It’s funny how the Trans Am “Thunderchicken” theme spread around to other cars, this Mustang with its trippy snake and the Chevrolet Monza Spider with it’s own big spider decal on the hood. Mercury should have done one with the Cougar.
Much has been written about the end of the 60’s muscle car era and the low HP 70’s motors, to the point it’s getting kind of old to me.
Yeah, we know all about EPA regs, but look at the motors in today’s cars pulling 300 net hp, with clean tailpipes. It is not as if the world ended with Net HP ratings, and smog equipment.
The world might not have ended but, man, it sure slowed down.
That’s the biggest thing to take away from that photo and one has to wonder how differently things might have been if forces outside the auto industry hadn’t conspired to drastically alter the way cars were required to be built in the mid to late seventies. There were a few interior safety features required in 1967 (padded dash, seat belts, etc.) but regulations largely stayed out of the engine compartment and the exterior.
That sure wasn’t the case in 1978. The 5mph bumpers, alone, had a drastic impact on styling. Coupled with dramatic auto insurance rate and gas price increases, as well as new, stringent EPA regs, it’s no wonder the Japanese were able to get such a foothold in the auto industry during that time.
The Japanese had the same regulations and restrictions. It’s not like they only applied to American cars. Their response was with engineers instead of lawyers.
CAFE gave the Japanese the market. They had to meet emissions standards (as well as safety standards)yes, but they DID NOT have to figure out how to take a lineup of 8mpg tanks the public was still willfully buying and suddenly double their efficiency.
CAFE did not go into effect until 1978, so the MII’s existence had nothing to do with CAFE.
Anyway, it’s not nearly as simple as that. By 1980 or so when CAFE really started making a more substantial impact (20 mpg for passenger cars), folks had ZERO interest in buying 8 mpg barges, thanks to a huge run-up in gas prices.
Detroit built small cars back then too; the issue is whether they were as well built as the Japanese cars. The consensus on this issue was decided a long time ago.
XR7Matt
Posted May 22, 2014 at 8:31 PM
CAFE didn’t go into effect right away but it was a reality for automakers since the law was passed in 1975. Detroit HAD to divert resources into meeting those targets, the Japanese didn’t.
I never said the MII had anything to do with CAFE, I was retorting to the notion that the Japanese succeeded and excelled on an even playing field, which just isn’t the case.
It was an even playing field. Detroit chose to play the game their way, by spewing out half baked crap like the X-Bodies. Or unnecessarily ugly, stunted cars like the E-Bodies of 1986. And a whole lot of other endless mistakes.
If what GM (and some of the others) had built their new smaller cars to the level of quality that the Japanese did, things likely wouldn’t have turned out so bad.
But why waste my breath? Detroit apologists like you will forever find excuses why things turned out as they did. The Japanese succeeded for one reason: their cars were on average of higher quality and more reliable. That’s an undisputed fact. Detroit learned that painful lesson too late. That was the essence of the problem. Finding excuses after the fact is just trying to re-write history.
All of the Japanese (except for Honda) had to tool up for all-new FWD cars too, just like Detroit. But almost all of them were solid from day one.
XR7Matt
Posted May 22, 2014 at 10:19 PM
No law demanded transverse FWD layouts, that layout rose to prominence primarily for it’s packaging and wet traction advantages much more than it’s fuel efficiency gains(the gains that are there primarily come from hand and hand engineering advancements more than the inherent efficiency of the layout). As far as I know no RWD subcompact from anyone was paying CAFE fines by 1980, so clearly Honda’s move to it was to separate themselves from the herd, and the rest followed suit, lest be damned as old tech.
As for the playing field, the Japanese didn’t sell any cars in the US that were bigger than the US definition of a subcompact throughout the 70s, which was pretty much the unspoken model of a CAFE car. Detroit made some considerable piles in that segment, no one will argue that, but their bread and butter were still with cars that could not be sold without fines by 1980 and the choice was to either drop those models or heavily redesign them, In other words risk losing huge amounts of customers by offering a few all new compacts(albiet much more well designed/built ones due to the extra development dollars) or spread themselves very thin by limping to the barn with hastily developed stubby cars in effort to retain a familiar full model lineup.
I’m definitely not apologizing for those end products(but thanks for the label) but you have got to see that there was a considerable advantage for the Japanese who were well within compliance with the law and general circumstances from the start, and only really had to keep up what they were already good at to succeed and grow. Not everyone wanted(or wants) a small car, even with expensive gas. I may be biased more towards American cars but clearly you are biased towards small cars, and frankly in a close minded way. The Japanese were lean in both the size of their cars and the size of their lineups, they got very good at building small cars because that’s all they ever built. Today is where the playing field is level, who will succeed and who will falter is much more blurred now with cookie cutter model lineups from all automakers, back in the late 70s though you could really spot the dinosaurs.
The Japanese also easily embraced W. Edwards Deming philosophy to improving production techniques. ( Unfortunately, the US companies were mired in their respective apathy and half-assed attempts to downsizing.) Couple that with Japan actively working to limit engine size at the time to conserve fuel (years of fuel rationing in postwar Japan) allowed their cars to be readily embraced during the fuel crunch. Essentially, Toyota/Honda/Datsun worked on perfecting 2 platforms at the time and their respective 4 cylinder engines were light years ahead of the US in reliability and refinement at a pivotal time.
Actually, what we need is less of an attitude of “protect me” and a lot more of the “take a chance and let fly” attitude that was prevalent in the 50’s and 60’s. We’ve numbed down our society into a bunch of scared little children who only probably get out of bed in the morning because they realize that they could suffocate in their bed clothes if they pull them too tightly over their heads.
Life isn’t meant to be safe. Life is meant to be interesting. And a learning experience. And the sum total of all those daily risks that, at one time, we happily surmounted.
Scott McPherson (aka NZ Skyliner)
Posted May 22, 2014 at 5:40 PM
Amen, brilliantly put.
Lee Wilcox
Posted May 22, 2014 at 6:18 PM
We need a like button. I would punch it right now.
Adam
Posted May 22, 2014 at 6:46 PM
indeed
gottacook
Posted May 22, 2014 at 7:16 PM
I take risks too, but safer risks (if you will) than I used to take – intellectual rather than physical. For instance, I drove a 1966 Bonneville convertible for 17 years; although I did put radial tires on it, it had drum brakes all around and didn’t have even an energy-absorbing steering column among its safety equipment. And in the early 1980s I rode a bicycle – an old black English one with fenders and an enclosed three-speed hub – up and down Broad Street in Philadelphia, alongside dense traffic, without a helmet. Any risk I take today will be one that doesn’t involve an increased chance of brain injury, chest impalement, etc.
As for the “attitude” of the 1950s and ’60s, in domestic automotive terms this meant jets and rockets, first as moldings and sheet-metal stampings along the sides, then as pointy tailfins. How easy it is to see that a pointy car fin could poke someone; this is addressed in Unsafe at Any Speed. This doesn’t mean that I endorse the other extreme – for example, the high front end of any car also sold in the European market; I like a low cowl – but making cars without metal protrusions is as self-evidently a good thing as reducing urban air pollution from vehicles; my old Bonneville’s emissions control equipment consisted of a PCV valve.
XR7Matt
Posted May 22, 2014 at 8:48 PM
I hate to sound callous but how many people actually were severely hurt or killed directly by jet age “protrusions” in the real world? I’ve heard a lot of grizzly stories from my grandparents but not one of them involved little billy getting puncture wounds from a 59 Cadillac.
Life can be safer and interesting. It’s not an either-or proposition. I’m glad it is safer. It’s easy for those of us who survived to gloat, but a lot of folks unnecessarily lost their lives due to unsafe cars (and other products).
When a drunk crosses the center line and plows into you, no one asked you if you wanted to take on risks like that or not. If folks want to take risks, they still can, and do, but generally not so much at the expense of those who would prefer not to. The non-risk takers also have a right to be protected from the risk takers. But it took a lot of legislation for that to happen.
Go take your risks on the race track, or sky diving, or bungee jumping…but I’d prefer not to take a risk of someone plowing into me unnecessarily. Autonomous cars for drunk/bad drivers? Bring it on.
gottacook
Posted May 22, 2014 at 10:51 PM
Paul – I don’t think you meant “a lot of unnecessary folks lost their lives”; if the folks themselves were unnecessary, it would’ve been no great loss. Perhaps “a lot of folks unnecessarily lost their lives”?
It’s the emissions stuff I’m glad for. There’s simply no other way to clean up tailpipe emissions than strong, top-down regulation – not enough value to the individual customer – and I’m under no delusions that I’d be able to function in a world where present-day numbers of cars belched out pre-EPA levels of pollution and our air looked like China’s.
XR7Matt
Posted May 22, 2014 at 8:51 PM
I agree on emissions, ultimately I think that’s the only regulation that directly effects the end product that I care for. The rest, efficiency and safety, are up to me as a consumer.
I would be willing to drive just about any Mustang. I think the were innovative and the concept proved to be durable. The picture above shows why they were successful. They were adaptable. The 86 5.0, along with the GN Buicks were groundbreaking IMO. I spent a lot of years as a bachelor and as a sailor. The mustang would have served me as well as the VWs and Pickups that I did drive.
Having said that, for some reason I didn’t ever buy one. I don’t think I know why because I sure turned into a fan.
I’ll take the 60s Mustang.I’ve got an unhealthy interest in go faster striped 70s muscle cars since I saw big brother’s holiday snaps of a Volare Roadrunner.
..the ’69 Fastback would have to be the hipper of the two for a collector ..’69 Mach 1 is the one to die for as it was the last year with a non-collapsible steering column n’est-ce pas?
The Mustang II was not vintage stuff, but for anyone who has ever built a hot rod or updated an old front suspension, the Mustang II lives on in thousands and thousands front suspensions of very cool cars
This comparison shows the difference between the minimalist sixties and the excess of the seventies just in general design. Geez, it really was the decade the country got high and boogied.
The snake on the hood I suppose was marketing against the chicken on the hood of the TransAm. I was alive but grew up in the eighties. Not a good decade for car design but it wasn’t as crazy as the previous decade. Kinda like Detroit had just gotten out of rehab.
As far as the personal safety thing goes, both the sixties and the seventies drunks were considered funny, starting in the eighties they were considered a menace to society. I remembered as a kid there was a certain intersection that had signs knocked down on Monday morning. My parents laughed about “silly drunks need to take a different way home’. Now most of the bars and liquor stores have closed in this area because of MADD.
A few comments need to be made about the horsepower ratings. Horsepower did decrease in the early 70’s, partly due to net vs gross ratings. But engines were detuned for lead free lower octane fuel. Horsepower is a function of the torque and engine speed. The detuning resulted in the peak horsepower at lower engine RPM’s. Consider an engine with the torque of 200 lb-ft at the peak horsepower:
200 lb-ft @4000 RPM’s = 152 HP
200 lb-ft @5000 RPM’s = 190 HP
200 lb-ft @6000 RPM’s = 228 HP
In the late sixties engines could be tuned to peak at 5000 RPM’s. Those engines after 1970 peaked nearer 4000 RPMs. With current OHC VVT tech, engines peak at 6000 RPMs or more.
My perception of what GM did to compete with the imports was to try to build something to compare directly with every import. They tried to build too many different product lines, usually two or more makes, none of which were of high quality. In the case of the Cimarron there were 5 versions. The strategy seemed to be to saturate the market with something for each import. GM really did not understand the small car market, hence the Saturn division, who was supposed to figure it out I guess.
Does that bird on the hood of the MII realize that it landed on the wrong car?
Ha ha! Isn’t that supposed to be a coiled-up cobra with some trippy smoke all around it?
It’s funny how the Trans Am “Thunderchicken” theme spread around to other cars, this Mustang with its trippy snake and the Chevrolet Monza Spider with it’s own big spider decal on the hood. Mercury should have done one with the Cougar.
Much has been written about the end of the 60’s muscle car era and the low HP 70’s motors, to the point it’s getting kind of old to me.
Yeah, we know all about EPA regs, but look at the motors in today’s cars pulling 300 net hp, with clean tailpipes. It is not as if the world ended with Net HP ratings, and smog equipment.
The world might not have ended but, man, it sure slowed down.
That’s the biggest thing to take away from that photo and one has to wonder how differently things might have been if forces outside the auto industry hadn’t conspired to drastically alter the way cars were required to be built in the mid to late seventies. There were a few interior safety features required in 1967 (padded dash, seat belts, etc.) but regulations largely stayed out of the engine compartment and the exterior.
That sure wasn’t the case in 1978. The 5mph bumpers, alone, had a drastic impact on styling. Coupled with dramatic auto insurance rate and gas price increases, as well as new, stringent EPA regs, it’s no wonder the Japanese were able to get such a foothold in the auto industry during that time.
The Japanese had the same regulations and restrictions. It’s not like they only applied to American cars. Their response was with engineers instead of lawyers.
CAFE gave the Japanese the market. They had to meet emissions standards (as well as safety standards)yes, but they DID NOT have to figure out how to take a lineup of 8mpg tanks the public was still willfully buying and suddenly double their efficiency.
CAFE did not go into effect until 1978, so the MII’s existence had nothing to do with CAFE.
Anyway, it’s not nearly as simple as that. By 1980 or so when CAFE really started making a more substantial impact (20 mpg for passenger cars), folks had ZERO interest in buying 8 mpg barges, thanks to a huge run-up in gas prices.
Detroit built small cars back then too; the issue is whether they were as well built as the Japanese cars. The consensus on this issue was decided a long time ago.
CAFE didn’t go into effect right away but it was a reality for automakers since the law was passed in 1975. Detroit HAD to divert resources into meeting those targets, the Japanese didn’t.
I never said the MII had anything to do with CAFE, I was retorting to the notion that the Japanese succeeded and excelled on an even playing field, which just isn’t the case.
It was an even playing field. Detroit chose to play the game their way, by spewing out half baked crap like the X-Bodies. Or unnecessarily ugly, stunted cars like the E-Bodies of 1986. And a whole lot of other endless mistakes.
If what GM (and some of the others) had built their new smaller cars to the level of quality that the Japanese did, things likely wouldn’t have turned out so bad.
But why waste my breath? Detroit apologists like you will forever find excuses why things turned out as they did. The Japanese succeeded for one reason: their cars were on average of higher quality and more reliable. That’s an undisputed fact. Detroit learned that painful lesson too late. That was the essence of the problem. Finding excuses after the fact is just trying to re-write history.
All of the Japanese (except for Honda) had to tool up for all-new FWD cars too, just like Detroit. But almost all of them were solid from day one.
No law demanded transverse FWD layouts, that layout rose to prominence primarily for it’s packaging and wet traction advantages much more than it’s fuel efficiency gains(the gains that are there primarily come from hand and hand engineering advancements more than the inherent efficiency of the layout). As far as I know no RWD subcompact from anyone was paying CAFE fines by 1980, so clearly Honda’s move to it was to separate themselves from the herd, and the rest followed suit, lest be damned as old tech.
As for the playing field, the Japanese didn’t sell any cars in the US that were bigger than the US definition of a subcompact throughout the 70s, which was pretty much the unspoken model of a CAFE car. Detroit made some considerable piles in that segment, no one will argue that, but their bread and butter were still with cars that could not be sold without fines by 1980 and the choice was to either drop those models or heavily redesign them, In other words risk losing huge amounts of customers by offering a few all new compacts(albiet much more well designed/built ones due to the extra development dollars) or spread themselves very thin by limping to the barn with hastily developed stubby cars in effort to retain a familiar full model lineup.
I’m definitely not apologizing for those end products(but thanks for the label) but you have got to see that there was a considerable advantage for the Japanese who were well within compliance with the law and general circumstances from the start, and only really had to keep up what they were already good at to succeed and grow. Not everyone wanted(or wants) a small car, even with expensive gas. I may be biased more towards American cars but clearly you are biased towards small cars, and frankly in a close minded way. The Japanese were lean in both the size of their cars and the size of their lineups, they got very good at building small cars because that’s all they ever built. Today is where the playing field is level, who will succeed and who will falter is much more blurred now with cookie cutter model lineups from all automakers, back in the late 70s though you could really spot the dinosaurs.
The Japanese also easily embraced W. Edwards Deming philosophy to improving production techniques. ( Unfortunately, the US companies were mired in their respective apathy and half-assed attempts to downsizing.) Couple that with Japan actively working to limit engine size at the time to conserve fuel (years of fuel rationing in postwar Japan) allowed their cars to be readily embraced during the fuel crunch. Essentially, Toyota/Honda/Datsun worked on perfecting 2 platforms at the time and their respective 4 cylinder engines were light years ahead of the US in reliability and refinement at a pivotal time.
I’m glad that we have such safety regulations.
Otherwise, we’d all be driving cars like that ’59 Impala that crumpled up against a newer Impala (look it up on youtube).
Plus, there are simply too many idiots on the road. Unfortunately, we need to be protected from each other.
Actually, what we need is less of an attitude of “protect me” and a lot more of the “take a chance and let fly” attitude that was prevalent in the 50’s and 60’s. We’ve numbed down our society into a bunch of scared little children who only probably get out of bed in the morning because they realize that they could suffocate in their bed clothes if they pull them too tightly over their heads.
Life isn’t meant to be safe. Life is meant to be interesting. And a learning experience. And the sum total of all those daily risks that, at one time, we happily surmounted.
Amen, brilliantly put.
We need a like button. I would punch it right now.
indeed
I take risks too, but safer risks (if you will) than I used to take – intellectual rather than physical. For instance, I drove a 1966 Bonneville convertible for 17 years; although I did put radial tires on it, it had drum brakes all around and didn’t have even an energy-absorbing steering column among its safety equipment. And in the early 1980s I rode a bicycle – an old black English one with fenders and an enclosed three-speed hub – up and down Broad Street in Philadelphia, alongside dense traffic, without a helmet. Any risk I take today will be one that doesn’t involve an increased chance of brain injury, chest impalement, etc.
As for the “attitude” of the 1950s and ’60s, in domestic automotive terms this meant jets and rockets, first as moldings and sheet-metal stampings along the sides, then as pointy tailfins. How easy it is to see that a pointy car fin could poke someone; this is addressed in Unsafe at Any Speed. This doesn’t mean that I endorse the other extreme – for example, the high front end of any car also sold in the European market; I like a low cowl – but making cars without metal protrusions is as self-evidently a good thing as reducing urban air pollution from vehicles; my old Bonneville’s emissions control equipment consisted of a PCV valve.
I hate to sound callous but how many people actually were severely hurt or killed directly by jet age “protrusions” in the real world? I’ve heard a lot of grizzly stories from my grandparents but not one of them involved little billy getting puncture wounds from a 59 Cadillac.
Amen to Syke.
Life can be safer and interesting. It’s not an either-or proposition. I’m glad it is safer. It’s easy for those of us who survived to gloat, but a lot of folks unnecessarily lost their lives due to unsafe cars (and other products).
When a drunk crosses the center line and plows into you, no one asked you if you wanted to take on risks like that or not. If folks want to take risks, they still can, and do, but generally not so much at the expense of those who would prefer not to. The non-risk takers also have a right to be protected from the risk takers. But it took a lot of legislation for that to happen.
Go take your risks on the race track, or sky diving, or bungee jumping…but I’d prefer not to take a risk of someone plowing into me unnecessarily. Autonomous cars for drunk/bad drivers? Bring it on.
Paul – I don’t think you meant “a lot of unnecessary folks lost their lives”; if the folks themselves were unnecessary, it would’ve been no great loss. Perhaps “a lot of folks unnecessarily lost their lives”?
yep
gottacook: Yes, that’s what I meant to write; damn fingers.
SO true.
It’s the emissions stuff I’m glad for. There’s simply no other way to clean up tailpipe emissions than strong, top-down regulation – not enough value to the individual customer – and I’m under no delusions that I’d be able to function in a world where present-day numbers of cars belched out pre-EPA levels of pollution and our air looked like China’s.
I agree on emissions, ultimately I think that’s the only regulation that directly effects the end product that I care for. The rest, efficiency and safety, are up to me as a consumer.
I took them 30 years to get computers powerful enough to manage engine to work so well.
I would be willing to drive just about any Mustang. I think the were innovative and the concept proved to be durable. The picture above shows why they were successful. They were adaptable. The 86 5.0, along with the GN Buicks were groundbreaking IMO. I spent a lot of years as a bachelor and as a sailor. The mustang would have served me as well as the VWs and Pickups that I did drive.
Having said that, for some reason I didn’t ever buy one. I don’t think I know why because I sure turned into a fan.
Neither appeals to me greatly, so I’d split the difference and take a ’73 any day!
Paint on performance at it’s most ludicrous.
I’ll take the 60s Mustang.I’ve got an unhealthy interest in go faster striped 70s muscle cars since I saw big brother’s holiday snaps of a Volare Roadrunner.
when driving a 78 Volare sedan with slant six, everything changed. i am a moving roadblock on hwy!
..the ’69 Fastback would have to be the hipper of the two for a collector ..’69 Mach 1 is the one to die for as it was the last year with a non-collapsible steering column n’est-ce pas?
I’d like to see a road test comparo of the two.
The Mustang II was not vintage stuff, but for anyone who has ever built a hot rod or updated an old front suspension, the Mustang II lives on in thousands and thousands front suspensions of very cool cars
This comparison shows the difference between the minimalist sixties and the excess of the seventies just in general design. Geez, it really was the decade the country got high and boogied.
The snake on the hood I suppose was marketing against the chicken on the hood of the TransAm. I was alive but grew up in the eighties. Not a good decade for car design but it wasn’t as crazy as the previous decade. Kinda like Detroit had just gotten out of rehab.
As far as the personal safety thing goes, both the sixties and the seventies drunks were considered funny, starting in the eighties they were considered a menace to society. I remembered as a kid there was a certain intersection that had signs knocked down on Monday morning. My parents laughed about “silly drunks need to take a different way home’. Now most of the bars and liquor stores have closed in this area because of MADD.
I’ll take the one on the right, but only if it’s remade to be a Ghia. Baby Thunderbird FTW.
I must confess I rather like these micro-mini Mark IVs.
A few comments need to be made about the horsepower ratings. Horsepower did decrease in the early 70’s, partly due to net vs gross ratings. But engines were detuned for lead free lower octane fuel. Horsepower is a function of the torque and engine speed. The detuning resulted in the peak horsepower at lower engine RPM’s. Consider an engine with the torque of 200 lb-ft at the peak horsepower:
200 lb-ft @4000 RPM’s = 152 HP
200 lb-ft @5000 RPM’s = 190 HP
200 lb-ft @6000 RPM’s = 228 HP
In the late sixties engines could be tuned to peak at 5000 RPM’s. Those engines after 1970 peaked nearer 4000 RPMs. With current OHC VVT tech, engines peak at 6000 RPMs or more.
My perception of what GM did to compete with the imports was to try to build something to compare directly with every import. They tried to build too many different product lines, usually two or more makes, none of which were of high quality. In the case of the Cimarron there were 5 versions. The strategy seemed to be to saturate the market with something for each import. GM really did not understand the small car market, hence the Saturn division, who was supposed to figure it out I guess.
Can I have a Mustang from 10 years later? You know a Fox-body with a SEFI 5.0 HO?
Saw an early 80s Cobra today, white with a white leather interior a 2.3 and an orange cobra decal