American Automotive

The 50s and 60s were the golden age of the American automotive industry. In the 50s you drove a rocket s But in the 70s it suddenly went all down What happened? What caused t And did the industry finally lost its worldwide dominance? Welcome everyone to episode 20 of the Automotive And there was a time when American cars were regarded as the leaders of the world. What was considered a standard feature for an American was considered a luxury option almost anywhere else. Everyt Here in Europe you had your standard car, your European luxury car and then you had an American car. Even if it was a base level Ford you still drove somet The land of good and plenty. T See, the big American car is built on the premise that gas prices were low or will always be lower. A dangerous bet and a shocking short term vision instead of long term, especially if your whole range of models are just big cars with gas guzzling V8 engines. T In short, it comes down to t Congratulations General Motors. Hello, I What inspired you to create even bigger and less fuel efficient cars than the year before? Money. Jokes aside, American cars grew in the 60s with even bigger engines and I can understand, never change a winning team. If people want big cars why not make them bigger than the year before? An often quoted example is your standard Chevrolet Caprice of the early 70s. The standard engine was a 350 cubic inch or 5. 7 liter V8 and the largest engine available was a 454 cubic inch or 7. 5 liters. Over at Cadillac you could get a 500 cubic inch or 8. 2 liter V8, 8. 2 liters. Each cylinder is larger in displacement than the entire engine block of a basic mini. How big is your engine? 5. 7 liters. 7 liter V8 motor. 160 horsepower in the Buick. It's 200 horsepower, OK. How do they get so few horsepower from a V8 motor? Well that's what we're going to find out. The early 70s land yachts were the ultimate result of a loving relationship between cons But what if? And maybe I'm saying somet And what if suddenly the gas prices weren't so low anymore? Introducing the oil crisis of 73. The oil crisis was set up by OPEC, an organization of era petrole Among other reasons they were not all too happy about the current fuel price and decided to cut back oil production and as a result gas prices skyrocketed, especially over in America. The oil crisis is what kickstarted the whole malaise era, but it was already a long time coming. The later 60s were t Back then with the student and hippie protests, the public image slowly shifted and more people became concerned about such vulgarities By the early 70s the happy The oil crisis was the wake up call and boy were American car manufacturers in for a ride. Because where as an average American cons Oh yeah, from the rest of the world. Look the oil crisis also had an effect on European and Asian countries. My country had carless Sundays as a drastic measure, but European and Asian cars always had been a lot smaller and fuel efficient, especially compared to American cars. They never suffered as much as American cars did. With the Volkswagen Beetle, the symbol of counterculture and the exact opposite of a standard American car as their captain, foreign imports started to trickle in more and more. Not only from Europe, but also from Asia. One news report shows that a man traded in his big Chrysler station wagon for a much smaller Mazda station wagon with the promise that the Mazda cuts the fuel cons T Somet Luckily, I set up a guide of five steps the American automotive industry took to combat the foreign competition and all these sudden changes and to survive the malaise era. Step n The first step the American auto industry took is to offer competition to the ever-growing foreign import market by launc They thought, well we pulled this trick from 10 years before with cars But the compact cars of the early 60s had grown into mid-size models by the early 70s. And t For European standards, it'still huge. So a new generation of compact cars were created. And these cars really show that Americans and small cars are a rocky relations To keep t You have General Motors, Ford Motor Company and the Chrysler Corporation and these three are better known as the Big Three. And then you had AMC, the last independent car maker. Let's have a look. We start off with Chrysler and we're done. Interestingly enough, Chrysler did not come up with an in-house compact car, mostly because of financial reasons. In fact, they kept on making full-size cars all throughout the early 70s Chrysler still had the Plymouth Valiant and the Dodge Dart, but these were mid-sizers and not true compacts. But to be fair, they saw quite well. Chrysler called in cars from overseas, Dodge did the same t But more on t Next up is Ford. Ford came up with the Ford Pinto. Initially a great car. It really was the type of car American cons Literally. See, the Ford Pinto was a rush job. Through time and cost-cutting measures, the car had some design flaws. The gas tank would rupture and the leaking fuel could ignite and burn. The movie Top Secret made a joke out of t But wait, it gets worse. Ford had two choices to fix they could spend some extra dollars on every Pinto to reposition the fuel tank and add some protective rubber lining, solving the problem of sudden combustion. Or they could keep the cars the way they are and just pay the money of legal fees because of the lawsuits of some of the burned victims. Guess w Congratulations Ford Motor Company! Hello! I What inspired you to not fix the Pinto and let people burn and die instead? Money! That's right. Ford calculated that the total cost of legal fees was a lot lower than the total cost of modifying all their ve Next up is General Motors and General Motors came up with the Chevrolet Vega and later on the Chevrolet Chevette. If mediocrity was a car, the Vega would be it. The car started out with some good intentions like being technologically a little more advanced than usual with an engine block made from al But after I'll give you a moment to take a look. By 1972, two years after the introduction, six out of seven vegas were subject of a recall. It's almost Standard stuff that was staking for granted for over 50 years simply broke down on t Last one left is AMC. Ah, now you see AMC was somewhat prepared for t With the creation of AMC in the late 50s, they already realized that they were never going to win against the big three in the full size car department and so AMC focused a bit more on midsize and smaller cars waiting for something AMC came up with two compact cars w The first one is the AMC Gremlin. The Gremlin features a rather interesting design. AMC was always a little tight on money so to cut down development costs they cut down the car. Literally, you're looking at an AMC Hornet with the rear cut off and voila, you got yourself at Gremlin. The other one is the AMC Pacer, a car that has European compactness but still preserves traditional American car values. Small on the outside but big on the inside. T It was as wide as a Rolls Royce or a Cadillac. T Huge windows and a tall greenhouse led to a bubble What really didn't help was that acres of glass added quite some extra weight to the car and with either an inline six or a V8, the whole intended purpose of making a fuel efficient car was just thrown out of the window. Still the car was quite successful and despite its quirky design seen as an average grocery gatherer in the 70s but gained a cult following in the coming decades and received nicknames Step n Call for backup. I hear you t GM at Opaul and Vauxhall in Europe, Ford had its own European models and Chrysler had controlling interest in the British Roots Group. Why didn'they import the European models? Oh they did but it was only a temporary solution. Ford for instance sold the European Ford Capri as the Mercury Capri in the States. As mentioned before, Chrysler went on to sell the First of all, every foreign car they sold was at the expense of their own domestic models w I mean, I get it, every car sold counts but it should not destroy the sales of your own American models. Second is that in order to compete against Asian quality cars, European cars weren't really the best choice either. Not only American cars were bad, quality wise, Europe also had some bad apples as well. Beautiful example is the And last, the most important reason was the value of the dollar which pl Suddenly, these European cars became rather expensive to import to the US and they became very hard to sell as a cheap alternative when the sales price was anyt Step n Luxury is king. If you make a car that is inferior to the competition in terms of safety, build quality, power, emissions and fuel cons Luxury. When the 50s were all about design and the 60s all about horsepower, I guess you can say the 70s were all about luxury. Luxury became somewhat of a mass-market t What does luxury mean to the average American car maker? Two t N The rise of the personal luxury car. These cars looked expensive, were expensive but were inexpensive to make, making them a nice, low effort, Unsellable, muscle and pony cars were converted to become personal luxury cars. I have an entire episode waiting for you that goes into the And n The rise of the luxury version of standard models. T Chevrolet followed with the Chevrolet Caprice, a luxury version of the top trim Chevrolet Impala. Plemeth turned up with the Plemeth VIP, a luxury version of the Plemeth Furey and AMC turned up with the AMC Ambassador DPL, a luxury version of their flags These were entry level luxury versions that in some way had to compete with the luxury land yachts of those days Luxury for the masses, so to speak. That kind of kills the exclusivity of luxury, doesn't it? It's just a cheap way to make cars look more expensive without really going the extra mile to make them actually more expensive. This was just another way to make a quick buck, but what it really is, is trying to divert attention by not dealing with the problems that are right in front of you, like making a good economy car or, Step n Pass the blame. Just look it up. I put a link in the description that leads to a little interesting doc In this doc And in See all those cars. Count how many foreign cars you see. And yes, looking at the street scenes, it is full of domestic car manufacturers and maybe a lost Volkswagen Beetle here and there. And then he proceeds to show you images of the present day, the 1970s, street scenes. And he continues to say, Look at it now. Count how many foreign cars you see. And yes, when you look at it, you see still a bunch of American cars, but a lot more Asian cars, foreign imports. The doc And a deep voice continues saying, Here they are. S Coming in every day. The doc Why don't you buy American made cars? Be proud of your country. Buy American. And that is the moral of the story, really. The t It is not our fault as American car manufacturers that you are keep on buying quality products from Asia. It is your fault as cons It is your fault that we see so many Asian cars on the road. You keep on buying them. And I'm just surprised the man doesn't even mention Pearl Harbor And now you're buying cars from them? Okay, just let's just say that I find it really interesting that patriotism is the only t Step n Write it out. So, we tried and failed to make an economy car. We then tried to divert attention with cheap luxury. We then tried to blame the customer for not buying our cars. What is left? Well, just write t And that's what I did. The Asian invasion, as I But that's the story for another time. T What caused it and how did American car makers immediately react to it? Roughly the years 1970, 1975. Next part is really going into the darker years of the Malaezerra, roughly 1975, 1985. And boy, do I have some more juicy examples waiting for you.