American Automotive

The 1950s and 1960s were the golden age of the American automotive industry. In the 1950s, it drove a rocket over wheels and in the 1960s, a power over wheels. But in the 1970s, suddenly everyt What happened? What caused t And finally, the industry lost its world domain? Welcome all to the episode 20 of the series about the And there was an era in w Everyt Here in Europe, you had your standard car, your European luxury car, and then you had american car. Although it was a basic Ford, you were still driving somet T Look, the great American car is built on the premise that the price of the gasoline were low, or they would always be low. A dangerous bet and a shocking vision in the short term instead of in the long term, especially if your range of models are simply large, t In s Congratulations General Motors. Hello, I like the money, a sign of opening up, what inspired you to create cars even bigger and with less fuel cons The money, jokes aside, American cars grew in the 60s with even bigger engines. And I can understand it, you never change to a winning team. If people want large cars, why not make them bigger than the previous year? An example that is often mentioned is the Chevrolet Capri Standard of the 70s. The standard engine was a 5. 7L or 350 cubic inches V8, and the largest engine available was a 7. 5L or 454 cubic inches V8. In Cadillac, you could get a V8 of 8. 2L or 500 cubic inches. 8. 2L each cylinder has a larger cylinder than the entire engine block of a mini-basic. A bigger engine. 5. 7L, 7LV8 plus D, 160 horsepower in the wiki. They are 200 horsepower. Okay, how do they get such a few horsepower in a V8 engine? Well, that's what we're going to find out. The earthen yachts from the early 1970s were the final result of a love relationship between cons But yes, and maybe I'm saying a crazy one, suddenly the gas prices were no longer so low? Here we have the oil crisis of the 73. The oil crisis was caused by the OPEP, an Arab country-exporting oil organization. Among other reasons, they were not very happy with the current fuel price, and they decided to cut the production of oil, w The oil crisis was what triggered the whole era of the disaster, but it was already seen to come from time to time. The last years of the 60s were t At that time, with student protests and At the beginning of the 1970s, happy 60s The oil crisis was the so-called attention and the American car manufacturers put their hands on the work. Because, as average American cons Ah, yes, in the rest of the world. Look, the oil crisis also affected European and Asian countries. In my country, on Sundays without cars it was a drastic measure, but European and Asian cars had always been much smaller and under cons They never suffered as much as the United States cars. With the Volkswagen Beetle, symbol of counterculture, and all the opposite of a standard American car as captain, foreign imports began to arrive more and more, not only in Europe, but also in Asia. A news shows that a man changed his big Chrysler truck for a much smaller Mazda truck with the promise that the Mazda would reduce fuel cons There was to be somet Luckily, I have made a guide of five steps that the American automotive industry took to combat foreign competition in all these sudden changes and the Malaya era survived. Step n The first step that the American automotive industry took was to offer competition to the growing market of foreign imports, launc They thought, well, we already did this trick about ten years ago with cars We can do it again, but the compact cars from the early 60s had become medi And we are talking about medi For European standards, they are still huge. So a new generation of compact cars was created. And these cars show that the United States and small cars have a difficult relations To simplify t You have General Motors, Ford Motor Company, and Chrysler Corporation. And these three are more known as the three big ones. And then there was AMC, the last independent car manufacturer. Let's take a look. We start with Chrysler and that's it. Interestingly, Chrysler did not get a compact car from its own manufacture, especially for economic reasons. In fact, they continued to manufacture cars of complete size throughout the first years of the 70s, as if there was no fuel crisis. Chrysler still had the Plymouth Valiant and the Dodge Dart, but they were medi But, to be fair, they sold quite well. Chrysler resorted to foreign cars Dodge did the same with the new Dodge Colt, a Mitsubis But we will talk about t Ford presented Ford Pinto. At first, a big car. It was really the kind of car that the American cons Literally. Look, Ford Pinto was a hard work. Thanks to the reduced cost and time, the car had some design defects, as if it could explode if it received a blow from be The gasoline depot would break and the fuel that escaped could burn and burn. The Top Secret movie made a joke about t But when you see the images of the real tests, it becomes much more disturbing. But wait, the worst they could spend some extra money on each Pinto to reposition the fuel deposit and add a rubber protection coating that would solve the problem of sudden combustion. Or they could leave the cars as they were and pay only the money from legal owners due to the demands of some of the burned victims. Guess what option they chose. Congratulations Ford Motor Company. Hello, I Sign of opening up. What inspired you not to fix the car and let people burn and die? Money. That's right. Ford calculated that the total cost of legal owners was much less than the total cost of modifying all their ve The next is General Motors. And General Motors presented Chevrolet Vega and later Chevrolet Chebet. If the mediocrity were a car, it would be the Vega. The car started with some good intentions, as being technologically a little more advanced than usual with a engine block made of al And, as it was expected, it received some prizes from the engine press. But after one or two years, it began to reach an endless n I'll give you a moment so you can see it. In 1972, two years after its introduction, six of the seven Vegas were an object of a market withdrawal. It was almost as if GM was suffering from Alzheimer's and had completely forgotten how to manufacture a car. The standard the last t Ah, now that AMC was somet So AMC focused a little more on medi AMC took two compact cars, w The first is the AMC Gremlin. The Gremlin has a fairly interesting design and AMC always had a little money in it. So to reduce the cost of development, they cut the car. Literally, you are seeing an AMC Hornet with the back cut and ready, you have a Gremlin. The other is the AMC Pacer, a car that has European capacity, but that still preserves the traditional values u200bu200bof American cars. Small on the outside, but large on the inside. T It was as wide as a Rolls Royce or Cadillac. T Huge windows and a What did not help at all was that the glass sectors added a lot of extra weight to the car, and both with a 6-cylinder engine on the line as with a V8, the entire purpose of making a car with fuel cons Still, the car was quite successful and, despite its peculiar design, it was considered a medi Step n I hear you t GM had Uphold and Volkswagen in Europe. Ford had its own European models, and Chrysler had a majority participation in British Roots Group. Why didn't European models matter? Yes, they did, but it was just a temporary solution. Ford, for example, sold the Ford Capri European as Mercury Capri in the United States, as mentioned before, Chrysler sold the First of all, each foreign car that they sold made it expensive for their own national models, w I mean, I understand, each car sold counts, but it should not destroy the sales of its own American models. Second, to compete with Asian quality cars, European cars were not really the best option. Not only American cars were of poor quality, Europe also had some rotten apples. A beautiful example is the And finally, the most important reason was the value of the dollar, w Suddenly, these European cars became quite expensive to import, and they became very difficult to sell as a cheap alternative when the sale price was all the less cheap. Step n luxury is the king. If you make a car that is inferior to competition in terms of safety, manufacturing quality, power, emissions and fuel cons luxury. When in the 1950s everyt luxury became something Two t First of all, the luxury cars' luxury cars. These cars seemed expensive, they were, but they were cheap to manufacture, w The muscle cars and the pony cars that did not sell became personal luxury cars. I have an entire episode waiting for you to talk about the story of the personal luxury car, so we will not cover it right now. And n the luxury version of the standard models. T Chevrolet followed them with the Chevrolet Capris, a luxury version of the Chevrolet Impala of Plymouth introduced the Plymouth VIP, a luxury version of the Plymouth Fury. And AMC presented the AMC Ambassador DPL, a luxury version of its star model, the Ambassador. These were luxury versions of entry-level luxury that somehow had to compete with the land yachts of luxury of those days, luxury for the masses, well, that ends with the exclusivity of luxury, no? It is only a cheap way to make cars look more expensive without making an additional effort so that they are more expensive. This was just another way to earn money quickly, but what really is trying to distract attention from the problems you have in front of you, how to make a good car or, Step n Look for it. I put a link in the description that leads to a slightly interesting doc In this doc And yes, when you observe street scenes, it is full of national car manufacturers and perhaps some Volkswagen Scarab lost here and there. And then he proceeds to show images of the present-day street scenes of the 1970s decade and continues saying, look at it now. How many foreign cars do you see? And yes, when you observe it, you still see a lot of American cars, but many more Asian cars, foreign imported cars. Then the doc Every day a cargo comes after another. The doc Why don't you buy American cars? Feel proud of your country. Buy American products and that is the moral of In reality, I mean to say the truth. It is not our fault as car manufacturers that you continue to buy products of quality in Asia. It is your fault as cons It is your fault that we see so many Asian cars on the road. You keep buying them and I am surprised that the man does not even mention Pearl Harbor. As if we used to fight against these people 30 years ago and now you buy cars. Okay, let'say it seems very interesting to me that patriotism is the only t Step n So we try and fail in the manufacture of an economic car. Then we try to divert attention with cheap luxury. Then we try to blame the client for not buying our cars. What is left? Well, I guess I'll just write the Asian invasion, as I And from there, the American automotive industry did not But that's a story for another moment. T Approximately the years 1970 and 1975. The next part is really included in the darkest years of Malaya Era, approximately 1975 and 1985. And go if I have more examples of players waiting for you.