floor shift, racing stripes and an available 426 wedge engine.
And not just genuine sports either. The Dude trim package was targeting a more narrowly defined slice of the market, and one that reflected the growing cultural schism in the country. This was not exactly the same Dude as made famous by another actor.
Which reminds me that our next door neighbors in Iowa City had a ’61 Chevy sedan for him and a ’63 Chevy II for her. Then they sold their house and built a new one at the edge of town on a couple of acres, and he sold his sedan and bought a new ’65 Chevy pickup for him. They were on the leading edge of a major new trend, moving to exurbs and semi-rural property, one that hasn’t stopped yet. Pickups became the best selling light-vehicle category quite some time back.
The VW bus became the ultimate anti big-American car symbol, with its feeble little engine, no hood or trunk, but room enough to live in. Or go anywhere. Or at least dream about it.
Just like the hippies’ long hair was adopted widely in the 70s, so was their van. Detroit embraced this trend with a fervor; if they couldn’t sell younger buyers a big car, they would happily crank out big vans instead. Keep the party going, as long as possible.
And that went for SUVs too. What started out as gnarly little off-roaders quickly became ever-more civilized trucks that even women soon embraced with a fervor, especially after the compact ones appeared.
But amidst all of this intense change and fragmentation, there was a reaction too, a powerful one.
In 1965, a whole new era began, one I’ve dubbed the Great Brougham Epoch. The 1965 Ford LTD is its standard bearer, but it had already started a year or two earlier.
As in December 1963, when Esquire magazine published this rendering of a Stutz Revival Car, by Virgil Exner. It was hugely influential, a whole series was created and they were turned into toy cars, several prototypes and the limited production Stutz Blackhawk. The neo-retro movement was on.
This wasn’t just an automotive trend; it was a major societal and political one, a conservative reaction to all of the rapid changes that were being unleashed in every element of life. Neo-classical decor, architecture, clothing and other aspects all flourished in the Great Brougham Epoch.
Click on this ad and read the text if you want to understand better just what was going on at the time:
“these are uneasy times, about pollution, safety, the economy…at Chevrolet, you want meaningful change…at Chevrolet, we understand, and our aim is to give that to you…Caprice, the biggest Chevrolet ever, the change is complete”
Yes, it’s the fall of 1970, kids are getting shot on campus demonstrating against the war, Black Power is on the rise, the first Earth Day was in May, Chicano students are striking in LA, Women are striking for equality, the first Gay Liberation Parade was in June and Chevrolet now has the solution to all of your deep societal, economic, environmental and safety anxieties: ride in blissful isolation of them in your bigger, heavier, softer-riding, quieter and less efficient 1971 Caprice. All your problems are solved!
I’m sorry if I’m coming off a bit heavy handed, but I lived through this era during my formative years and was actively involved in all of these causes, so perhaps I’m not able to be fully objective about it and its effect on the image of big American cars. In an effort to compensate and inject some objectivity, I’ve spent time compiling and adding individual model numbers from the Standard Almanac to create total numbers by car line (size/type), which are not available anywhere else, and creating a spreadsheet from which I made these charts. I’ve been at this task for over two years, and it’s not complete yet; this is just the first category I’ve finished. And the results surprised me.
So if my emotion-tainted words, or the words in the ads don’t do it for you, here’s the numbers, one more time: During a time of great economic expansion (1960-1973), ever-cheaper gas, and fast-growing real income, a time that is often seen retroactively as the golden age of the big American car, they lost one half of their market share. They were just not cool anymore, or even worse than that.
It doesn’t take a PhD in psychology or statistics to know that these final huge cars (the longest ever was to the 1973 Imperial, at 235.3″) were targeted solely at certain men and bought solely by them. This is the ultimate anti-woman car, despite the young woman in the ad. It’s Daddy’s girl…who would soon enough cajole him to buy her a new Rabbit or a Celica.
Folks may have isolated themselves from the troubles outside in their big new Caprice, but it was going to be a short-lived ride, once the gas tank went empty, for good. Because when OPEC turned off the oil taps in October of 1973 to all those countries that had backed Israel in the Yom Kippur War, the global price of oil shot from $3/barrel to $12 by the end of the boycott. Gas was hard to find at any price, and big, thirsty cars were suddenly a liability.
Gas prices actually didn’t jump all that much, from 36¢ ($2.19) in 1972 to 53¢ ($2.73) in 1974. But there’s something hard wired into humans that when they see a commodity that’s always been plentiful and cheap suddenly become scarce and rise in price that makes them react rather impulsively. And they did just that with their purchases of cars.
The Pinto shot to the top of the best-seller’s list of nameplates in 1974, with 544k sales. The Vega wasn’t far behind, with 456k sales. And how soon would folks have regrets? Maybe there was something in the middle that might have been more pragmatic?
Like a mid-sized car? That came next as soon as things stabilized, and the Olds Cutlass took the gold in 1976, and made some repeat appearances in coming years.
From 1973 to 1974, big cars lost almost one third of their market share. And it kept dropping, for two more years. Big cars were suddenly on the endangered species list, it seemed.
The downsized ’77s from GM changed that trajectory, if only briefly. And yes, that really is more like it. And no, these weren’t downsized because of CAFE; GM began its downsizing program well before the first energy crisis, as they knew their cars had gotten too big. And their sizes were locked in by 1975, before CAFE was ever taken up by Congress.
These much better (but still quite large) cars gave the category a bit of an upward bump in 1977, the last time the big cars would have a share size bigger than the teens or single digits. Ford and Chrysler followed suit with downsizing in 1979, which gave another little bump. The ’77 Chevy managed to sell 662k units, about one half of its 1969 ancestor.
And then it happened again in 1979, when Iran drastically reduced oil output in the wake of its revolution against the US-backed Shah. Although this time the global oil supply was only reduced some 4%, widespread panic resulted, and oil prices jumped more than during the first crisis. US gas prices went from $0.65 ($2.53 adjusted) in 1978 to $1.22 ($3.75) in 1980. By 1982, prices leveled off and soon began a long steady climb down, but the damage to big cars was permanent. Their market share plummeted almost in half in one year, from 19% in 1979 to 11% in 1980. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice…
The federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy (“CAFE”) standards were created by Congress in 1975 in the wake of the first energy crisis and went into effect for the 1978 MY. It is often given as a major cause of the demise of the big American car. Undoubtedly it played a role, but by the time it might have started to have any meaningful impact, big cars were already down to about 10% of the market.
And they weren’t really having much trouble meeting the CAFE numbers. A 1980 full sized Chevrolet was rated at 18/26, which would have been a 22 combined mpg, well above the 20 CAFE for 1980. But that’s just for the full sized cars; the CAFE included all cars built by GM. By 1980, most of them were smaller and more efficient. Efficiency is what buyers wanted at the time, and not because it was being mandated.
One might rightfully point out that the V6 powered Chevrolet had mediocre performance. But then this was during the long-lived dark era of the double-nickle (55 mph) speed limit. And the reality was that no cars had good performance at the time. Almost all cars and trucks sold during the late 70s and into the mid 80s were modestly powered, with very few exceptions. Welcome to the Malaise Era, precipitated by higher gas prices, compounded by tightening emission standards and exacerbated by the temporary lack of high technology solutions.
Although gas had dropped a bit, it was still above $1.00 ($2.30) until 1987. And fuel efficiency, although better than in the 70s, still had a long way to go. There’s very little reason to assume that big cars would have sold substantially better if they had more power. A 305 powered Chevrolet was a lot faster than all of the four cylinder minivans and the early V6 compact SUVs being snapped up at the time in the mid 80s. And it was a moot point: literally no one under a certain age was buying big cars anyway, especially so on the coasts and major metropolitan areas. The big car had long ago become the old man’s car.
Young families had long moved on; decades ago, for that matter. The baby boomers shunned buying new big cars from the get-go, with rare exception. And starting in 1984, the minivan and compact SUV were red hot with that demographic, and between them, they absolutely killed what was left of the big station wagon. The original swb Chrysler minivans were all of 177″ long, the lwb versions 190″. And with a high seating position and a short hood but room for up to eight. No wonder this was the biggest hit of the 80s and 90s. Chrysler had ditched the last of its big RWD cars a few years earlier and never looked back. By 1987, they had already sold over a million of them.
The exception would be the Taurus wagon, which along with the sedan redefined the size, shape and capability of the new standard American car. At 188″ long (191″ wagon) it was right back to that magic number, within inches of a ’55 Chevy and ’58 Rambler, and so many others that hit the sweet spot. With its FWD, it was significantly more space efficient than its RWD counterparts, as well as more fuel efficient and much more fun to drive. And they sold very well: In 1988, as an example, Ford sold 126k Taurus/Sable wagons, and GM sold 140k A-Body wagons. These had become the standard family wagon, for those that still wanted one.
The Taurus and its domestic and import competitors were the final coffin nail in the big American RWD car. It had nothing more to offer than nostalgia as well as a rugged platform for taxis, police cars, limos and other commercial uses. And not surprisingly, useful alternatives have been found for all of them one they disappeared.
Given that this site is all about the love of old cars, and big American RWD cars probably get more love here than any other, my goal here is not to denigrate the big American car. Many of us grew up riding in them as kids—or wish we had—and thus were deeply affected by them. And many of you, including many younger readers, have owned them as transportation as well as hobby cars. They have a unique appeal that has only grown as they become more scarce. Their passing is a genuine loss.
But it’s also important that we not mythologize them in ways that are not historically accurate. Just like not all Chevelles were not SS396’s, not all American cars from the mid ’50s on were full sized ones. Their size made them a unique part of American culture, and perhaps now we can lament the fact that there weren’t more made. Blame it on your mother or grandmother. And yourselves.
Of course the big American car is still alive and well, in the form of the pickup, the ultimate guy-mobile. The pickup’s (and big SUV’s) popularity as personal transportation started growing in the mid ’60s, and it really accelerated in the ’70s. Expensive gas slowed that down in the ’80s, although mini-pickups were madly popular. But as gas prices leveled off and receded in the ’90s, big pickup and SUV sales exploded. And their share is still growing.
Since women all have (and buy) their own cars now, it’s also the ultimate reflection of how polarized and fragmented the market has become. To each their own.
Note: These charts were a bit of a challenge to create. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve slowly been building an Excel spread sheet by tediously adding up the production numbers of all the various models of any given size from my tattered Standard Encyclopedia of American Cars. Why the publishers didn’t do this is beyond me. Who cares how many 1964 Bel Air 2 door sedans were built? How about how many full size Chevrolets? It’s still got a ways to go, but eventually I want to make it available to anyone here at CC as well as use it to create similar analyses of the various categories/sizes.
Defining the total US light vehicle market, which includes passenger cars and light trucks and vans, was a particular challenge. From 1977 on, I had stats for that combined market. But the charts I used in this post are for just the passenger car market, all the way through. But I have added this chart above that shows Big RWD Cars’ share of both the passenger car and the total light vehicle markets. I extrapolated the light vehicle market by adding a multiplier to the passenger car market stats that were available. I gradually increased that multiplier from 1.10 in 1964 to 1.22 in 1976, based on some information available, but there’s some assumptions in that (the light truck market was 23.7% in 1977), but presumably it’s not enough to make a material difference. it’s safe to say that prior to the early 70s, the great majority of light trucks were used commercially and not primarily as a substitute for regular passenger car duties.
Related reading:
How Rambler Won the Compact and Price wars of the 1950s and Saved AMC PN
Thanks for this simple and yet comprehensive history of the post WW2 American automobile that was a delight to read. Really well thought out. The only question I have about the current state of the light vehicle market that this piece dosen’t answer is the one that arose yesterday in my daughter’s school parking lot, as I watched in amazement a 105lbs mom take 3 1/2 minutes to wrestle her 4600lb Porsche Cayenne into perfectly ordinary parking space.
Women
Nailed it. The market for big cars had already been declining for some time and the seventies’ spike in fuel prices simply hastened the inevitable.
Yep, “blame women for everything” is on page 1 of the whiny, aging, right wing Boomer playbook.
Er, I’m about as far from a ‘whiny, aging, right-wing Boomer’ as is possible. The auto manufacturers focus on the female market signifcantly altering the automotive landscape over the past half-century (and not necessarily for the worse) is a simple fact.
I think he’s just drunk. Surely he (or she) hasn’t read neither the article nor your comment.
Definately not for the better(and i dont whine and not aging any wing)women have pretty much ruined everything great about this country. Doubt me? take a look at where marriage is in this country. Men do not want to marry someone who will discard them like an old newspaper at any whim and leave with their pension,kids,house and pretty much their life. Pus jailtime job loss based solely on their word. Yeah not for the worse………that was sarcasm.
Actually Eddie, it is for the better. You, like a lot of similar minded men, are threatened by someone else having as much power and control as you do. Not more, mind you, just equal amounts. Women got the short end of the stick in traditional marriage, and if you want to stay home, raise kids, and be totally financially dependent on your spouse, please do. I think a lot of women no longer think that is a viable choice, especially when there are other more palatable options.
Women represent half of the world. Their taking their fair share and getting just as much attention paid to them as men were paid in the past is only fair and just.
Men built the world not women(God created it). i don’t have a problem with equality………….as long as it goes across the board. Again look at what i said,women have been getting unfair and preferential treatment since the late 60’s. if a man and a woman both commit the same crime…………why give the man(hypothetically)25 years and the woman 7?. Single mothers are the destruction of our children. Look deeper into what i’m saying and maybe you’ll understand what i mean. i am not a woman hater(they are the most beautiful things God has ever created). My son’s mother repeatedley ignored my woarnings of maintaining a 2005 Chrysler town and country that i bought for her to get my boy to school until on a trip to pa……she had to pull off the road and have it towed to a gas station to find out that it practically had no oil in it. There are truly a lot of unfair treatment of women in the past. but now it seems like it’s society against man.
How about them Red Sox? Seems like winter was tough on them.
Eddie, your only enemy is looking at you in the mirror.
Big-block Intermediates and Compacts gave one a bigger bang for their buck…literally! No younger person where were around 20 years of age in the late 1960’s wanted a big-block full-size car because of better performance Intermediates and Compacts offered. Can we blame John Z. on the demise of full size cars, too?
Interesting: women eskewed big cars, but many seem to embrace big SUVs.
I remember on one of my deployments to Japan meeting a female co-worker who had recently transferred there from the US. One of the things she said she missed from her life in the states was her big car. She was a fan of Lincoln’s and Cadillac’s biggest coupes, and now she was driving an early 80s Corolla. She was miserable.
Another trend I noticed and one I find ironic. In fact, of the women I know, most prefer SUVs and the like because it makes them feel safer. While this is purely psychological, it is rather interesting to see that.
I can only offer my own hypothesis based around my experiences and observations, but my theory is the combination of a higher seating position and the difference in something that’s big and height vs something big in length might be the deciding factor in this trend. Of course, my evidence is anecdotal and nature and not indicative of the overall reason as a whole, so I can only offer my own perspective from what the women I know or have known have told me.
Of course, I happen to be the exact opposite. I would much rather wrangle with the absurd length of the big American car, rather than deal with the potential pitfalls of the height on the big SUV. But then again, that is me and my own personal psychological hang ups talking.
” In fact, of the women I know, most prefer SUVs and the like because it makes them feel safer. While this is purely psychological, it is rather interesting to see that.”
It’s not psychological. It’s physics. Large SUVs have the lowest fatality rates according to the IIHS.
That said, most women I know, including my wife, do not like large SUVs. They do like smaller CUVs that they sit up higher in though.
You’re also talking about at least two different, non-consecutive generations of women raised with very different expectations about their own capabilities as well as the physical degree-of-difficulty of driving.
While I may not fully agree with everything you’ve said Paul, I think it is interesting to reflect on nevertheless.
Of course, I am a fan of the big American car, for many deep seated reasons. But I have long learned to accept that they won’t come back in any way, and it is the job of people who have the appreciation for them to observe them in some way. It’s far too easy to get people to care about muscle cars and Italian exoctica, it’s another for those people to get passionate about preserving the mundane sedans and coupes like these that made up far more of the automotive landscape, both at the time, and of now.
Of course, you’re comments about social upheaval and the ever changing standards in society remind me of a vehicle that has since become ingrained in my mind as the perfect embodiment of that. The Hummer H2. Yes, I was a wee little lad, yes I thought that impractical oversized Tonka Toy of an “SUV” was the coolest thing ever when I was a wee little lad. But looking back, it’s hard for me to see at as the perfect embodiment of early 2000s kitsch and societal changes. Even ignoring the obvious connotations to the financial crisis and the War in Iraq that all but put this thing in the ground, I think the Hummer was a victim of its own success and just the image it presented. I’m going to ignore the obvious hatred from environmentalists that were going on when this came out, The Hummer H2 was in many ways the embodiment of late 90s/early to mid 2000s conspicuous consumption. It was the car that represented the period of time that gave us MTV Cribs, OTT displays of excessive wealth in multiple forms of media, and the overall glitterati lifestyles of the rich and famous, probably to distract us from all the turmoil going on in our post-9/11 world. However, I think that as the decade wore on, people just got sick of all of that, they got tired of it, and the global financial crisis was the final straw that put an end to it. In many ways, people could see the hollow spectacle of the decade’s overzealous obsession with pomp and flash for what it truly was, and the Hummer H2 became the primary figurehead for that sort of mentality. It was not practical, it was not better than anything in its price range, it was a useless flashy toy that told the world just how much your image meant to you and how desperate you were for public validation and approval, and so its hard not to see why the Hummer H2 became as incredibly dated as it was. The only way I can see appreciation for it growing is as a symbol of kitsch, someone who’s driving it precisely because of how laughably ineffective it is and appreciates the vehicle for those qualities and the connotations it invokes.
Certainly interesting how I managed to be reminded of the Hummer H2 in an article about the big American car. There’s a certain sense of serendipitous irony that is not lost on me at all.
The H2 by its’ very nature, like a lot of Bob Lutz’ “let’s build the concept car” projects, was the sort of car that everyone who wanted one, and could afford it, bought the first model year or two.
Very well stated, Joseph of Eldorado, and a wise observation.
While the example of the H2 is apt, it also brings up the proliferation of “luxury” cars overtaking more basic ones. We became even more status conscious during the period and went from desiring American near luxury to ultra-luxury and foreign built as the default, not the option. the Hummer line, mostly due to the inherent ineptitude of GM, lost to the G-wagon and Range Rover line as a result. As proof, even the mighty Jeep does better with their smaller ones than a full-on Grand Cherokee type vehicle.
As a result, the more common OEMs have added too many items that were options before into their standard models, and even the most basic car has features that were rare on a high end Cadillac of 20 years ago. There is minimal difference in features available on a Chevy and a Mercedes. Materials, fit and finish are all better on the latter, but the AC, USB ports, and similar are functionally the same on both. Yes, some of the items are safety features, but many are just convenience items. Do we need power assist rack and pinion steering on a compact? Power windows? Power seats (especially as only one person drives the car, so the position once set is never changed), or many of the other items? We made the gap between basic and luxury so small that the lowest price car is still out of reach of a majority.
“We made the gap between basic and luxury so small that the lowest price car is still out of reach of a majority”
Advertised prices of new cars in my area today:
2019 Fiesta: $12,192
2019 Spark: $9,999
2019 Versa: $12,275
$12000 today = $1,802 in 1970
1970 Beetle base MSRP: $1,839
This was just a quick random example.
Granted, not as many of those base cars are sold today. But they are still available and as accessible as ever.
Yes, the base price of those is about what a Beetle cost in 1970, but in 1970, more folks were going for something less austere and long in the tooth. Plus, those advertised prices you note probably are just teasers, more bait and switch than cost out the door. In 1970, you could get that Beetle for about that price, but not so today. The cost of a 1970 Nova was $2076, and that was the stripper. Plus, financing was not for 72 months, nor was a credit score of 750 needed to get a percentage under 7%.
The cost of a new car is prohibitive for most folks just out of college, especially those paying off student loans. Pricing for housing is also higher. The money left in the budget for a car for the average young person today does not go nearly as far as it did in 1970. While you are correct on price, I stand by my statement.
The prices I found are actual cars and there are lots of them in the $12,000 range. If you don’t want to buy them that’s your choice, but they do exist and are easy to find. I’m not sure why you complain about financing either. The average car loan in 1970 was 11.5%. Now you can get 72 month loans at much less interest. That makes it easier, not harder, to afford a car.
Now if you are going to move the goalposts and claim that other costs have risen, well I’m not going to spend more time proving or disproving that. The bottom line is basic cars do indeed exist and for the same prices as back then. They do this while offering far superior safety, efficiency, performance, and comfort. If somebody with a college degree can’t afford a $12,000 car they should probably re-evaluate the choices they made in life, including location. The real reason most say they “can’t afford” a new car is because they don’t want the $12,000 car or even the $20,000 car, they believe they are entitled to the $35,000 car.
JF: We’ve covered this topic numerous times. Given that new cars cost about the same, but are drastically more reliable, long lasting, efficient and more comfortable, there’s no question that a dollar today goes a lot further.
Other factors like debt are not directly relevant. I can assure you that deleting power windows, a/c, and power steering form a modern car would not only have little or no difference in the price, but would make the car unsalable.
Here’s the details, from 2015:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/operating-costs/the-cost-to-own-and-operate-a-car-has-fallen-25-since-1968/
Overconsumption is the American way. My utility reports average consumption for a home my size and age, consumption for an efficient home mybsize and age, and my family’s consumption which is lower than both. I’m darn proud of my low consumption, yet we don’t live some kind of starved 30 second shower lifestyle. I hope that some day 40 years from now my kids appreciate that I tried.
But they’ll also probably remember the variety of 400 cubic inch Pontiacs I’ve had in the garage over the years. just a few hundred miles a year though. But they probably spew as much pollution in 500 miles as my 300h does in 20,000.
I love it that you’ve taken the time to compile this data. Who knew that my entire childhood, which was dominated by large cars, represented their waning years?
Really interesting read, and I thoroughly enjoyed the graphs! Keep up the great work.
From the point of view of a European guy, thanks be that women saved us from these dinosaurs and good old toxic masculinity 😉 I’m sure they were great cars in their time and place, but given all the evidence of the damage we’re doing to the planet I’m glad to see them in museums.
I wonder how we’ll look back on the current crossover trend in 20 years. I normally split my time between an MR2 and a Citroen C5 estate, which feels GIANT in Scottish cities (inherited it from my dad, whose sole car criterion is fitting in a sheet of drywall). I drove a Qashqai for work the other week and I was amazed by how space- and fuel-inefficient it was. Boot/trunk was useless, felt way smaller than my old Mazda 3. If/when the C5 dies, I’d probably just rent a van for days of moving big stuff! The MR2 is really the perfect car for 95% of my driving. If only I could cheaply replace the engine with something electric to run off our hydro power…!
Epic post! The photos alone are priceless. Thanks for the comprehensive history.
I’ve owned many cars… including ‘64 GTO, ‘71 Catalina, ‘07 350Z, and a lot of others in all shapes and sizes over the years up through and including the current ‘81 Fiat X1/9, ‘01 Highlander, ‘12 500 Abarth and ‘13 MB E350 BlueTec.
The MB comes close, but the most comfortable, long distance cruiser for our family I’ve ever owned was the ‘87 Dodge Caravan. It could barely get out of it’s own way, and it’s cubbyhole storage in the backseat may have been debased with what became petrified, half-eaten PBJ sammiches, but she was a runner!
Some data points from my family reinforce your points:
My paternal grandmother (Wowo) gleefully “downsized” to a 1964 Skylark, after years of driving bigger Buicks. She never looked back, and continued to buy the rationally sized intermediates. In 1979, she went to replace her ’76 Century, but she hated the Aerobacks. The dealer tried to sell her on a LeSabre instead (which would have been about the same size as her Colonnade) but she would have none of it. After a lifetime of Buicks, she switched to Pontiac and got a Grand LeMans. She really wanted an intermediate, and liked the sanely sized ones the best.
My maternal grandmother (Mère) had a ’55 Chevy, which she used to rave about. She went through a few Imapalas in the 1960s, but then found happiness in a ’72 Cutlass Supreme, ’78 Regal, ’84 Thunderbird, ’89 Taurus and ’94 Taurus.
My own mother (at a whopping 5’3) used to gripe mightily about piloting her big Oldsmobiles. I also vividly remember when she got a new ’75 Ninety-Eight at the same time my Pop got a new ’75 LeSabre company car–and both cars couldn’t fit in our carport. The rear ends of both stuck out past the overhanging roof–I think the added bumper length just pushed them over the edge. When these jumbos were replaced with downsized full-sized GMers, it was a revelation. Those downsized cars were soon supplanted with mid-sized GMers, which were even better. The imports that followed those were better still.
And guess what? My Pop liked the more rationally sized cars just as much as my mother. In fact, his favorite cars of all he’d owned were a ‘64.5 Mustang, ’68 Cougar and ’91 Accord. They just made sense, no matter your gender.
My mom despised having to park Dad’s 1970 strippo Pontiac. It had no power steering and a small steering wheel. Dad was too cheap to have power steering installed. I used to help her.
And that year of the Grand Prix still knocks me out.
Outstanding article and analysis — the charts and data are mesmerizing, and I can’t fathom how much effort went into this.
I was a holdout — having bought a Crown Victoria in its waning years (2006) and used it as our daily driver/family car until last year. My wife loved it, and she was a major reason why we bought it. But I realize we’re outliers. We were in our 30s when we bought it, so probably under half the age of typical non-fleet Crown Vic buyers.
Nonetheless, that car served our needs perfectly.
To me, that Crown Vic was the pinnacle of the Big American Car… not in size, of course, but in how it was to drive. It was roomy but not absurdly large, handled well, was solidly comfortable, an excellent value to buy, etc. I’m glad I got to own one before the species faded away.
Let’s just say that driving a late model CV compared to a ’59 Chevy with manual steering and three on the tree are about as different from each other as is possible. The negative issues in terms of operation, handling and such were long gone.
But yes, you probably were outliers in 2006 CV demographics. And there’s always exceptions to every generalization.
I know a number of other CC contributors/regulars also had big cars in the past decade or two, but I think almost all of them were bought used, which is a bit different.
I’ve owned a Panther Platform as well (Grand Marquis).
I’d never want to buy one new but as a used car in the 6-12yr bracket they represented the best value.
Absolute peach for road trips and highway driving. Main downside was the lowish city cycle fuel economy.
This is why I subscribe to CC.
I own a few full-size classics of this era. I love them, but Paul’s insights make a lot of sense to me. My 1976 Fleetwood (the last year for the design that debuted in 1971) is my favorite among them, but it’s utterly terrible for daily use. I live in the Midwest, where parking spots are designed for full-size pickup trucks… and the Fleetwood is still too big. Imagine what it must have been like in the 1970s when older stores still had parking spaces designed around the tidy-sized cars of the 1930s-50s.
In spite of the car’s size, the trunk fits far less than you would expect: the spare tire takes up prime real estate, and the trunk is vertically so shallow that grocery bags get crushed if they’re placed too close to the bumper. And let’s not forget about that high lift-over, which makes it a struggle to load luggage or boxes of cat litter (which have to be pushed to the far/deep end of the trunk… and then yanked out to unload). The rear seat is plush but hardly spacious: photos give the impression of lots of leg room, but that’s because the seat bottom cushion is weirdly short!
Visibility is disastrous. There’s plenty of glass, but the seating position is so low that you can’t see the road surface for maybe 20 feet in front of you… and it’s worse behind you, if you’re foolish enough to try to parallel park. And this is in a luxury car where I can crank the seat up high… I can’t imagine trying to park a car like this with a plain, non-adjustable bench seat. I shudder to think of maneuvering it without power steering, though I think that was pretty common by the 1970s.
I also own this car’s successors, a 1991 Brougham and 1996 Fleetwood, both built on the vaunted B-body platform. The 1991 Brougham solved a lot of those problems except for the high lift-over: the seating position is much better, and the back seat is genuinely spacious. The 1996 Fleetwood has an even more spacious interior, but visibility got worse because of the thicker pillars and the sloping hood.
My 1967 Imperial is in most ways a superior design. The trunk liftover is still too high, but at least the seats are nice and tall, combined with plenty of glass and a full-size rear window (no silly “limousine style” padding). It’s oversized for its capacity, but not as egregious as the ’76 Fleetwood, and it’s much more maneuverable because I can see all of the corners (blade fenders!). I also used to have a 1967 Dodge Monaco, which lacked power seats, but was still easy to see out of. I wouldn’t want to drive any of these in a city without power steering.
These are all impressions of an average-sized American male. Trying to put my petite wife or mother behind the wheel of these cars, let alone cheaper versions (no power steering), would be a bad joke.
A seminal piece on the decline of the full-size American sedan. Excellent examples, cogent arguments and I’m glad you sourced all that data. Really eye-opening!
I just presumed it was all downhill from the early 70s on. I had no idea the slope started that much earlier. It all makes perfect sense.
Look, I like a big ol’ Yank Tank as much as anybody on here but they reached colossal and pointless proportions and represented packaging at its worst. I don’t besmirch women – and a lot of men – for abandoning this style of car.
Great article! A trip down memory lane for sure.
Some comments.
5 MPH bumpers came out in ’73.
“The Aero-Falcon”. Baby’s first car?
In the Renault ad, why is the plane getting ready to make a belly landing? Are they waving good bye to Papa?
“Mrs. Murphy’s Valiant”. What is Mr. Murphy staring at?
“Chevrolet knows what a woman wants”. Origami birds?
“LaFemme”. In his book “The Dream Machine”, Jerry Flint specifically comments most of these were bought by pimps.
5 mph bumpers were phased in during 1973. Manufacturers were allowed to make some non compliant cars, or use some fudges like Chrysler’s enormous bumper guards. 1974 required full compliance front and rear.
My whole point was that the 5 mph bumpers on the rear made access to the trunks more difficult. That happened in 1974.
..and did you catch Lloyd Bridges (“Sea Hunt” and father of Jeff and Beau) in the photo of the Beat girl dancing?
“In the Renault ad, why is the plane getting ready to make a belly landing?”
If that 707 was coming in for a belly landing, it would still have a slight nose up attitude and its flaps would be extended.
Yep, Paul’s assessment is correct. It’s gonna crash. That might explain the look a terror from the flight attendant near the stairs. ;o)
Someone messed up this ad.
I laughed out loud at the caption to the Renault ad. Great article.
Knowingly or unknowingly, a dicey situation.
Almost looks like the attendant at the bottom of the stairs is giving one final salute. 🙂
It also almost looks like she’s holding her ears shut in anticipation of the impending crash!
Thank you Paul for this informative, interesting effort. It belies your recent comment of waning interest and subject matter in maintaining the site, maybe just a bad day then.
Illustrative of how women were addressed in the fabulous 50’s was that Plymouth wagon commercial, noting character “Nancy” attending a picnic in a dress and heals…the poor dear.
Great reading, reminded me that after years for driving big fords my parents purchased a 78 Caprice because my Mother liked the sloping hood and smaller size. From that moment on, she took control of what kind of car they drove. Although, my Dad didn’t mind, the 78 was always his favorite car.
When I was in the sixth grade, my homeroom teacher, Mrs. Ziff, bought a new car. This would have been in 1977 or maybe 1978. I don’t remember what her old car was, but her new one was a Chevette. She was all of about 5’3″ tall, and when I saw her parking in the teacher’s lot in her new Chevette, I asked her how she liked it. She loved it: “I can actually see over the dashboard!”
Excellent piece Paul. One would never find such an excellent article in any car magazine on the planet. Well illustrated, well researched, and well written.
The big car was representative of the excess that people enjoyed. It was their (our) way of making a statement that they had ‘arrived’. Bigger was better, especially when impressing the girls. Phallic symbology at its best.
I feel the SUV/CUV craze was the final mind set change in traditional RWD sedans. Once “Male toxic masculinity” realized it was cool to drive a SUV (ie:Ford Explorer), the station wagon and the minivan took a big hit. The CUV (ie: Ford Escape) was the final nail in the coffin as it attracted many women.
Think back to the movie “Ordinary People”, Cal drove the Olds Ninety-Eight and Beth drove the Delta 88. Today, Cal would have a Lexus LX and Beth would have a Lexus RX. Not one sedan would be found in their upscale ideal neighborhood (unless they gave Conrad a Camero).
Actually, in the 1980 film, he had the golden colored “88” and she the dark blue “98”. Both were clearly 1980 M.Y.
Thanks Paul, that was really interesting and as you mentioned, why didn’t anyone else compile that data before?
For my own data point, although I came home as a newborn in a 1960 Pontiac my childhood had the twin Rambler Americans Brownie and Bluey (I know, not your favorite vehicle but it was in the sweet spot).
Like your father, a lot of immigrants did not care about the status symbol of a big car. In my Dad’s working class family there were no really big cars. Toyota Corollas, beetles, yesterday’s Bellet and our Ramblers. My only relative who had a big Ford LTD was an airline pilot with 4 children.
Anecdotal evidence as each of us experienced growing up is certainly not nothing. It is interesting that my own experience is the opposite. My grandma (a nurse and farmer’s widow) picked out one new car her entire life – it was a 69 Pontiac Catalina. Her daughter (my mother) kept to smaller stuff for most of her life, but the last two cars she picked out on her own were Crown Victorias.
Kudos for putting all the time into collecting data on this area. This is a major accomplishment and could be a crucial resource for many going forward, not just us here.
I do have some questions. I kept waiting for the list of what is and what is not a “Big RWD Car” because (as in all things) it’s all about the definitions. If it is every RWD car of over 200 inches in length, these market share percentages look a little shaky. In 1956 both Chevy and Ford would not have been “big cars”, so did Chevy, Ford, Rambler and all imports only make 15% of the market?
Also the 1964 Olds F-85 would be a big car as would be most mid-sizers through the 70s. The Cutlass Supreme was the number 1 seller in that decade (and at 211 inches the 76 coupe was as long as the 57 Plymouth wagon) so the big car share again looks light.
There were undoubtedly countless factors at play, including changing tastes (generational and otherwise) and ever-increasing choices. I certainly don’t argue that 1959 (to pick an example) was the norm. But I also don’t think 1981 would be the norm either.
You and I disagree about the CAFE effect, so I will just say that people cannot buy what isn’t offered. Each of the big 3 made one attempt at the large end of the market after CAFE and never started from scratch again. The law also eliminated those car’s practical ability to do any significant towing because the larger engines were all gone by 1980-81. Yes, fuel costs drove much of that but those optional powertrains never came back once fuel costs moderated. Well they came back, but only in trucks.
We must also be careful to not cement the tastes of baby boomers as they might have been in 1972. Those boomers got older, moved to the suburbs and got families but could not get anything like a 66 Country Squire so they bought Suburbans and minivans instead (btw the 96 Town & Country rounds to 200 inches). We will never know if a US industry without CAFE would have worked towards a taller RWD sedan with 3 row seating, and I do not think it an unfair observation that the unavailability of large cars (especially at the high end of the market) was at least partly responsible for the accelerated “softening” of trucks.
Please do not take these thoughts as argumentative, but asking pointed questions is an occupational hazard. It is a fascinating topic for sure.
I ran out of time last night, and I was determined not to spend anymore time on it, as it’s been too much already. My point being is that there was a lot more that I might have liked to address, especially towards the end, including some of the issues you bring up about CAFE and such. They might be worth another post, such as a What If?
As to the definition of big cars, yes, I also forgot to include that. And yes, it’s more relative than absolute, meaning it was all of the full-sized cars of the big three, regardless of their absolute size. I initially dropped out the ’62-’62 Plymouth and ’62 Dodge, because they were more intermediate sized, but added them back in, because that’s how they chose to repackage their standard sized offerings.
I did not include any “mid-sized” lines, regardless of length, as my focus was on the largest cars. Also, no Ramblers, including the Ambassador, which is a questionable choice, but I feel the Amby was really a mid-sized car with a long front end. And its absolute numbers were always miniscule, but it’s debatable. And no Studebakers, for the same reason.
So yes, perhaps it’s a semantic issue in part, and I should have called them “full-sized” or “standard-sized” cars.
Regarding your own family, didn’t Mrs JPC have an Accord when you met? 🙂
“Regarding your own family, didn’t Mrs JPC have an Accord when you met? 🙂”
Indeed she did. But she is also the one who finished a test drive of a Grand Caravan by asking if she could look at the extended version. 😀
It would be fascinating to do a similar analysis of cars of, say, 200+ inches long and 3500+ pounds, regardless of drive axle(s). Or perhaps vehicles of all types that fit those criteria. I suspect we would see a deep V around 1981-83 but a reasonably steady line otherwise.
I think another big story is the disappearance of “small cars” from the big 3 from maybe 1942-59.
An excellent rebuttal, J P Cavanaugh!
I agree with everything you mentioned above.
JP you bring up an excellent point about CAFE having an effect on things. While I do agree with much of what Paul wrote and that by the 1980 big cars fell out of fashion, CAFE definitely also played a role. Like you said, if the manufactures don’t offer big cars, how can anyone buy them? As we know for many years the loop hole that allowed SUV’s and minivans to be classed as light trucks for CAFE. This really creates incentive for manufactures to drop big cars and build minivans and SUVs instead. Why would anyone make a big gas guzzler car that hurts them, when they can have a minivan or SUV that easily can make CAFE standards?
That said, as much as I do love the old big station wagons or the past, a minivan is a more practical choice, with more interior space and less overall length. So it was logical for people to move to these as prime family movers. But people are also strongly motivated by what is fashionable which is why minivans fell out of favor for the less practical crossovers.
Thanks for the article Paul, I think you did an excellent job summarizing a lot of the changes that occurred during those decades. I liked the graphs, and loved the photos.
Exc wagons, the 1957 Plymouth was only about an inch longer than 1956, though it was significantly wider.
The 1957 Plymouth wagon was the same length as the Dodge, because all Mopar wagons were scaled for the Dodge Desoto Chrysler size. Though you can reasonably argue that decision reflects a basic perception: “It’ll be fine. Wagon buyers want the biggest car we can make for them anyway.”
Holy hell Paul, this might be your best piece yet. And that’s really saying something. I really enjoyed reading it.
Agreed.
+1. Great writing from a great writer.
I’d only add some slightly dissonant anecdotal evidence – many of the ‘Murican moms in my social circle insist upon driving a big, tall SUV – Suburbans, Tahoes, and 4Runners. Commanding view of the road, and the bulk conveys a sense of safety (even if no actual safety is truly conveyed).
Agree with the others; a fantastic article.
I love this site; it gives you gobs of info, but never forgets that cars are about our emotions too.
With my Israeli background I obviously see things from a very different PoV. In 60s’ Israel owning a car, any car, was not yet a given so my mother put up with the 53 Chev, the 57 Plodge and the 64 Fairlane ALL of which had strong-arm steering and brakes, and I do nor remember her grumble much about it at the time, hell, it was better than driving around in some basic English, European or Japanese tin box!
But the theory does make perfect sense for the US.
That being sad, for the distances and roads you have, a big car has its attractions and that explains your pickups. Arguably the classic American full size car metamorphosed into the full size pick up…
At the early ’60s many relatives moved to Israel from Uruguay, my parents deciding otherwise leading to my birth here. From what I have heard (which is in agreement to what you say) the Israeli market was very similar to the Uruguayan. So, cars were far from a given, usual cars were smaller European ones or older (’40s or early ’50s) American cars with powered nothing and mostly manual.
I vividly remember my father trading his ’68 Nova for a ’78 Chevette and marvelling about driving a “scooter car”. And a ’68 Nova was far, far from a full size Impala.
“being said”
Wonderful article. And, as someone who lived thru the student movement of the late 60’s/early 70’s, smelled more than a bit of tear gas, and learned how to evade police and being arrested, you’re not being at all heavy handed.
That was what it was like back then. If you drove a full-sized American car back then, you were obviously a Nixon supporter, probably forced your kid home from college to stop at the barber shop before he was allowed in the house (no, that’s not hyperbole, that was my late teens), and hated the young with a passion.
I also will say “thank you” to women in general for forcing Detroit out from their same-old-same-old cheap engineering coupled with annual restylings because, quite frankly, that was the cheap, more profitable, way to go. I for one will never shed a tear for the classic V-8 in the front, rear drive barge. Europe showed that there were better ways to go. Detroit finally followed after it became impossible to ignore them any longer.
I hear you about haircuts, Syke – loud and clear! Dad finally shut up about my hair when he saw the school photo in ’71 – my ‘too long’ hair was the shortest in my year. Now I’m balder than he ever was, but I’ve still got the beard he hated!
Great piece, it filled in some blanks for me, not having lived through most of the era over here.
in response to some of the other comments re: the modern woman and her apparent preference for large vehicles these days several factors come to mind:
1. It is definitely easier to load kids in child seats in a higher vehicle, with multiple kids multiple rows become more important as it’s the rare sedan that can hold three side by side unless one searches for specialist models of child seats that may be less preferable for some other reason.
2. SUV vs Minivan is merely a styling preference or an image thing of one over the other. Function is largely the same relative to #1 above.
3. As far as safety goes
– A. A large car is safer in general than a small one if a wreck were to occur. Safety grades are given relative to others in a vehicle’s class, NOT in an absolute sense. A 2019 Corolla may have a higher safety rating compared to a 2002 Suburban or whatever but not when the Corolla crashes head-on into the Suburban if that makes sense.
-B. A larger and “tippier” SUV is more likely to crash than a smaller, lighter vehicle but only in the absolute sense given identical parameters. What is usually missed is that by sitting higher one is more able to observe external factors further in advance and possibly take pre-emptive measures earlier. I note this all the time in driving my very low car vs driving my Wrangler around town. The low car is BY FAR more agile, safe, less likely to tip, has better brakes etc but the Wrangler that often is considered relatively unsafe allows me vastly better sightlines both with and without traffic and I can see situations developing far earlier. So that was a lot of words to say that I don’t believe taller vehicles are less safe when taking into account all of the external aspects of the act of driving, vs a crash test in a lab setting.
4. In my own anecdotal experience, in the case of many of these women as well as some men, once no longer needing the space and ease of hefting tiny kids and all of their accoutrements into vehicles, once these kids start to drive themselves, there is usually a downsizing that occurs. It’s the VERY rare single woman of any age without kids that chooses or seems to prefer a full size SUV or truck, as diametrically opposed to the young single man.
I disagree with a fair amount of this, Jim. The trouble I see with it is that you’re starting with a reasonable assertion (you have better/longer sightlines in an SUV) but then you stack assumptions and guesses on top of it to arrive at a position that justifies driving a Wrangler. The end of your line of reasoning, what you’re presenting as a conclusion, doesn’t appear to line up with how this stuff actually works. Take a look at this, which is based on real-world crash data, so it cuts through your objections to crash tests in a lab setting. If you’re just glancing and skimming, pause at pages 8 and 10, 21 and 22.
Sure, the laws of physics are the laws of physics; F=MA, etc. But there are a whole lot of effects at work in something as complicated as traffic safety, and we don’t get to pick and choose which effects we like the sound of and declare them dominant, we have to look at the final outcome after all the various effects are done affecting what they’re going to affect.
The good-quality data represented by these charts show that the way it all shakes out, in the real, practical terms of how likely it is that death or severe injury will result from a crash, the big vehicle cannot be assumed to be safer. Small cars are generally considerably better than big ones at enabling the driver to avoid a crash—yes, you’ve got nice long sight lines up there in your Wrangler, longer than the ones in a Jetta, but the driver of the Jetta is much better able to safely and effectively maneuver to avoid a crash, and that effect overwhelms the longer-sightlines effect.
Wanna find something to be peeved about? Look at pages 16 and especially 17-18-19.
(And speaking of interesting effects: take a look at pages 13 and 14, Ford Crown Victoria vs. Mercury Grand Marquis. Giant effect of driver behaviour on safety!)
Unfortunately, our human minds are poorly equipped to consider very big and very small numbers and odds, risks, and chances. Not very many of us can do it very well; those who can are paid very well for it. I’m not such a one, so I outsource my reckoning on matters like this to those who are.
I think you may have missed the point I was trying to make – that being that I agree that if one is in a situation where an accident is imminent it may be more likely to be avoidable in a lower, more stable vehicle. My point though was that with better sightlines an incident may be avoidable in its entirety from a point well prior and thus not even classified as an incident.
In the Porsche for example it is sometimes difficult to see if someone is backing out into the street from behind a row of bushes or whatever, in the Jeep it is more likely to be noticed from further away by being able to look/see over the bush or whatever. And the reverse is also true, others are more able to notice a taller vehicle more than a low one and don’t back out in front of it due to not seeing it.
If your guy in a Jetta can avoid an accident due to the superior dynamics that are able to be used at the point of no return, that’s great, but if the guy in the tall vehicle can avoid it by not even being in a situation where a maneuver is necessary, that’s even more preferable, no?
The study you cited can’t measure accidents that never occurred or emergency maneuvers that were never needed, can it? Every day every one of us makes adjustments while driving based on what we observe around us. The sooner one notes the need for an “adjustment” can make the difference between something being merely an adjustment in speed or lane position and an emergency maneuver.
I’m not saying that on the whole a large SUV is a better choice than a smaller car, I am saying that if one is in the large SUV and one crashes into a smaller car with the same angle of approach, i.e. 50% overlap head-on for example, the occupants of the larger SUV will likely fare better than those in the smaller car. If both vehicles are the same age and both fare equal on any crash test (that are rated only as compared to others in its class) and contain the same safety equipment, the larger vehicle will fare better against the smaller one if for no other reason than mass and height of the vehicle and body position (higher in the larger SUV relative to lower in the smaller car).
Thanks for the followup. The point you just explained is exactly what I got from your first comment, which spurred my objection. The part I think you might be leaving out of your take on things is that we don’t have to guess or assume or hope at how many crashes the Wrangler (e.g.) driver avoids because great sightlines. We have actual data, compiled from actual crashes, giving an accurate picture of how likely any given kind of vehicle is to be in a crash, and what tends to happen to those inside it and those in whatever other vehicle(s) involved. If a crash-avoidance benefit attributable to a vehicle’s excellent sightlines (or unusually good lights or brakes or whatever else) were to compensate for its safety shortcomings, that would be reflected in the data, for exactly the reason you note: crashes that don’t happen aren’t counted. Roof don’t leak when there ain’t no rain! So it would be possible to look at the data and find a correlation between driver eye height and crash involvement, or unobstructed glass area and crash involvement, or sightlines and crash involvement, etc.
Porsches and bushes and Jeeps and backing out into the street: sure, but here again, we can’t just guess and assume and hope that effect outweighs other effects at work in the complicated traffic system—even if we have personal experience with how much more we think we see when we’re in the Jeep, and how much sooner we feel like we see it. The plural of “anecdote” is “anecdotes”, not “data”.
Thank you, Daniel for this additional information. I like the way the authors attempt to parse out the interaction between car design and driver behavior/risk, the examples of the Crown Victoria/Mercury Marquis and Camaro/Corvette being the most dramatic. I wish there could be more research to examine and support this, but the authors point out the extent to which the data are confounded. For example, at the time of their publication, it was the old people who were still driving the big, heavy American cars, AND it is well established that old people are more likely to die in a crash (just because old bodies don’t handle physical/psychological stress as well). So, if an old person, driving a big car, dies in a crash, did he die because of the design of the big car, or because he was old? If he lives, was it because if the weight of the big car? You can’t answer this question, because these variable tend to be confounded. If a young man dies in an accident in a small car, is it because the car is small, or is it because he is a young man and is more likely to drive in a risky fashion? Or because young men, who tend to drive in a more risky fashion, tend to buy that small car? So, you can’t, as IIHS and HDLI seem to assume, just look at death and injury statistics by model and year and assume a car with a higher statistic is more dangerous. Which is what I think you, Daniel, are trying to explain. I look at the insurance and crash data for Mazda 3’s and Jettas and wonder, are they really that much better designed than Cruzes and Focuses, or do they just attract a different buyer and operator? Or is it a combination of both?
Yes, we have trouble crunching big numbers. What we really have trouble with is thinking about more than one set of numbers at a time. To do this work, you need to be able to think about the weight, model, type and driver and risk, type of driving done with this vehicle and risk, all at the same time, and few people are equipped to do that. So, we pick a variable we like or feel like we understand (e.g., weight, or manufacturer, or CR rating) and argue on the base of that. I try to remind myself that I am driving a nimble little Toyota vehicle with the max number of airbags, and try not think about the fact it is a 2400 pound Yaris and about the lightest thing on the road. Maybe these things will cancel each other out. Unless I get hit by a big truck.
In closing, I guess the Dodge Ram is aptly named.
While your analysis is interesting, and certainly carries some merit, I feel like you downplayed a major factor: The rise of SUV’s and big crew-cab pickup trucks. They certainly carry the same “manly” cachet that big sedans used to carry, and it shows in sales. Last year, the F-150 sold over one million units, and the GM and Dodge trucks sold several hundred thousand units each. That’s just the trucks, and it doesn’t take into account the SUV’s like the Suburban, Tahoe, Expedition, and the like. It’s not a coincidence that full-size car sales began to decline right around the time big SUV’s and big trucks took off.
Look at a modern crew-cab truck in profile. It heavily resembles an older RWD American sedan in layout: Long hood out front, passenger compartment behind, and a big long trunk out back. Only difference is that the truck has a taller profile and is supposedly more practical. Same with big RWD SUV’s. Same basic layout as a station wagon, but taller.
The big American car never went away. It just evolved into something else due to changing consumer preferences. We are arguably seeing a similar trend today as traditional FWD sedans and wagons are losing market share to crossovers, which are basically just a taller body on a sedan platform.
I agree. I could have gone on and on, but decided it was time to stop. I did make a reference to the huge growth of pickups, but not perhaps not adequately.
Let me add that there is a lot of room for a sequel or such, as to how the markets evolved from the point where the big car effectively died in about 1980, or sooner.
That’s a good idea, trucks/SUVs would be a good sequel. You have shown how full size cars declined, the increasing civility of trucks in the late 80’s and early 90’s would perhaps show why they never came back.
Those are fair points. I must say that the whole idea of gender shaping car evolution honestly never crossed my mind, but is fairly logical the more I think about it. I’ve been a lurker on this site for a few years now, and this is definitely one of the most thought provoking articles I’ve read. Thanks, and keep up the good work.
Paul, I’m thinking there could be a doctorate in this. Or maybe not, but it’s truly a stellar article. Incredibly thorough research, and so well written.
I had never realised that the drift away from the too-big testosterone-fuelled American car designs of the late fifties that I saw in my own country was mirrored in the US, and never made the connection with it being a part of the emerging decision-making and purchasing power of women. Like other kids my age I knew I didn’t want Dad’s car (’67 Falcon, a ‘full-size’ Aussie sedan!), but never realised I was part of a global movement in that.
Interesting that the CUV boom is effectively a return to the proportions of the ’49 Plymouth. Seems ol’ K. T. Keller was right after all!
Regarding size comparisons, I came upon this scene a few years ago — a 1947 Chevrolet Stylemaster parked between a Tahoe and a RAV-4. It’s not often that we can see a car from the ’40s in a modern-day setting, so it’s interesting to look at.
The dimensional similarities between the ’47 Chevy and the RAV-4 are striking. The Tahoe dwarfs both.
Excellent treatise, Paul, and thank you for writing it.
Couple thoughts…
From the 20s through the 60s, Americans seemed overly susceptible to whatever the advertisers were pushing. For example, most women did not remove underarm hair until razor and depilatory advertisements started telling them how unsightly such hair was. Similarly, men bought into the premise that they would not be seen as successful unless they drove a big, fancy car.
A fellow named Wilson Brian Key wrote a book called “Subliminal Seduction” in 1974. I read it in a college advertising class. It was an expose on how the advertising industry was manipulating consumers. It may not have been the first such book, but I was taught that it had mass-market popularity, and when people read it, they realized how they’d been manipulated, and it influenced them to think more for themselves. Could this have had some influence on car-buying trends? It’s really hard to corrolate that – the timing was close to the first oil embargo – but it’s certainly possible.
—
Before the 1960 introduction of the “Big 3” compacts, a buyer had to go out of their way to find a “compact” car (and that term was quite relative). You had to go to a Studebaker, Rambler, Willys, or “one of them foreign jobs” dealers to get one, and for various reasons many folks didn’t/wouldn’t do that.
—
You briefly touched on the issue of space efficiency, which folds into all of this. As people were exposed to smaller cars, through friends/relatives, etc., they could see for themselves how “smaller” cars weren’t really that much smaller in the important places (people & cargo capacity) than the big behemoths. Perhaps that made them wonder why they felt they needed to drive a barge to commute to work alone. Again, hard to say.
I’m thinkin’ LOLnope, what it did was accelerate research and development of ever-more-effective psychoemotional manipulation techniques for use in marketing. Many (probably most) people will swear up and down they’re not influenced by advertising. Right, that’s why it’s a highly-multibillion-dollar-a-year industry: because it doesn’t work.
Exactly. “Think for yourselves” is as much of a marketing slogan as “tailfins provide directional stability to make you a man”. Advertisers exploit the phyche, the manipulation becomes obvious only through the lens of hindsight.
I’m not manipulated of course, I’m a non-conformist… like everyone else!
For awhile not far from my place was a billboard for an SUV by Acura or Lexus or Infiniti with a slogan suggesting that buying that model would mark you out as a nonconformist. Yeah, just like everyone else who buys it or one of the other practically and cosmetically damn-near-identical ones from another maker.
Agreed, Daniel!
We are all manipulated in one form or another, from purchases to politics.
And we all think we are too smart for that.
Vance Packard wrote one of the earliest of these advertising expose books, The Hidden Persuaders. It first was published in 1957 and led to many others that were much discussed as I was growing up in the 50s and 60s. John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Affluent Society was published the following year and also touched on this topic though his subject was much broader and primarily focused on the need for more spending on public infrastructure.
This is an epic piece of work, Paul and thank you for it.
However, I’m not so sure that huge automobiles are a thing of the past, especially for women. I often see young women in giant automobiles. We are presently experiencing very high gasoline prices, yet I see most folks buying and driving a vehicle that is much larger than their actual needs.
Interesting observation, but it makes me wonder if the young women in large cars you see are driving them by choice, or by necessity. A large sedan goes for less than a similar SUV or minivan, and if they are carrying kids, then they need a larger car for their family. Those large sedans may be the cheapest option available to them, thus not a choice, but a solution.
I never bought that argument. I raised three kids in an 800 sq foot townhouse in downtown Vancouver and did it with a 2008 Honda Fit. All three kids fit in the back. As soon as any kid could walk, the stroller was chucked. We lived in a city so we could buy food wherever we were so we didn’t need a lot of stuff.
It is actually a lifestyle. I was a millennial before anyone was a millennial. I just returned from a two week trip in Asia. I had one carry one bag because you know what? God invented washing machines. Shops, too.
My boys and I just moved to a new residence. We did it all with my Golf SportWagen. Everything we have folds or is compact and we don’t have much.
Less is so much easier than more, for me anyway.
Reminds me of some American friends who stayed for a few days last year. She complained that their rental car was ‘so big’. It was a Corolla, for Pete’s sake! Apparently back home they have two Fits. Guess I still thought of Americans as big-car people.
Another insightful, well-researched article of the kind that keeps me coming back to CC!
I will chime in with further anecdotal evidence that full-size cars were never as dominant post 1960 as many seem to claim. The cars my family owned during the 1960s and 1970s while I was growing up never fit the full-size car template: a pair of Dodge Dart wagons, an elderly Studebaker Lark, a Vega, a Chevette, a diesel Rabbit, and so on. The two largest vehicles we owned were a Dodge Coronet wagon, followed by a Torino wagon, the latter of which was easily the “malaise-est” car ever. My parents usually bought new (except for the Lark) and expected cars to last no longer than 4-5 years, max, so they bought bottom-of-line, rubber floormat models suitable for long commutes and kid-hauling duty. Not really being car enthusiasts, they treated our cars as consumables to be purchased at minimal cost and thrown away when they rusted out or developed expensive mechanical maladies.
Starting with the first Dart wagon, the one option my mother insisted upon was power steering. This preference was borne of her experience in trying to parallel park an old Ford in Queens, NY while extremely pregnant with my older brother. A police officer on the neighborhood beat watched her make two attempts and then volunteered to park the car for her, an arrangement that held until my brother was born a few weeks later.
” I’m sorry if I’m coming off a bit heavy handed…”
Agree that it is heavy handed. I think it is a bit much to post a pic of a shot, possibly dead, Kent State student in this posting. This is about cars, not politics. I mean, really?
And look at today, all the big pickups all over. They simply took the place of yank tanks. Cars are now called “passe’ ”
So much for the “small car revolution” that Boomers preached. Now, they are mostly overweight, driving big trucks in drive thru’s getting ice cream cones, because “they are hungry”.
I think it is a bit much to post a pic of a shot, possibly dead, Kent State student in this posting. This is about cars, not politics.
It’s history. And it’s impossible to separate politics from any historical analysis of the automobile industry. It was hugely influenced by politics all along. And vice versa.
So much for the “small car revolution” that Boomers preached. Now, they are mostly overweight, driving big trucks in drive thru’s getting ice cream cones, because “they are hungry”.
You’re throwing out some gross generalizations/stereotypes, but no, I’m largely not proud of my generation. I hope the younger generations will show us up. They better had.
What killed the big sedan? These even bigger things.
True that!
I think the single most important thing that you contribute to the discussion of “The Decline and Fall of the Big American Car” is the graphic showing the dramatic drop in market share from the mid ’50’s to the early ’60’s. This goes against everything I have thought or intuited about the market.
A couple thoughts. Many who study the women’s movement in this country mark women’s involvement in industrial production during the two World Wars as equal in importance to such events as the right to vote. Many women, unsurprisingly, enjoyed the money and freedom that employment in the labor market brought to their individual lives, and especially after World War II, many were loathe to give this up and go back home to a lifetime of living in the style marketed by the Mad Men of the age. I would like to look at data for 1. the growth in women’s involvement in the economy, outside of the home and also 2. The percentage of women who held driver’s licenses as compared with your graph. My question is, is this drop in part the result of more women doing more of the driving and, as a result, wanting and getting more say in the purchasing decisions?
My next question is also related to the economy. Standards of living were growing through the 1950’s and 1960’s, making it possible for many families to afford more than one car. Which meant that family vehicles could become more specialized, rather than having to fulfill all family needs. So, at least the second car, could be smaller, handier, and more economical. Is it possible that over time, the market responded with such variety that the one-size-fits-all large car no longer was the best fit for any niche? Perhaps this helps to account in part for some of latter data. And then the vehicles became so specialized that the full-sized car became the answer to the question no one was asking any more. Maybe a comparison of growing vehicle types with the chart would help to answer this question.
I can personally attest to the importance of women in the downsizing and demise of the American sedan. Dad had always purchased the family vehicles until the Summer of 73, when he was very ill with pneumonia and Mom did the research and final decision making for that purchase. With our encouragement, she chose the four door Malibu, which served them well until Dad bought one last Impala in ’78. And Mom could drive anything. She hauled the harvest home for years after Grandpa died, and she was the only person who ever got in my Vega and did not stall it on the first try. And she chose a midsize car.
PS, the bumper on that Plymouth looks crooked to me. I think its a “tell.”
Paul nails another one! This will take several reads to really digest.
. Many who study the women’s movement in this country mark women’s involvement in industrial production during the two World Wars as equal in importance to such events as the right to vote. Many women, unsurprisingly, enjoyed the money and freedom that employment in the labor market brought to their individual lives, and especially after World War II, many were loathe to give this up and go back home to a lifetime of living in the style marketed by the Mad Men of the age.
This exactly what I realized I had left out as i went to bed last night. it’s a critical component. Thank you for adding it here.
Women were mostly forced to give up their WW2 jobs after the men came home. And many were very unhappy about it. It was a foreshadowing of what was to come, and a critical influence.
Glad to help out a little. You do all the heavy lifting, I just try to fill in a few points.
I like to point out the historical context because it offers a counterpoint to those who continue to blame women for the so-called demise of the “traditional” family, with its male breadwinner, female housekeeper, 2.5 kids and assorted pets. And a full-sized American sedan, station wagon if you like. Women’s involvement in the war industry, particularly during the Second World War, was for many a first taste of real economic and social freedom. But it was in response to a national need, not some underhanded conspiracy to mess with the menfolk. And it is generally acknowledged to have made a huge contribution to the ultimate victory of the Allies. A good thing. Yes, there have been consequences, and as your posting points out, convincingly, one of them was their successful pressure on the auto industry to build vehicles that were less bulky, unwieldy and inefficient. Ultimately, that is also a good thing.
Now, if they could just get to work on getting the industry to build a CUV that looks more like that 56 Bel Air wagon and has the same, decent sight lines…
Excellent, Paul!
Text, photos — superb!
Great analysis Paul, and an enjoyable read. I think that much of what your write shouldn’t be a big revelation to most. We are all aware that imports, compacts and intermediate cars got more popular as time went on, but until the cold hard numbers are laid out before us, it’s only then we see how dramatic the drop was in the standard car. I also agree that your point about females driving the interests to smaller cars is an excellent one. It’s interesting though the the generation of females today don’t seem to be as intimidated by the size of vehicles, but obviously the climate they grew up in is quite a bit different. That and the fact that big vehicles are much easier to drive now. It’s not uncommon in more rural areas around Ontario to see young females driving big pick-ups as family vehicles. I have even known some young single female to drive pickups, although it is still far less common than young males.
It’d be interesting to dig up the Canadian numbers in comparison to the US numbers over this time period. In Canada, buyers tended to be much more frugal, especially in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Big cars were definitely less popular here. Even later on, Canadians who have essentially had the same vehicles available to them as the Americans, have always tended to prefer smaller and less ostentatious vehicles.
My Dad’s biggest car pre-1980 was his ’65 Impala, and from there he “downsized” to the intermediate sized cars, which were petty near the same size. He saw no need to have anything bigger than that Impala and stuck to that size as his maximum. When the Chrysler minivans came out in 1984, Dad was looking for a new family car. I remember going to look at the minivans with Dad and he was apprehensive about buying one and walked away. We ended up with an ’84 Parisienne wagon instead. It may have been old fashion but after the lemon Fairmont wagon, Dad was more concerned about proven technology that could transport six people safely and reliably, which it did for many years.
My mother on the other had was definitely the exception when it came to big vehicles. She liked big cars and had no problems driving them. I think for her, being taller than average for a woman and that after having kids she drove school bus for a period which made big cars easy for her. She was a confident and good driver and could handle a 40 foot bus with ease. That said, when she was a younger, my Grandfather had an early Corvair that she always told me she enjoyed driving. Later when she was able to afford her first new car, she bought a ’73 Plymouth Fury 2-door, which was the biggest car anyone in my immediate family ever owned. She liked the Plymouth, but my dad didn’t like that car and he convinced her to sell it off. Later on when Dad bought the Parisienne wagon as her car, she really liked that car. I remember her talking about how good the visibility was and this allowed her to parallel park the beast downtown with ease. After a few more big cars, I bought her a ’97 Accord when she was an empty nester. She did like this car too but still spoke fondly of the big cars of her past.
You remind me of a related issue. If you go back to around 1930 there was a huge size gap between low price and high price cars. A Model A parked next to a Buick (or especially a Dusenberg) was a real contrast. The “small car” that put America on wheels disappeared around WWII and by 1959 there was little size difference between, say, a Chevy and a Cadillac.
It would be interesting to track “big cars” in relation to price class or percentile. A 1950 Cadillac or Buick was 80 inches wide. Isn’t this about the width of large trucks and SUVs today?
Yes, full-size trucks have been between 78-80″ since the early ’60s, to allow for 3-across seating. Even when full-size cars were downsized to 72″ in the ’80s, full-size trucks never dipped below about 77″. And 80″ is the maximum allowable width without clearance lights.
Actually, bringing up the fact that low priced cars were small and high priced cars were large for many years previous to the mid to late 1950’s is a great point. I think because of this size differential which had been established pretty much since the beginning of the car, many North Americans began to equate large size with premium vehicles. So as Sloan’s ladder began to blur in the 1950’s, it kind of made sense to move the lowly Chevy up market meant that it had get larger. The new Chevy’s were so large, they must be better. It may also help explain why for many people of that generation, the larger car was seen as better. An Impala > Chevelle > Nova kind of mentality. Once the boomers took over as the prime buyers, this mentality of size equal premium vehicles w not near as well established in their lives.
And yes, you are correct most pickups are in the 80″ range width, with the narrowest modern truck being the GMT400s (they had very thin doors to help compensate). While the large FWD cars n got a fair bit narrower, the RWD sedans always stayed above 75″ in width, including the 77-90 B-bodies, which were narrower than the Ford Panthers.
Although it occurred after the timeframe of the article, one of the vehicles that hastened and really sped up the demise of large cars was none other than the minivan.
With the minivan, it was no longer necessary to have a large, long sedan or station wagon to drag along the complete brood. But, more importantly, was the ‘command seating’ of the FWD minivan: you sat higher and more forward than in a full-size car, making it much easier (particularly if you were of a smaller stature) to see out of and drive.
This is what led directly to the SUV/CUV boom. When the minivan acquired the practical ‘sensible shoes/soccer mom’ stigma, women still wanted the same improved visibility of the minivan. So, they got into SUV/CUVs. Here they had an even higher driving position (and worse driveability) of a minivan, but without the stigma.
And that’s where we are today: no more full-size sedans, but lots of full-size station wagons on stilts.
I quite explicitly said as much, and included a video ad for the new Chrysler “Magic wagon”. And also about the appeal of SUVs/CUVs.
This article is excellent. Well done, Paul. I got to read it yesterday while you were still polishing it up for posting it today. I’m not sure how that happened, as you were clearly still editing it. But I’m glad I read it again, as it is a great piece.
From personal experience, I can relate to this with the vehicles my parents had while I was growing up, and even later as an adult.
My Dad always liked big cars. We were a one car household until I was 16 in 1976 (1977 MY). He had mostly big Chevys and the LTD I’ve often mentioned here. When Mom went back to work, and we could now afford to be a two car household, he bought his first small car, a 1977 Chevy Concours (Nova). It was mostly for MOM to drive.
When I graduated and went off to work, I got the LTD as a hand me down. Dad went out shortly thereafter and bought a really nice 1980 Bonneville. He stayed with the biggies until 1985 when he got a Grand Prix…
…FFWD to more recently, he bought his first SUV/CUV in the late ’00(s)… a Lexus RX-350. The reason for the choice supports your argument about women: He wanted to replace his Acura RL with an MDX. She wanted the smaller RDX. The compromise was the one sized in the middle. Later, Dad would get his MDX, but felt the need for a second mid-life crisis car, a 2014 Mustang. Mom was now driving the MDX. Shortly thereafter the MDX was traded in on an RDX for her to drive.
He traded his Mustang in on an Accord… a 2017. He wanted the biggest Accord that ever was… one close to his beloved RL. He didn’t want the “downsized” 2018 Accord built on my 2016 Civic’s platform. I guess he still likes big cars.
Mom on the other hand? She loves her CUV. She’ll probably always have one.
I just referred to this in a comment elsewhere as Paul’s Magnum Opus. A tremendous accomplishment in digging up the data and writing a definitive history of the big American car.
I too find their crashing share in the sixties to be most eye-opening. But when we think of the hits of that decade it’s the Mustang and the GTO that come to mind, not the LTDs and Caprices.
I agree with the case you make that women entering the marketplace had a huge role in this. But there are exceptions – my 5 foot 2 inch mom sure loved that mile-long ’68 Ford XL, and drove it for fifteen years.
Clearly today’s “full-size” pickup has replaced the “full-size” sedan, certainly for a lot of American men (as you observed). One could in fact make the case that “full-size” vehicles are again topping the charts just like they once did. In the fifties and sixties I think it was from optimism and exuberance, now I think a lot of guys have been sold a sense of fake masculinity. (Enough with the armchair psych for now.)
‘Clearly today’s “full-size” pickup has replaced the “full-size” sedan…’
And with today’s pickup bed height, ‘trunk’ access is probably just as difficult as ever!
It’s your Magnum Opus, Paul. Obviously it was a mountain of work collecting, collating and presenting your data. You’ve given us a fresh look at what happened with these cars and why.
I’m especially enlightened by how much their share fell in the sixties. Though in fact it’s the Mustangs and GTOs we remember most from that decade. And we had all the proliferation of platforms under each brand, responding to the market forces you’ve described here.
Great work Paul. Your best work is often derived when you write very passionately on a topic. Like the GM Deadly Sins.
I’ve never been a big car fan. To me large American sedans have always been sold to the public as image. As a status symbol superseding their genuine practicality for most people. Most full-sized cars were far more than people needed. I knew many larger families that managed just fine with mid-sized (and even compact cars or wagons).
The true value of large cars is ultimately is hard to justify, if they offer poor space utilization compared to many smaller cars, higher maintenance and gasoline costs, or in many cases are far more car than most people actually need. Many of the largest American sedans never made much practical sense for most people in the first place. The manufacturers sold the public the idea that big cars were the standard size. As bigger was better form a social status perspective. When they were probably way more than a lot of people needed. So, IMO the genuine worth of big cars was in many ways a ruse to get people to spend more for status. Especially if disposable income was growing.
Many apologies, for the typos and grammar errors in my post. Was unable to edit after initially posting.
How many times did the full-sized American cars of the 50s through 70s carry one solitary person to work every day and back home? Day in and day out. In many cases, they were more car than many people needed in the first place. Family vacations together amounted to maybe two weeks in a year. To me, the public was marketed that they needed big cars. When in most cases, they really didn’t. Big cars were overrated all along. And people saw better value elsewhere.
Overrated by the manufacturers rationalizing them, and selling them for bigger profit.
And everything in Daniel’s comment applies to today’s American pickup trucks.
Car’s are largely status symbols. The full-sized American car always was of dubious value. Its merit was always on shaking ground from a practical point of view. They never should have been the standard. The marketers wanting to sell lifestyle, made it the ‘standard’.
It simply was the case that for decades, the manufacturers have been successful persuading the public to buy what they want to sell. Ultimately, way more than the vast majority of the public really needs.
As you said, pickups fulfill that role for the today.
They sure weren’t of dubious value to the many ’50s and ’60s families with 3, 4, 5 kids and only one car… generalization is a dangerous habit.
A full sized Chevy or Ford was no status symbol, it was a necessity for them. They didn’t usually buy Cadillacs or Lincolns.
I have never liked large cars, either. I have more fun with small ones.
Nice piece of work, Paul!
There’s a lot in there to digest.
A really wonderful article, Paul, thank you very much.
It is very easy to harp about how the past was better, an in some ways it was but in many more it was not. Yes, my family was the typical 1960-1980 nuclear family but their level of consumption would be considered minute by today’s standard. Yes, dad made decent money but he had a long apprenticeship, too. There were no fancy cars or vacations and restaurants were rare indeed. Yes, housing was cheaper but relatively speaking many things were not.
I bought a 2018 Golf last year and today it rolled over 10,000 km, pretty much six months exactly. In that time it has had not malfunctions. It has had one oil change. It has averaged 7.4L/100 km. The fit and finish are perfect. I have every confidence that I can drive this car 200,000 km in ten years and not have a major component break. It will even be worth $7000 at the end.
In late 1970, dad bought a leftover 1970 Pontiac Stratochief two door hard top, equipped with 350 V-8 and Powerglide. It didn’t even have a radio in it. It cost $3400, which translates to about C$23,000, almost exactly what I paid form my Golf. That car was junk in five years. It was so rusty and dangerous it wasn’t worth fixing.
Times have changed so much. I was raised on the concept that frugality and conservation are the goal of everyday life, due to my depression era parents. Whenever I see a Ford F-450 dually used as a commuter, I just wonder what has changed so much.
I don’t wanna say you’re wrong, but you’ve probably never seen an F-450 used as a commuter. The base price and the unladen ride quality of a 450 are such that even in flyover country, where 3/4 and even 1-ton DRW pickups are DDs, the F-450 is never used for anything but actual towing. I can’t say I’ve ever seen one not permanently hitched to a giant 5th wheel. You may have seen an F-350 with the uncommon wide front axle option, but an actual F-450, probably not.
I saw one on Cambie Street today. It has obviously never hauled or carried anything other than its rather small driver.
Why “obviously”? It’s entirely possible to pull a 25K-lb. horse trailer thousands of miles and never scratch the bed. That’s what 450 pickups (a fundamentally different vehicle than a 450 chassis cab) were meant for, at any rate.
As so many have said, this piece is one of your best and very thought provoking to read.
Growing up in the 50s and 60s, I lived through this period of change. My observation is that Americans were ambivalent about vehicle size over the decades and vacillated back and forth in their buying habits right up to the present. My Dad was an example of this behavior. He bought small and large cars and trucks but his overall preference was for smaller ones and he owned a small Nissan truck when he passed in 2004. At one point he fully embraced compacts and bought two new Falcons in 1961, and later owned a Falcon Ranchero. He also bought a Datsun pick-up in 1974. But he owned a large 1965 Ford truck, 1965 Thunderbird, 1971 Lincoln sedan, and his aspirational car, a new 1978 Mark V. I recall how the compacts of the early 60s started small and kept getting bigger and then were supplanted by the even larger mid-size models (Fairlane, Chevelle, et al).
The other issue – and you mentioned it – is the huge shift toward urban population growth. Yesterday I saw a woman struggling to parallel park a new Lexus RX. I looked up the dimensions – the newest model is 13 inches longer and about four inches wider than the original RX of the late 90s. On my long walk in downtown Santa Monica today I saw a slew of new Lexus UXs – they are tiny by comparison to the new RX but actually only three inches shorter than the original. SoCal is now so congested, street parking is so limited, and parking lot/garage spaces so narrowly striped that vehicles like the UX – a premium compact – make a lot of sense even for those who can afford or might prefer a larger vehicle under different conditions. I’ll be interested to see how things develop in the next decade or two.
The significant volume drop of the 1960 Plymouth is probably more related to Chrysler’s marketing change than the Valiant. Previously, every Mopar dealer had dualed Plymouth with an upscale brand. For 1960, Plymouth was removed from Dodge stores, and Dodge added a full line of Plymouth sized and priced cars. Cutting about half of Plymouth’s outlets and adding a direct competitor with a more prestigious name (and more attractive styling IMO) smacked Plymouth upside the head.
Another PhD level dissertation, but maybe, because of the present state of affairs, that Kent State picture gave me chills I have never had before.
“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme” – Mark Twain
Great article, and the work you did to put those graphs together — wow.
But there’s a couple of pretty big nits that I think need to be picked. You laid down the ground rules of how you define what constitutes a big car as:
“My arbitrary cutoff for big cars is 200″ length”
And that’s pretty reasonable — especially considering — as you rightly pointed out — both the Chrysler 300 and the current Dodge Charger are less than that — though the current Charger is 199.9.
First nit — you claimed that big American cars — i.e. those over 200 inches in length — went extinct in 2012, and that’s simply not correct. Currently, there are two full size American cars which exceed 200 inches in length: the Cadillac CT6 at 204 to 205.8 inches, and the Lincoln Continental at 201.4. Plus, the Continental’s predecessor, the MKS, was still 205.6 as late as 2016. Obviously, these are/were not big sellers, and maybe they’re exceptions that prove the rule, so to speak, but they do exist.
Second nit — as you accurately noted, the top seller in 1976 was the Olds Cutlass.
“The Pinto shot to the top of the best-seller’s list of nameplates in 1974, with 544k sales. The Vega wasn’t far behind, with 456k sales. And how soon would folks have regrets? Maybe there was something in the middle that might have been more pragmatic?
That came next, and the Olds Cutlass took the gold in 1976, and made some repeat appearances in coming years.”
And that 76 Olds Cutlass was 211 inches long — nearly a foot longer than your arbitrary cutoff for defining a big car and only 4 inches less than the 2011 Town Car. True, it was not the biggest car made by Oldsmobile that year, but you did not define a big car as being only the biggest car made by a brand.
Did you include sales of these obviously big cars in your stats? Maybe you did and I missed it, but they should definitely be counted under your definition, as should cars like the Chevrolet Monte Carlo from 81 to 88, which topped out at 202.4. The 87-88 T-bird also topped out at over 200 inches (202.1), and the 94-97 model did as well, though barely (200.3).
My point is that big cars persisted longer than you seem to give them credit. The BIGGEST cars declined precipitously, yes, but big cars — as defined by you — continued to sell well.
Now this doesn’t necessarily mean that your premise — that women killed big American cars — is necessarily wrong, but I think it does mean that their role in the demise of such cars was not as great as it first appears. I do think the shift to smaller, more efficient engines made a huge difference, especially when coupled with FWD, which results in a smaller, more efficiently packaged car. In my opinion, the biggest culprit was actually the explosion in popularity of the pick-up truck, and in particular, the full size pick-up truck.
Thus, I contend — admittedly without any figures or the time to do the research — that the increase in pick-up truck sales resulted in a decrease in big car sales, as more and more men decided to express an image of manly ruggedness through a truck instead of an image of wealth and success through a big car.
Either that or it was the Trilateral Commission.
Also of note the *compact* Dart/Valiant cracked 200″ in 1974 at 201.7″ with the crash bumpers, but even before federal bumpers the Dart was at a healthy 196″.
I too agree that this doesn’t crack the core premise of this article, but it’s a noteworthy point that should be made. It’s not as though the market was at radical opposition with 225″ symbols of the patriarchy on one side and beatnik/hippie compacts on the other, like most things including politics, there was there was a whole lot in right in the middle. 200″ seems less a defining stat for a segment as it does a tipping point for drivers to tolerate. My Cougar is 200″ dead, classified as midsize and it’s about as long as I’d willingly tolerate as a daily driver.
See my comment below. 200″ was not used except to not include the Chrysler LX cars in the recent years, which is actually irrelevant, as I didn’t go past ’96 anyway. And there might well be some FWD cars that exceed that number.
Keep in mind that it’s not just length; width is another significant factor. But in any case, I chose what have been referred to as standard or full-size RWD cars to include, not an arbitrary length.
You have some valid points. The 200″ cutoff was only arbitrarily applied to the recent Chrysler 300/Dodge Charger; it was not applied otherwise. For instance, the 1956 Chevy and Ford were not yet at 200″, but were included.
What I chose to do for this exercise is to include those car lines that were obviously known and identified as “standard” or “full size”. I chose “Big Car” for my title and in my text because it is more recognizable for younger readers who might not have any familiarity with the other two terms. “Who Killed the Standard Sized Car?” is not a very catchy title.
But you’re right, and others have pointed out too that some of the mid-sized cars exceeded 200″. But at the time they did, full-sized cars were proportionately bigger too (mostly the 70s), in part because the 5 mile bumpers added several inches (or more) to their original design length, and because bigness was peaking. Absolute size of full size cars varied considerably over the total time span, from under 200″ in 1956 to 235″ at their peak and back to 205-210″ in the late downsized cars post 1977-1979.
But the the mid sized cars were downsized too, although a year later (GM).
My goal was to look at the full sized cars, and their market share over time. It may not have been perfect, and it may be impossible to agree on all the variables, but that’s what I did in the end.
I anticipate doing a thorough look at the other market segments, including the mid sized one. It obviously became something of a proxy for the full sized cars during the 70s.
I think they’re more constructive points rather than points of contention, it still supports the premise. When you look at all the segments that emerged between the late 50s and early 70s they all seemed a response to the continual dimensional increases of the previous model, starting with the growth of full size that begat midsize and compacts, then the growth of compacts begat subcompacts, then the growth of midsize begat more efficiently packaged compacts, etc. Even the seminal Mustang was more or less a reboot of the 55-57 Thunderbird, whose namesake became a big heavy land yacht by 1965, and when that grew by 1970, imports like the Capri and Celica took the ponycar torch.
I sometimes wonder if this cycle would have continued unabated and inevitably resulted in the phasing out of segments like the ‘standard’ size big car, if not for the energy crisis and stiff competition from imports eating away profits, rather than downsizing. Downsizing for GM especially severely muddied the waters, with model 5 lines for each division ranging from compact to full size, J to H, that all would have been considered compacts in 1960. Full size was still a moribund segment even with its new svelt wasteline, the scale was gone but the perceptions and demographics of the carried over model names remained.
This is quite an essay, Paul—much, much richer than anything I might have written on the subject.
April ’58: The 1958 International Auto Show is in NYC, and the smaller imports have begun making inroads in the U.S. This pair of articles really sees the trends, and Detroit’s upcoming compacts. The “Suburbs” article gets into second-car thrift and parking ease, and then one more factor: a significant number of prewar homes have garages that the post-1955 cars won’t fit into, forcing the smaller-car choice:
I just love all these clippings you come up with, George.
“…the industry on the whole feels there will be no revolution in American automobile buying habits.” Nothing to see here folks, just move along…
LOL at the Hillman Minx pictured on your clipping it cant have made too many inroads into large car sales, I have one and its small compred to my daily drive.
Fantastic article, one I’ll need to re-read to absorb the massive content. Paul really put a lot of time in this effort, and it shows.
Thanks Paul for a well thought out article. I too grew up a fan of the really large car, the Cadillacs and Lincolns of the 1950s through 1970s. Luckily I’ve been able to own and drive a few examples. I think that as excessive size became a dominant design factor that “standard sized” American cars of this period became an aberration. They were overly large without gaining any advantages of space or utility. If the ’59 Plymouth or ’60 Chevy or Pontiac was big and it was the cheaper car, than the Cad, Buick, and Chrysler had to get even bigger. Size was the only real difference between a cheaper and more expensive car.
I also agree that as the American women’s role expanded as a more independent party, even within the traditional family structure, her choices were bound to effect the kind of cars that were produced. Most women of this period were not as interested as their men in cars that were making a status statement. Whether in size or excessive power. They are just more practical in their choices.
When it comes to trucks my personal choice is for something that gets the job done. I have a single cab, long bed pick up as my work vehicle. I have an older Explorer that I now prefer to drive as an everyday vehicle because it is easier to park and load due to it’s smaller size. Those big older cars are interesting as artifacts but not so much as actual vehicles.
Congratulations on a remarkable piece, Mr N.
I too had the perception that big cars were much more dominant than this reality shows them to be. Over time on this site, I have also learned that heaps of US consumers hated the gigantism for all the obvious practical reasons. I would add this thought: when it comes to manouvreability, it is excessive width which makes for true unmanageability. Indeed, from the perspective of another country, there are many places where the sheer width of these things make them undriveable. Which is a bit of a minus for a car.
As a purely anecdotal observation, women are far smarter than men in choosing a car that actually fits their needs. It may be sad in a nostalgic way for all that chrome and style and hugeness to have passed, but the female influence on the car world means sensible, useable sized cars predominate.
Is it correct that the huge utes from Ford and GM (and others) are the big car replacement? Jason Shafer had a fascinating article on big utes on this site a while back, and in part, it said that these monsters are close to a practical necessity for the way transport is set up in vast areas of the mid-west. For sure, there seem to be plenty in suburbia too – which really must be male ego-calmers – but the bulk have a practical purpose. I also recall that despite being best-sellers, they still only amount to about 10-15% of the total market.
One question. Why DID the cars grow so large in the mid-fifties? This piece posits an idea of why the average buy shrank and ultimately killed the monsters, but why did those ’50’s cars that crossed the boundary of sensible do that, and then continue to their apotheosis in that ’73 Imperial?
Cars got big in the ’50s because they could. We were building all sorts of new cities and suburbs and roads in the postwar years, and unlike in Europe, we didn’t have to worry about width. So we spread out as far as we could, and it’s only within the past 30 years or so that we really started to come back from that.
And yes, full-size pickups (and to a lesser extent, SUVs) are the de facto replacement for full-size cars.
+1
Highly interesting analysis, one of the most enjoyable reads of the period I lived through. Thanks for your all your work compiling the statics, the graphs are invaluable to understand the phenomenon. As a partisan for big American cars, even I admitted they had become excessive by the early 1970’s and increasingly out-of-touch with societal realities.
When the ’59 Cadillacs were described as the “pleasant insanity of innocent excess” in a ’80’s Motor Trend article it perfectly encapsulated what that latter 1950’s through 1970 approach to big American cars was. But 1970 was the stunning wake-up call to come back to the realities. It simply took a decreasing percentage of the population more time to abandon the childishly innocent ideal of the big American car as acceptable and desirable any longer.
Oh deary me, I commented, it went away, could someone please find it (and get rid of this one)? Cheers
Outstanding piece Paul and I look forward to your follow up, “Who Killed the Small American Car?”
I think we all know the answer to that one, but your definitive take will be welcome.
Naw, it wasn’t the Trilateral Commission–that’s for conspiracy theorists. It was the Illuminati. 🙂
Actually it was the Mercury Marquis de Sade.
Paul, I finally took the time to read this through and it’s a commendable amount of work and a fascinating perspective. This all was happening well before my time so it is truly interesting to see it analyzed and discussed in this detail. Fine work, and thanks for providing something so unique and rare.
PS: In our decade, the full size pickup is all the rage (or enrage, depending on view). Big, roomy, comfy, powerful, pure Americana, and with a strong counter reaction to what some view as excess. I won’t plant a flag on any side of that little conflict, but will note that every time I see one of those grand 1950s-60s American battleship sedans with quarter-mile overhangs and tail fins fit for an airliner, I must say that even the most chrome-bedecked pickup of today looks….shall we say, modest?
Nobody’s ever called a modern pickup “grand”.
Today’s pickups are the modern equivalent of the finned monsters of the 50’s.
Nothing modest about them. Overweight, overstyled, and catering to a fashion trend that most people actually don’t need but want. Doubt my point of view? 4×4? Off road package? Home Depot is off road for most. If it weren’t for leasing, most people couldn’t afford these cowboy clown cars that pass for pick ups today. Most owners (lessors) can hardly get into them gracefully, but they’re hoping that you won’t notice.
Wow Paul, this sits amongst your finest work, possibly up top. The stats bring great clarity and its sociological breadth makes a very persuasive contribution to the premise.
It seems the male skew is still evident in today’s cars. This piece discusses on the sizing of crash test dummies along male lines to the possible detriment of women.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/feb/23/truth-world-built-for-men-car-crashes
I recently noticed a campaign run here in Australia by Volvo that claims to have addressed this bias in their own product.
Very much appreciation for this piece.
Some of the best automobile journalism is found right here. Thank you for your article on the demise of the big American car. But after spending a few months in central Texas I find that the big American car is alive and well and are called pickup trucks and SUVs. Interstate 35 is bumper to bumper with them and every country makes them.
Thanks, Paul. I am really enjoying your analytical pieces about the industry. My family pretty much fit the profile you reported. Dad was the only driver and bought standard or mid-sized American sedans or wagons, until the 1969 Dodge Sportsman Van. After the kids grew up, he did return to passenger cars, not big sedans, a Monte Carlo, Cutlass Supreme and a Thunderbird. Finally, he went Toyota and never looked back. As a “boomer” (licensed in 1968) have never owned a standard American car as primary transportation.The 1957 Chevy was only a collectible and generally miserable to drive.
One thing that differed from the norm when I was growing up is that moms in the neighborhood that drove tended to have the big station wagon during the day while the dads commuted in small cars.
Magnum Opus indeed, wow! This is the kind of article you’ll never see at the “other” site.
I always found it amusing that the big American car was called “standard size,” at least from the late 1950s into the early 80s, when even the august publication Automotive News stopped using the term. Standard size implied that smaller cars were of substandard or suboptimal size, which as others have mentioned, was intentional!
I spent a couple of days reading and rereading through this enormous piece. There are many new viewpoints presented. I am still considering many of them, as if they are true, causes new questions to arise.
Such as – what is it that makes a vehicle masculine? Why would a 1959 GM car be more masculine than another car? Are we considering these cars to be the male equivalent to a rooster or peacock? Are overly designed vehicles more appealing to men? Is the finned beauties from sixty years ago as appealing as the faux bolts, hooks and gew gaws of a HUMMER? There’s a lot to unpack there.
This could have easily been a week’s worth of postings. It covers so much ground.
I am delighted to have your professorial presentation regarding these issues. I will be studying it for a long time.
What impact has family size had? I’ve been forced through many types of vehicles, due to fertility. I covet big car from the past because I need a big car that is affordable, and I find most trucks to be embarrassing cartoons of masculinity. My kids do that for me, so I don’t need a truck designed to look like a bulldozer.
These old ads – the ones praising male traits – are we really seeing a different way of injecting a “sporty” character into these cars? Is it possible that “sportiness” is an attribute assigned to masculinity? Are sports cars masculine?
The reason I ask this is because it seems that small cars didn’t really kick into popularity until “sportiness” became a selling point. The Henry J, Rambler, Jet and early small cars failed to be presented beyond “smaller”, so that their prices couldn’t be justified. So, “sportiness” became the selling point to smaller cars to present them as different from “luxurious”, which had been the selling standard for decades earlier.
So – I’m at a point where I believe that small cars grew in popularity as auto marketers shifted to presenting them as being sportier than larger cars. During the 1950s, small car ads didn’t present them this way, but within a decade, they were.
Size, maneuverability and cost are left brain reasoning behind VWs, Volvos and Falcons. Yet, small cars boomed in the market when they were sold as “sporty”.
Hmmm….
Fascinating article Paul – definitely one of your (many) labors of love! Your premise makes sense throughout.
I believe we are of similar age; my parents moved to the burbs in the early ‘60s, the 2nd car came along a year later, the station wagon soon after. I remember them “downgrading” from a full size Ford to a Torino in ‘70 (although us kids were clamoring for Dad to get a Mustang since we all were heading towards driving age), and then further still to a Dart in ‘75. By that time 2 of us were off to college.
Personally I always disliked the unwieldy-ness of the big cars; my first smaller car was a Hornet. Even today I still prefer smaller, although at 6’3”/190# there are comfort considerations… After the Outback I think I want something a little taller for ingress purposes, maybe a Forrester or CR-V. Of all my vehicles my Trooper was the most comfortable, sitting up like you’re on a park bench.
If I was buying new back in the mid ‘60s I would have probably been a Lemans or Fairlane kind of guy…
Let’s not forget the magazine writers of the day, in particular Brock Yates and Patrick Bedard of ‘Car and Driver.’ Every issue in the 70s and 80s was filled with bile, contempt, and derision for big American cars from these two gentlemen. Patrick Bedard once devoted an entire article to show his great disdain for the Gen 2 Monte Carlo. In 1974 there was an article entitled “Detroit’s Shattered Love Affair” which chronicled the break-up with the Big Car. Every Big Car write up in that publication was fraught with snide comments, cruel jokes, and constant threats that “big cars are going away for good.” Turns out they were right, it just took a lot longer than they expected (or wanted). Yes, the purchasing habits of women did drive the Big Car to its extinction, be we can’t discount the profound effect magazine editors, not just from Car and Driver, had in the accessory to the murder of these vehicles.
I included attached image of the “Love Affair” article.
But, in long run, they were dead wrong, since big trucks and SUV’s all over nowadays are replacements for the cars C&D bashed. They gleefully predicted in 79-80, ”we will all be in small Euro-like cars from now on”. As if!
The “big car” simply changed its styling and form.
The picture that accompanied the article from the same issue.
It was small cars that sucked big cars into extinction, right?
Each big car brings in a bucket of profits, so that the manufacturers can spend it refining a profitable small car. The belief that an Escort is an entry-point into Ford products meant that making $50 on an Escort was justifiable when that returning customer traded in their Escort for a Crown Victoria, which made Ford a lot of money. Small cars were loss-leaders for auto manufacturers. What little money was made putting a subcompact on the road, was made up when a Town Car hit the streets.
So, while big cars brought in the money, they didn’t need to be refined, improved or better that the previous year’s big car. By broughamification, you can get even more money out of a dated Torino by selling it as a Thunderbird, a Falcon by selling it as a Granada, or a Custom 500 by selling it as an LTD. Want more profits from a big car? Add more velour, deeper pile carpeting, a hood ornament, or an opera light, right?
Big cars didn’t improve. All the other smaller cars improved instead. Lee Iacocca struck a gold mine by putting cheap tacky plastic garbage on dated cars. He showed Ford how to make a silk purse Mustang II Ghia out of a sow’s ear Pinto. It was too hard to resist.
Big cars were milked for the dough they made. They got ignored until too late.
Lee Iacocca killed them.
He showed Detroit how to take obsolete cars and return them to profitability through marketing, badge engineering, opera windows, Rolls Royce grilles, Mercedes Benz wheel covers, Ghia badges, deep pile carpeting on lower door interiors, velour pillow top upholstery, while spending absolutely NOTHING on improving these cars.
1955 Ford becomes Falcon
Falcon becomes Mustang
Falcon becomes Maverick
Falcon becomes Granada
Falcon becomes Versailles
Falcon becomes Monarch
Pinto becomes Mustang II
Pinto becomes Bobcat
Pinto becomes Cruising Wagon
Detroit got fat and happy selling Iacocca-inspired auto rides. There was more time spent matching fake wood trim in a Pontiac dashboard, than trying to make the car handle better, brake quicker or give a driver great road handling.
I missed this when it was first written – wonderful article.
I remember my 5’3″ mother reversing our 1959 Plodge station wagon into a ditch when I was a child, so I agree with your premise. Our other car at the time was a 1958 Morris Minor convertible, which was much more manageable.
Post-divorce, my mother had a Dodge Colt wagon, a Honda Civic wagon, and finally a Toyota Celica. She definitely wasn’t in the market for a big car by choice.
Funny. I saw a ’58 Edsel Ranger in a parking lot about a week ago. Seemed kinda slender and dainty compared to what was around it. They seemed sizable when I was a kid. This from somone who rode around in a ’74 Impala as a kid…
Rummaging through some old magazines downstairs, I recently came across this short 3 pager entitled, “Who Killed the Station Wagon.” Summarizing it, the author blames minivans, SUVs, CAFE, and Pickup Trucks (and also Front wheel drive). Here are the images, they are from an out of print magazine called Canadian Classics, that was published out of PEI.
Page 2
Page 3
Just reread this again from it’s original publication. What a masterpiece of literature and history.
Personally I never liked driving the big cars as I came of age in the 70s. Compact/intermediate is much more my liking although I’m a tall person and comfort in smaller cars isn’t always easy. No wonder mom loved getting the ‘70 Torino to replace her ‘66 Ranch wagon….
Neatly parallels my folks car buying habits during the 70’s and 80’s. During the late 60’s and early 70’s they drove a huge 1968 Olds Delta 88 sedan in a very dark shade of green. That was replaced by a “smaller’ and mid size 1974 Chevy Chevelle sedan with a 350 2BBL V8 as opposed to the Delta’s 455 4BBL. The next car and worst we ever owned was a 1979 Fairmont sedan with the 200 six followed by a vastly superior 1982 Cutlass Supreme coupe and 1984 Cutlass Ciera sedan with the little 2.5 Iron Duke. Then dad downsized even further with a 1989 Ford Tempo and the an early 90’s Escort that after about 8 Winters saw it’s rear cave into the ground with rotted out rear shock towers.
After that it was back to larger cars with a 1999 Intrigue and Lumina followed by a 2001 Bonneville that mom actually drove. The Intrigue was replaced by a 2008 Impala and when dad passed away the Bonneville and Lumina were sold and the Impala gave way to a 2016 Cruze- mom’s current car that better fits in the garage and makes for a great little city commuter. The 08 Impala lives on in the hands of my best friend’s son and will be the last larger sized sedan in our family.
The article was indeed interesting especially considering the sheer volume of full sized sedans on the roads during the 70’s and 80’s. By the later half of the 80’s however it was very noticeable that the full sized sedan was being displaced by minivans, smaller wagons, the ever popular Taurus, pickups and the like. I wouldn’t mind having my 1990 Cadillac Brougham back but only with the superior 350 engine.
I don’t share Paul’s definition of the “big car.”
The big American “standard car” since WW II is arguably anything with a wheelbase of 111” or greater. The Plymouth brand defines this for us.
The 1946 Plymouth was a behemoth on a 118” wheelbase with SUV like height and proportions. 1962 was not the first great Plymouth downsizing. The first was the 1949 postwar design “Second Series,” which was offered in 111” and 117” wheelbases. Downsizing came again in 1953 with a single 114” inch wheelbase. Peak standard Plymouth was 1974 with a 124” wheelbase under the wagons.
If we define the standard Plymouth car as anything with a wheelbase 111” or greater, that includes any Plymouth built in the ‘70s except the Duster and Volare coupes and the Horizon! The final standard Plymouth car was the 1989 M body Fury with a 112” wheelbase – in showrooms with 119” wheelbase Voyager minivans! In 1974, Plymouth effectively offered the 1946, 1949, 1953, 1962 and 1974 cars in one showroom.
The 1975 CAFE laws directly targeted the standard car as defined by the EPA, but left Dodge RAM 3500 size loopholes for vans and trucks. After 1980, American manufacturers mostly froze development on standard cars as they were a dead-end. Creating a new successful standard car would literally lead to government fines, so “cars” moldered and became the province of older folks that mostly used them for the lighter errands of life after age 60.
The hard work of the standard Plymouth car was transferred to anything that could be labeled a van or truck, leading to regulatory absurdities such as the Chrysler PT Cruiser and the Dodge Ram pickup sharing showrooms as “trucks.”
The 2007 update to CAFE, with its “vehicle footprint” formula is now killing the “car,” period. The “car” category has become synonymous with “entry level vehicle,” leading to lower margins and the technology to keep cars compliant is too expensive to develop. The last round of fuel economy technology development in the “car” sector played a part in the decisions that led to the VW Dieselgate and Ford DPS6 transmission messes. With low margins, high development costs and mind-boggling legal expenses following rushed technology, it is 1980 again. Why bother with cars at all? Let them molder and die.
Which is unfortunate. Sure, my F-150 is a limousine like sedan, but our 2015 Dodge Dart, with its low center of gravity, small footprint and aerodynamic body is fun to run around in, and (perversely counter to the overall goals of CAFE) gets gas mileage a blocky compact Jeep can’t get with the same engine in it. It’s been great vehicle for my college kid, but Sergio Marchionne saw no logic in cars that don’t carry Alfa Romeo Giulia price points. And, public taste has been conditioned to see no logic in cars with high price points.
When Plymouth “cars” were workhorses….
Is it really that bad to like the big American cars from years past? I do and I don’t hate or marginalize women. Or are you (Paul or anyone) saying maybe I do and don’t know it? I think it would be great to have car styling aimed at me for a change instead of a “bigger picture” share. I think the 1970’s big cars are the best looking and I would love to drive to work in a Marquee or an LTD and see the expressions on peoples faces. Why not? They are beautiful and very different looking these days. Im at the point that I can even afford the gas for them. The problem is the rust. Thats the deal breaker.
P.s. Just because I’m a man doesn’t make me evil and petty sarcasm is not a way to prove it to the contrary.
Great article as always Paul.
> It doesn’t take a PhD in psychology or statistics to know that these final huge cars (the longest ever was to the 1973 Imperial, at 235.3″) were targeted solely at certain men and bought solely by them. This is the ultimate anti-woman car
I was looking through old car brochures online and the one for the 1966 Imperial was an eyeroll-inducer. It didn’t even seem to even cross the mind of the brochure writers that a woman would want to buy this car. First page shown below, and it goes on in this vein for several pages filled with verbiage like: “The man insists on a choice. He weighs the alternatives carefully. Then others abide by his decision.”
…and it gets worse. Clearly, a woman’s place is in the passenger seat (the page shown below is the only place in the brochure that the ladies are referenced at all). Women are portrayed in the brochure more as lifestyle accessories for the self-absorbed men these cars were aimed at than as actual people. A second Imperial brochure was produced that year, a more typical booklet showing and describing features of the car. I can’t find any publication dates to know for sure in which order they were printed, but I have to believe the original brochure rubbed some buyers the wrong way and a revamped pamphlet took its place.
You have to realize that in 1966, the wife referred to in the ad, would have had to have her husband’s permission to legally obtain a credit card. Context is everything with this ad.
That is pretty stunning but does it really make you roll your eyes? It is a brochure targeting a specific demographic is it not? Remember, if there was a large enough market to target a group that loved to torture cute puppies, the car companies would be all over it in the name of making a buck and having a good quarter. Its just exploitation of a potential market even if we disagree with the (assumed) beliefs of the target audience.
There is a 1978 Chrysler New Yorker for sale in my area(Queens) if i had a garage to park it…….i would gladly buy it $2700. It looks great not concours,but great looking daily driver. Button tuffed leather seats and all. I agree with Ted………these cars standout and look great,those who don’t like these cars are basically blue pilled manginas. These cars represent our history and the richness of our country in better times. Whats out there now is look alike cars(you have been assimilated)i can afford almost any new car out now………………………i choose to use my 98 Ford escort and 01 BMW 330xi. At some point(when i get out of NYC)I will be looking for a 1st gen Cadillac Seville and would love to find a 74 Bel Air or 2nd gen Monte.
This is easily the best of 2019, explained completely what happened to the big American RWD car. I refer others to it to increase their understanding of those times and events. Thank you.
I was born in 79 and all the cars i grew up with were FWD. My first 4 cars were front wheel drive.
So when it came time to replace my w body regal i wanted something different. I wanted RWD and it was 2010…the crown vic was gonna be gone soon so given they were cheap reliable and rwd i decided to gave the last big bof rwd american car a try and got a grand marquis. I also wanted to try a type of car that everyone once had but was almost extinct.
So conclusuon….it was a great car with awesone utility…yes the wife hated to drive it but it was a awesome family car and took us and the 2 kids everywhere…but fact is it provided the same comfort and utility as a honda crv…or an A body wagon if it was 1985 (my parents family hauler). Fact is..these cars were not bad but not practical designs which is why theyre gone now. As for my grand marquis it gave me 7 reliable years but lost its title as family hauler to a 2016 odyssey after 5 years and replaced with an accord after 7 years.
I somehow missed this the first time around. Have to say out of the comments the Eddiesaurus was priceless.
I curse everyone and everything that took away the big cars. I had a hard time getting used to panther plàtform cars after decades of 70s Ford and Lincoln barges. I certainly don’t want or like anything any smaller and like jp said you can’t buy what isn’t offered. I really thing that the second round of downsizing killed big cars. The 85 Cadillac and olds 98 and Electra made people feel that they were being robbed and trying to pass off a Fairmont sized car as full sized made people go buy trucks or SUVs instead of baby fulll sized cars that cost more and broke down more so in effect you got a bland penalty box that cost more to buy and own and the gas savings didn’t justify it. I would have gone to trucks too except I can work on my elderly Lincoln cars. And the other thing is with out size and all cars full of technology, a luxury brand is not justified
This ad isn’t anti-woman, it is pro-gentleman. 50 years ago men weren’t told that their sex was toxic to society. Instead, they celebrated masculinity and encouraged chivalry.
This fantastic write-up was the best posting of 2019.
In my family, we seemed to go the other way…my Dad started out with a standard sized (but stripper) car, he bought a new 1956 Plymouth Plaza with no options….before he married my Mother. After we were born (twins) they actually downsized in a way, they bought 2 Rambler Wagons (they were smaller than the Plymouth but the wagon gave them cargo capacity that the Plymouth lacked). By the mid-60’s my Dad was actually up-sizing (still a 1 car family) when we bought a ’65 F85 Wagon…and by the late 60’s he’d gone back to full sized wagon (’69 Country Squire) which they bought several similar iterations of.
However, like a lot of families, mine became a 2 car family probably in 1966 when my Dad bought a ’59 Beetle….then a new ’68 Renault R10. That was their pattern back then, always had a large wagon and a small (commuter) car. However, note that my 5’0″ Mother always drove the larger vehicle once they were a 2 car family, and my 5’11 230 lb Father drove the smaller car. My Mother really didn’t like driving large cars, but that’s what she had available, and for longer trips we did enjoy having a large car…1 large car isn’t really the same as having 2 smaller cars. And as others state, there are plenty of women who prefer to drive larger vehicles…so even though the trend was to smaller cars, and the trend was prior to gas prices getting higher, I don’t think it was strictly women, strictly gas prices, nor strictly less expensive (smaller) cars that caused this, though undoubtedly each had some effect.
One thing not mentioned was the number of single driver (no passenger) vehicles…though it is impossible to quantify this, I would expect that this number has gotten larger as time went on…which has a number of influences on car size…with single driver, of course you don’t need to have as large a vehicle (though of course you can). The number of cars goes way up, since each driver can and does have at least one car (sometimes more than one) available. Fewer people share rides, either carpooling, taking public transportation, or hitch hiking. To me, this is likely due to increased affluence more than anything. More money doesn’t necessarily mean larger (or more expensive) cars, it may just mean more of them, and that each driver in the family now has access to their own car…less sharing. To me, this seems to be the more likely trend, making large cars more “optional” (how often do large numbers of people occupy the same vehicle at the same time…I’d argue that it happens less than in the past).
I think that half the reason “full sized” cars lost so much market share after the mid 1950s is that the smallest of the ’55s, especially the Chevy and Ford, were just not that big, and would have been called “mid sized” any time between 1965 and 1976. Some people, no doubt, have always splurged to get something they don’t need but looks cool in their driveway; I drove early-1970s Cadillacs for a few years after getting my license and really enjoyed the sight of that long hood in the front and subtle fins in the back; it was like being in a parade. Of course, the opposite of that was when my parents test drove a 1975 Nova and decided to get a Malibu only because I could not fit in the back of the cramped Nova, with so much of its adequate wheelbase under the hood; I suspect that if they had been in a Ford or Dodge dealership, they’d have had no problem getting a 4 door Maverick or Dart, which seemed to have just enough room to fit a 5′ 10″ 13yo in the back. Later, when they got a Citation, I had no problem fitting in the back, so they were always looking for something that was just big enough. I’ll bet that a lot of people realized in the 1960s that a mid-sized or compact car was just big enough for their needs, the same way the “full sized” 1955 Chevy seemed to be. They were probably not the sort of people who fueled the “personal luxury” boom of the 1970s, with the remarkable Lincoln Mark V offering mid sized room an a package just 3″ shorter than a Cadillac Fleetwood; it was amazing that such cars sold so well between two fuel crises. It was a way of telling the world “I can afford a gas guzzler, but I don’t need the space”. It sounds incredibly gouache, but people who bought big SUVs in place of more practical minivans in the 1990s, just to use them as station wagons, were also blowing boatloads of money to impress the neighbors. Whatever becomes of the car market, human nature will always run the gamut from calculated practicality to brash showmanship.
The replacement vehicle for the full size sedan are 4 door full-size pickups. Then, larger SUV’s.
Started when F-Series hit #1 selling vehicle. Sure, we have gas crises, but then always back to biggies when gas goes down.
Predictions in 1979-80 by Buff book writers that “all US drivers will be in sub/compacts from now on”, didn’t come true. The critically acclaimed Honda Accord, once called ‘the perfect car’ has fallen from top sales charts. And certainly isn’t a ‘proper small car’ anymore.
Also, from post above:
“1975 CAFE laws directly targeted the standard car as defined by the EPA, but left Dodge RAM 3500 size loopholes for vans and trucks.”
Our family home, out in the suburbs, circa 1968.
I was born in 1957, firstborn.. My father had a 1952 Pontiac Chieftain that he traded on a 1957 Buick Century.. My sister was born in 1961. In 1964, he got a Cadillac Coupe de Ville, my mother inherited the Buick.. We were four person plus a dog family.. We took some cross country vacations to national parks, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, etc.. That was kind of mandatory that era.. I don’t think that sort of thing even exists anymore. In 1969, Papa got another Cadillac Coupe de Ville, Mom got the 1964.. Papa preferred Cadillacs. He said they were safer, and better built. The assembly lines moved slower, and a Cadillac with 100,000 miles was just nicely broken in. He felt it paid to buy quality. He got another Cadillac Coupe in 1977, with the downsizing, he felt the early ’70s versions were bloated. Mom got the 1969, and I inherited the 1964 Coupe.