Scanned from R&T’s 1981 March issue, these are two very interesting articles concerning the major crisis that the American car industry was undergoing at the time.
The late seventies – early eighties were a very difficult time for the American auto industry. I think the articles posted here have some valuable insight into this crisis best, and are interesting even 35 years later.
First, read Tony Hogg’s editorial, in which he very clearly links the changes that the American society was going through, to the effect it was having (among other things) on purchasing new domestic cars. The issue he addresses has only grown since then, as in so many cases what started in trend-setting California has come to affect the whole country. Also, he addresses the closure of MG at the time:
Related to this was an in-depth article analyzing the American auto crisis at the time further. A bleak, yet very interesting article:
(The eighties didn’t turn out quite as dire as suggested here. And ironically, it was GM that fell the most during the eighties, while Ford and Chrysler enjoyed mostly steady growth. And of course, the imports continued to grow, especially the Japanese. In fact, the 1981 Voluntary Export restriction with Japan was implemented only shortly after this article was published. That was inteneded to protect the domestic industry, but led to unintended consequences: the Japanese could raise prices aggressively, as the market was no longer free. And the large profits that they generated allowed them to invest in new upscale models like the Acuras and Lexus LS400 as well as in transplant factories in the US. Predicting the future is always difficult. – PN)
A fascinating read in retrospect. And somewhat amusing, as we thought things were bad for the Detroit-4 back then. Fast forward 25 years and just look how much worse it got.
Predicting the future is difficult for those with a sense of history. Predicting the future for a politician, who’s total intelligence is most likely aimed towards getting re-elected, is usually an impossibility. And when they do try, the results could be amusing – if it wasn’t for the long term effects.
The first article absolutely supports a hypothesis I’ve had for some time: The rise of imports and decline of Cadillac et al was much less a factor of the product and much more a factor of the name. Cadillac, GM generally, Ford, Lincoln-these were dad’s cars, provincial, not at all hip or quirky or frivolous. They were practical. They were frugal. Nothing about a domestic car shouted avant guarde. Nothing about a domestic car shouted that the owner was so well-off they could afford to buy meaningless frippery or untested fads. Even the Cadillacs, with their ostentatious styling and plush interiors, were designed to a purpose and to a (decidedly larger) budget. The luxury buyer that bought a Cadillac, in the end, was buying the comfort, the features, and the cachet. The Cadillac buyer could show exactly what that additional money spent bought him.
I maintain that the domestic brands generally were going to take a huge hit during the 1980s regardless of the products they released. The imports of the time? They were small. They were slow. But, they were different, and they showed a kind of carefree frivolous relationship with money that Cadillac couldn’t. I mean, had Ford released the stunningly successful Taurus in 1983 instead of 1986, it would have been a bubble Taurus disaster.
The oil crises and stagflation of the late 1970s destroyed a social paradigm that had existed for 30 years. Vietnam and the social movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s had everyone questioning which way was up socially in their wake. (I think All in the Family starting in 1974 and Joe Jackson with “Real Men” in 1982 captured it best.) New life sprouts from the ashes, and it’s not always what was there before.
“All in the Family” premiered in Jan 1971, well before ’74 oil crisis and recessions.
Yep, you’re right. It ran longer than I remembered (1971 to 1979). At any rate, I find it a fantastic window into an era I can only read or hear about.
I think your argument that the domestics would’ve faltered even if their cars were perfect because they still wore the old brand names is only partly true, primarily applicable to the west coast. Tony Hogg pointed out that people in the west coast are more likely to eschew established marques than those in the heartland states. They are two very different markets. That’s not surprising to me; the west coast seems to be full of creative people not afraid to be early adopters, and lots of trends (automotive and otherwise) start there.
He also points out that the domestics were marketing based on the nationalistic idea that US-made is inherently better and on having the latest features. Many people will tell you that domestic cars built in the 70’s and early 80’s were not that well designed/built and some of the new features didn’t hold up. They were selling the sizzle, but the steak itself wasn’t necessarily that good. The fact that the west coast market sampled the imports and found them to be good was a harbinger of where the rest of the market was headed.
With a few exceptions, I don’t think I’d describe Detroit cars of the 1970s as “practical” or “frugal.” Take a look at old brochures, and note the fake wire wheel covers, padded vinyl rooftops, and fake woodgrain on anything but the stripper models. Then consider the poor space utilization that was the norm for Detroit. “Meaningless frippery” is exactly what Detroit was about. The problem was that they were fashion items, built to a fashion the country, starting with California, was leaving behind. And that’s not even considering the very real functional problems caused by Detroit’s misplaced loyalty to the carburetor.
Mechanically, the domestics were practical, in the sense that there wasn’t much under the sheet metal that would baffle a competent mechanic. Many imports of that time were still considered exotic, particularly in small towns and rural areas. I remember my father’s reply when I asked why he wouldn’t consider a VW or an MG – “Too hard to get parts for them, or no one around here knows how to fix them.”
In 1982, I took my 1977 Honda Civic CVCC to the independent mechanic who worked on my parent’s cars. He told me, “You need to take that to the dealer; I’m not sure I can work on those.” The nearest Honda dealer at that time was about 25 miles away from our house.
Don’t confuse “practical” and “frugal” to mean “stripped of all non-essentials.” To make that mistake means that every car that’s not a Trabant or a Model T is equipped with some form of nonsense or frippery or impracticality.
As the standards of the era go, the domestics were cheap to maintain, as everyone and their sister and their dog knew how to work on a carburetor, parts were plentiful, and the engineering was straightforward. The domestics were hundreds less to purchase initially than were their imported competition. The imports were small and slow, and one could buy a whole lot more space, power, and comfort for the same money in a domestic brand.
Never mind the fact that it wasn’t until the 1980s that families started to shrink in earnest, so there were still plenty of families with three, four, or (like my mom’s family) six kids. So, space was important. The country had just installed 40,000 miles of multilane shimmering limited-access interstate highways, there was a lot of country to go and see, and Americans were still enjoying economic prosperity the likes of which had never been seen before (or since).
“Practical” and “frugal” in this case mean that the domestics were the least expensive and most reasonable option to achieve the motoring desires of the vast majority of the motoring public. Just because buyers wanted wire-look wheels and vinyl tops doesn’t negate the basic economics of the transaction.
Funny thing about vinyl roofs-they were actually cheaper for the companies to produce, as they didn’t have to bother fixing any imperfections in the sheetmetal!
I’ve long thought similarly. As I recall things, coming of driving age in the ’80’s was a decidedly different experience than passing this milestone might have been just a bit earlier.
Once the ’60’s “happened”, and the boomer generation started having such a huge influence on the design and marketing of just about everything, the automotive landscape started shifting in his country. I’ve always thought that once the Mustang and the Camaro and the Firebird et al came along and created the phenomenon of the “young person’s car” all bets were off. All of a sudden each generation wanted something entirely different than the one before. No 25 year old wanted “His Father’s Oldsmobile”. That model of success and upward mobility wasn’t valid anymore.
Flash back to 1955ish and I’ll bet there wasn’t so much difference between the chosen cars of the successive generations, or at least it was dictated more by budget than by fashion. The boomers were the first generation to demand that all of their consumer goods be entirely designed for them and be entirely different from what their parents were buying. And by the late 70’s and early 80’s the true effects of that were being felt. Having solidly bommerish parents, and being at the forefront of the first post-boomer generation, I can tell you that by the mid-80’s the boomers’ kids wanted things entirely different from THIER parents too….and so on and so on. American cars really did basically go “Out of Style” for a while. Buying a Chevy or a Dodge made you a throwback. The conspicuous consumption generation of the 80’s wanted Audis and BMW’s and Benzes. We didn’t care what the Cadillac of the moment looked like or drove like. We were basing our preferences solely on what Cadillacs USED TO look like and drive like. I firmly believe Cadillac could have produced a true 3-series fighter in 1982 and it still wouldn’t have sold. Cadillac was just plain passe to a large segment of the buying public.
Isn’t it ironic how true globalization has now brought “Buying American” back into fashion? My kids’ generation now lust after Cadillacs again. Granted, a Cadillac isn’t the piece of crap that most of them were in 1986, but I don’t think that matters as much as we “Car Guys” might want to believe it does. Cadillacs, Chevys and Dodges are back in style again.
I think that is true to some extent, but Fords weren’t any cooler than Cadillacs were in the early 1980s. That didn’t stop plenty of Baby Boomers from buying aero-Thunderbirds and the first-generation Taurus. Chrysler’s minivans were also a huge hit with that audience.
Could Cadillac have completely stopped the rise of the luxury imports? No, as there were some people who simply wanted something different. But with the right product, Cadillac could have prevented some buyers from defecting to the imports. The first-generation Seville was a decent start, but Cadillac completely changed direction with the second-generation Seville, which was basically the anti-Benz in every possible way. The next effort was the Cimarron. Enough said.
I think that is true to some extent, but Fords weren’t any cooler than Cadillacs were in the early 1980s. That didn’t stop plenty of Baby Boomers from buying aero-Thunderbirds and the first-generation Taurus. Chrysler’s minivans were also a huge hit with that audience.
Exactly. And having lived in trendy West LA and Santa Monica during this time, I can assure you that Ford’s drastic change in design made it a big hit in CA, and kept Ford relevant in CA for at least a decade or so.
And the Chrysler minivans were also highly popular. As was the Jeep Cherokee.
Although the argument that young boomers only wanted brands different than their parents may hold a some truth, in reality, it wasn’t so much the brands but the style, or lack of it. As well as functionality. Folks on the coasts were simply more attuned to current trends in design, and old-school Brougham design just reeked of the past.
Let’s face it; the younger, better educated, urban demographic inevitably is both more fashion/design conscious as well as better educated about functionality. And in the late 70s and early eighties, as these young “Yuppie” boomers had the means to buy new cars, that is naturally what dictated their decisions. And when Ford (or Chrysler/Jeep) had these new fashionable and functional vehicles, they bought them.
The terrible decline of GM in the 80s was not because of an anti-domestic bias; it was a rejection of the design, functionality, reliability and other characteristics that their cars had.
If Cadillac had made a truly world-class new car at the time, I would have been a potential buyer at the time. Instead they made V8-6-4 Broughams, diesel Sevilles and Cimarrons. The screwed themselves by their own deeds, not because of an anti-domestic bias.
And the domestics are still playing catch-up. However, some imports (hello germany) seem to be helping out by sliding backwards.
When considering the first-generation Ford Taurus, remember that it wasn’t released in a vacuum.
The sleek Audi 5000 had debuted in the U.S. before the Ford Taurus . It was already receiving rave reviews for its design, and helped popularize the “aero” look as “high tech” and the “wave of the future.” The fact that it was European helped, as European cars had been gaining cachet throughout the late 1970s in the U.S. The Taurus thus said, “European style on a budget,” instead of, “strange-looking blob on wheels.”
Also remember that the aero-Thunderbird/Cougar and Tempo/Topaz had been released before the Taurus, and thus helped to “test the waters” for Ford’s new aero-look design theme. They helped prime the mass market for that new look.
Exactly right. Had Ford released Taurus in 1983, they would have gone bankrupt by 1985. It would have been a disaster greater in scope than was the recently-discussed 3rd generation bubble Taurus of 1996.
As it was, Bryant Gumpbel, on the Today Show, called the then-new Tempo a jellybean when Ford unveiled it. Without Thunderbird, Tempo, Saab, and Audi to break the proverbial ice away from the conservative heart of the market, Taurus would have been an unmitigated disaster.
What amuses me about the Tempo is how people today call it boring, forgettable, etc. At that time, it seemed quite radical, particularly for a family compact that was to be sold to people who had bought Fairmonts, Hornets/Concords and Aspens/Volares. I liked it from day one, and still do.
Ironic too, Geeber, that the early 2000s Nissan Sentra looked a lot like the first Tempo. The 2nd Gen Tempo was retrograde.
The first Tempo was well styled and roomy, far better looking than the equivalent Aries/Reliant, etc.
Part of why the Tempo is relatively forgotten is the lousy survival rate, as they were a good-looking car that was poorly put together and unpleasant to drive (from most accounts). Also, the extremely conservative second-gen car may obscure the memory of how fresh the initial Tempo must have seemed back in ’83.
There were a fair number of the post-1985 models (when Ford made revisions to the engine and gave it flush headlights) on the road around here until recently. They were one of the domestics from the late 1980s and early 1990s likely to still be on the road. Tempos tended to be more common than the Taurus from those years, as the Tempos were less likely to have transmission problems.
So true! The Tempo/Taurus looked so modern compared to my parents Park Ave. Its amazing how tastes change over time!
I don’t agree. The 1983 aero T-Bird and Tempo both sold extremely well. There’s no reason the Taurus wouldn’t have either. A huge swath of Americans were desperately sick of brougham design, which nearly killed Ford.
Even a simple aero restyle of the Fox sedans would have sold better in ’83 than the fleet queens they had become. Pretty much the only time you saw a Fox LTD or Marquis in someone’s driveway was as a take-home company car or an ex-rental.
These are both absolutely fantastic reads! The second article contemporaneously consolidates all the things I’ve only been able to piece together over years of reading and seeing large swaths of the Ford video archives. Hell, I think both of these articles should be required reading for enthusiasts and business school classes everywhere.
And the piece about U.S. energy policy and oil price fixing is actually new to me.
I need to think on this one a minute.
Kind of how Car and Driver gleefully kept saying “as soon as Detroit switches to all FWD smaller cars, we will be better off”, back in 80-81. But then what really happened?
Small cars then became known as “econ-boxes” and bigger came back. {Plus, Accords grew and grew, far from sporty compacts] Now, we have 60% of buyers getting trucks* and gas goes up/down. But, as soon as fuel is cheap, bigger is back in style.
*Yes, I know many CUV’s are car based, but in some buyers minds, they are “rugged, outdoorsy, active lifetyle trucks” to show that they are ‘cool’, ‘with it’ or whatever term people use these days for in style.
I hate to say it, but they were right; FWD ultimately was a good thing for most vehicle segments. It allowed for weight reduction, and getting more interior volume out of a vehicle with smaller overall dimensions. Hence the modern minivan and CUV.
Bigger is back in style, but I don’t believe the same as it used to be. People don’t buy vehicles “by the pound” anymore. (The possible exception being pickup truck buyers.)
Most CUVs are considered trucks partly to keep up the rugged image, and so they get more favorable treatment under CAFE. They are more like tall station wagons with higher profit margins than real trucks. I don’t mean to knock CUVs, just pointing out that your statement that 60% of people buy trucks is misleading in my opinion, if that figure includes CUVs.
Paul has pointed out in the past that the 1955 Chevy was the ideal proportions for a family car. When typical family cars stray too far from this size, larger or smaller, they eventually revert back to it. I don’t have time to look up the numbers right now, but I bet you’ll find that many popular CUVs have close to that “ideal” footprint.
Never discount innovation and engineering. We now drive 2/3 row car based CUVs that get gas mileage (real world) that is comparable to GMs A-body sedans of the 1980s in real world fuel economy.
You have a good point, but then CAFE is up to 50 some MPG to “force” people into electric cars, that cost more. But, that is another story.
You’re onto an interesting thought I think deserves further elaboration.
Several years ago (circa 2010/2011 as I recall), I saw a statistic that stated that we had seen a 25 percent increase in the efficiency of the internal combustion engine since 1985. As you state, we’re driving Escapes and Traverses that get the sort of mileage 6000s and Tempos got in the 1980s.
We’ve nearly completed a paradigm shift in how society perceives autos (look at a 2005 car to a 2015 car. Then look at a 1995 car to a 2005 car. You won’t see much difference between the 1995 and 2005, but you’ll see a gulf of difference between the 2005 and the 2015.). The last such shift was in the early 1980s (Look from ’65 to ’75, then from ’75 to ’85.). After the last shift, our expectation as to how much fuel a car should use was reset. Big cars and trucks used in the high teens, cars used in the 20s, small cars used in the low 30s, very roughly speaking.
So we now have motorists that, from an individual standpoint, are seeing huge mileage gains while staying in a similarly-sized vehicle.
Or rather, we have motorists that expect to get in the 20s in their daily driver, and they’ll buy the largest vehicle that can achieve that expectation. I think that better explains the current (and historical) trends of people buying larger when gas goes down. It’s less that the gas is cheap. It’s that the gas is not sufficiently expensive to stop them buying the car they want. If an Edge can get the same mileage as that 6000 they drove in college did, why would they buy a car the size of the 6000?
>>Or rather, we have motorists that expect to get in the 20s in their daily driver, and they’ll buy the largest vehicle that can achieve that expectation. I think that better explains the current (and historical) trends of people buying larger when gas goes down. It’s less that the gas is cheap. It’s that the gas is not sufficiently expensive to stop them buying the car they want.<<
This is exactly how we've bought our last several cars. Now that gas is hovering around $2 where I live (so essentially on par with where it was 20-25 years ago, adjusted for inflation?), it's not really a factor in our car-buying or daily-budgeting decisions. I never have to stop and think whether I can afford to fill the tank or whether I should combine trips to save gas, provided we're getting something around 23-25 mpg for the main vehicle. Far more important is the cost of the vehicle itself–sticker price and anticipated maintenance costs.
The car we have that gets the best mpg, our '98 Z3, averages about 30, but we'd still drive it if it got 15–it's the sunny-day, recreational driver. I don't pull it out to drive just to save a few pennies on gas (which I would).
Today a car the size of the 6000 is getting up to 38-40 highway MPG which is nearly 10-12 more than what a V6 6000 got back then so much progress has been made. Buy a hybrid and those figures go well into the 40’s as an average as displayed by a recent test of the new 2016 Malibu which averaged 41.2 and got up to 49 on the highway. These figures will do nothing but go up and up. SUV’s and CUV’s will also increase but 40 plus MPG will be much more difficult on those with there increased weight, ride height, larger tires etc.
FWIW, Some European countries tried to legislate Voluntary Import Quotas on Japanese cars but really didn’t have to. Sure, in a few countries Japanese marques did fairly well….for a time, but look at their market shares now. The U.S. car industry might have been better off if the money spent on lobbying for VIQ had been spent on product development.
I used to think like Tomcat630, that the U.S. auto companies were inept. Ironically (?), what I’ve read here in the past year or so has led me to believe the U.S. car buyers and the dealerships for “The Big 4” were almost as much to blame for Detroit’s “sins”.
Very interesting articles and comments, great to read. Road & Track’s journalism and writing was excellent back then. The auto industry is a tough business, always has been.
The story of MG is very sad. From the article: “Enthusiast cars can only be designed and built by enthusiasts and the enthusiasts must include management”. One of the challenges today might be just defining what an auto enthusiast is.
The late Jerry Flint once remarked many yrs. ago that GM reps he met were more interested in talking about financing than the cars themselves, unlike the people with import makes. I hope that has changed since then.
Yep, it’s changed, the import makes now think like that too.
ME: there are many different types of enthusiasts, these days, but the automotive press seems to recognize only one: the tire burning, high performance type, 350/350 in anything enthusiast.
I am still as enthusiastic about a drive or a ride in any car, no matter how modest, as I was when I was 10. Any four wheeled machine is fascinating to me.
So much has been written about “enthusiast” automobile, it’s a relief to come onto CC and read about the cars that serve to keep America mobile.
Myself ? Small cars with good interior room and good fuel economy. Stripped of course and simple. I am as enthusiastic about that type of car as any.
Frugality as a “lifestyle” choice doesn’t make one any less an automotive enthusiast, but to the automotive press these cars are dismissed out of hand out of hand as being beneath contempt.
There is an element of snobbery in place of objectivity in so much of what I read on the auto sites today.
Not everyone out there finds abusing machinery with at the limit stops, starts and turns is amusing. But that’s me. It doesn’t make me a “non-enthusiast”.
Thank the Automotive Gods out there for sites like CC.
The whole kicker with the onslaught of Japanese cars were that they were smaller, got great fuel economy and were fun to drive. Even though the bodies fell to rust faster than domestic cars, as a rule, they ran much better and more reliably.
Add to that, the design details compared to the domestics, were much more refined. A comparable-sized U.S. car looked downright stodgy by comparison. Of course, not in all cases, but often enough to make the difference.
The Japanese cars did not fare very well in Upstate, NY, during this time era especially over the long haul. The Toyota’s were probably the best but the Subaru’s were terrible often rusting apart after only 2-3 Winters. Our neighbor had one bought brand new in the early 80’s. After about 3 Winters the white steel wheels had rusted out so bad they had to be torched and pounded by a sledge hammer to remove them from the axle. Another few Winters and the bottom was falling out, brake lines wasted and the engine ticked and leaked like a sieve and they actually ended up buying an AMC Eagle wagon in 1987 to replace the rotted out Subie which surprisingly lasted them well into the late 90’s. The newer Asian cars are considerably better as is most everything else.
The part that got me is in the beginning of the first article, where the author talks about people living together without getting married and having babies like it’s a crime. And how he suggests that mothers work so they can afford nice things, not because they might actually have to help or wholly support their family.
Some of us are still baffled by such lifestyles, but that’s beside the point. The sexual revolution, women’s lib, etc. shook things up quite a bit and you must remember that this was written over thirty years ago. To many people who weren’t even born yet, the social expectations of 1981 are about as distant a memory as Victorian era mores.
1950’s domestic Americana might have been a blip on the radar in the long run (on the farm where I grew up it was no more the norm than it is today) but for the time and audience he was writing to, I’m sure he was getting a lot more head nods than scoffing.
I found that analysis also a bit puzzling. Living in urban California, we had thousands of young married couples, with children, buying Datsun and Toyota station wagons, just as their parents bought domestic station wagons a generation before.
The second article’s description of the government’s botched energy policy is spot on. By limiting the price of gasoline we had to wait in lines for artificially low priced gas. Price ceilings on domestic oil production practically guaranteed the end of domestic production and lessened national security. This article pointed out the second order effects of these policies that Detroit had to endure. Alan Greenspan was in charge of Nixon’s economic policy during this time. His autobiography doesn’t mention these blunders but he must have learned some lessons because he became (arguably) a darn good Fed Chairman.
“Affluence without responsibility?” You mean those land yachts Detroit was pumping out were “responsible?”
No sort of like hyper consumerism. It’s in overdrive these days where you can get loaded SUVs on a cheap lease just to have the latest thing, delayed gratification be damned.
Interesting that they were keeping an eye on the Lada Samara!