The NY Times explores one of the great riddles of the automotive world today, namely Detroit’s near-pathological inability to consistently produce quality compact cars. Scribe Rob Sass revisits the development of American compacts, and concludes that in addition to being hurt by low historic concern for fuel economy, compacts “had the bad luck of being produced by chronically undercapitalized independent automakers. These compacts were not particularly thrifty, had no distinctive engineering features and rather than being stylish but sensible, they were simply cheap and frumpy.” And as appealing as many classic American compacts now are as collectibles, the argument rings true.
Prior to the 1958 recession and the arrival of the VW Beetle in America, the then-Big 3 never took compact vehicles seriously. Their businesses had grown remarkably by presenting cars as symbols of status and style, and had largely abandoned compact, utilitarian vehicles to the smaller automakers. With the Kaisers, Hudsons and Nashes leading the charge, compacts soon gained a reputation for offering few efficiency or price benefits compared to full-sized Fords and Chevys. The failure of these smaller firms taught the Big 3 a lesson they still have yet to completely unlearn.
The introduction of the Beetle and the subsequent Japanese compact invasion introduced Americans to new standards in budget transportation, forcing Detroit to finally take the category seriously. And yet over 50 years later we are still waiting for the results. An engrained contempt for the genre has left American compacts to embody all of Detroit’s worst qualities. From imported penalty boxes (Aveo) to warmed-over leftovers in retro drag (PT Cruiser, HHR) to quasi-ute compromises (Caliber), it seems Detroit is still constitutionally incapable of producing a compact vehicle that Americans can be truly proud of. And the market is not about to become any more forgiving of this institutional blindspot.
Horseshit. Plenty of outstanding GM and Ford compacts around the world. Just not in this country.
Would Americans buy $20k Fiestas and $25k Foci with tiny engines and manual gearboxes? Would they pay $40k for a Mondeo? This is not a supply problem. American market rejects world products mainly due to very low gas prices. Even at $4/gal gas is far too cheap for Americans. It is an easy problem to fix. Slap a $10/gal tax on fuel and watch our roads flooded with excellent GM/Ford compacts.
Chrysler… not so much.
Oh come on, you have to at least tell me what that car is!
The car in the photo – a Nash Rambler Cross Country from the years 1950-52 – was the exception, and the article does note this.
George Mason of Nash pushed the development of the Rambler, and pointedly said he wanted a small car, NOT a cheap car. Thus, early Ramblers were fully equipped with radios, heaters and nice upholstery. They were also available as hardtops, station wagons and convertibles – the more glamorous body styles at that time.
As a result, the Nash Rambler sold fairly well, and, more importantly, sold to people who could have bought something more expensive (and larger). They wanted a car that was handy around town and fairly economical, but not necessarily cheap.
The Kasier Henry J, meanwhile, was sold as a stripped model, and pitched on the basis of price. As George Romney of AMC correctly noted, “It was sold as a car for poor people, and as a result, poor people didn’t want it either.” No one wants to announce to the world that they are poor.
The Nash Rambler helped Nash survive the collapse of the independents in 1953-54, and kept American Motors afloat until the larger, “standard” Ramblers debuted for 1956.
I wonder how much room it takes to turn that station wagon around with no cutout at the wheel arches?
John Horner: I wonder how much room it takes to turn that station wagon around with no cutout at the wheel arches?
One of the big disadvantages with these cars – and all Nashes with the covered front wheels – is a very wide turning circle.
Changing a tire was no fun, either.
The NYT thesis is complete, unadulterated BS. The car that put America on wheels – The Ford Model T – was a little, little car. It’s successor, the 1928-31 Model A was not much bigger. About as much room inside as my Honda Fit. As a country, we have grown richer and richer. Our cars have gotten bigger and more capable.
Every once and awhile, when the economy turns down or fuel becomes expensive, smaller cars have more appeal. Think the Willys of the 30s. Or the Studebaker Champion. Even Henry Ford came out with a smaller V8 in the 30s.
After WWII, we got richer and richer and our cars got bigger and more powerful. Chrysler tried selling efficiency in the early 50s. They surveyed people about what kind of car people would buy next. Smaller. More economical. More sensible. Chrysler made them. Got murdered in the market. Chrysler got passed by FoMoCo by 1953 or 54 and never recovered. They did another survey later, asking what kind of car will your NEIGHBOR buy next. Answers? Bigger, longer, lower, more powerful. Thats what was selling.
But in the 1958 recession, Rambler became the no. 3 selling brand, beating Plymouth. 1959 brought the Studebaker Lark which was very popular for a year or two, and 1960 brought the Corvair, Falcon and Valiant. 1961 brought the Dodge Lancer, Mercury Comet, Pontiac Tempest, Olds F85 and Buick Special. By the early 70s, VW and Toyota made clear that there was a market for subcompacts. I remember an awful lot of Pintos and Mustang IIs in the 70s. Mavericks, Dusters and Novas were not really that small, but were well under the size of large cars of the time. Go find a 73 Chrysler Newport and sit in it. These things were really big. Other than the Vega (which was GM POS job 1) the rest of these were generally pretty durable and servicable cars, given the technology of the day.
The VW Rabbit and Omni/Horizon followed. Then the GM X bodys, Then the Escort.
All of these examples (excluding what GM made) were more or less on par quality wise with whatever else the company was making. Ditto the Ford examples. Pinto and Mustang II were rust buckets. So was the rest of the lineup. The Omni/Horizon had its problems, but so did everything else from Chrysler in that era. GM is a special case, as it has NEVER made a decent small car. (The Chevy II may be the only exception) GM has been a big car company from the beginning. They can build a Roadmaster or a Suburban. But anything smaller? Forget it.
When we can afford better, we in the USA buy more car. Other than GM, big or small, the quality has been the same. With GM it has been worse the smaller the car.
vvk:
The British car market prices you are citing are meaningless. Even cars that are identical in the US and UK, like BMWs, cost twice as much in the UK. Price a US 335i and a UK 335i.
Detroit’s whining that it isn’t possible to build good compact cars, sell them at a competitive price, and make a profit on them in America might be believable, except that the Japanese have.
I think the domestic automakers have made some good smaller cars. How about the original Pontiac Tempest? Or the 5th generation Duster and Dart? The Nova, Maverick, and Corvair had their moments too.
Now if you mean Beetle or Yaris sized cars, then yes, the domestics haven’t done much there.
Horseshit. Plenty of outstanding GM and Ford compacts around the world. Just not in this country.
Would Americans buy $20k Fiestas and $25k Foci with tiny engines and manual gearboxes?
You’re making a three logical errors:
One, no one cares that GM and Ford make decent compacts for Europe. That’s a red herring. The point is that they don’t sell them here
Two, you cannot directly convert two market’s MSRP on the basis of the exchange rate. Take the Honda Fit/Jazz: sold in several markets, priced differently in each. It’s not the only example: the Golf, Impreza and Mazda3 are all sold at different price points. You can extrapolate from the Mazda3 as to what a Focus might cost, given than they sit on the same platform.
Three, that they must make up the cost on the entry-level product. Subcompacts can be loss-leaders: better a car sold at a loss versus no cars sold at all. Are Aveo buyers coming back to Chevy? Focus buyers to Ford? If they’re still around, probably not at the levels that Yaris or Fit buyers are coming back. The Americans have never understood that buyer loyalty is something you earn–certainly not recently. Rather, it’s something that they expect.
GM is the worst: you can see it in their talk about “perception gaps”. They see the perception gap as the customer’s problem. In reality, it’s their problem. But they’ll never admit to it.
But you’re right about Chrysler: for several years they’ve been selling the same cars on both sides, and done not-so-well at it.
The Detroit 3 realized a good 25 years before the fast food industry that although a larger car (or meal) costs only a little more to make than a smaller one, people are willing to pay considerably more. Thus they developed a distinct aversion to making anything less than “full size” vehicles.
Trucks and SUV’s have a similar issue where the MPG of midsize trucks generally arent any better than full size trucks. Heavy discounts on the full size TrucksSUV’s often make them the same price or cheaper than the midsize SUV’s with hardly any mileage penalty.
when i wuz young:
in a fit of insanity, my old dad bought a ford fairmont wagon, possibly a 79 or 80 model year, with the four-banger & a stick. it was painted a fetching forest green. what an appalling piece of junk! i once borrowed it to transport my band to a gig. with three skinny musicians & two guitars & a bass in the back, the damned thing was unable to climb the ramp out of the parking garage at my apartment. that was ford’s notion of a compact car.
gutless.
wallowing.
noisy.
trash!
my old dad replaced it after only a few years of ownership & tried to fob it off on me. i declined it. better to take the bus than try to drive that clunky gas-guzzling gutless pile of junk.
Chris Inns has it right. Detroit has always intentionally made crappy cars to drive buyers OUT of them and into higher margin, larger vehicles. The attitude from the 50’s through the 80’s was to let the imports have the econo-box end of the market.
Problem is that Japan learned how to make mid-sized sedans (and now trucks) while Detroit failed to learn anything about how to make good small cars at a profit. As times and tastes have changed, Detroit, hampered by legacy costs and legacy attitudes, can’t catch up quickly enough to keep their head above water. This isn’t a mystery, it’s Business 101.
One thing that the MSM has largely ignored is that Detroit can’t “conserve their way” out of this mess. No amount of cost cutting will create better products that sell better. Thus the long term death sentence – the more they cut and slash, the less R&D they do, the worse the product, the less they sell, the more they slash, etc.
jpcavanaugh : you forgot the original Mustang, which was was pretty small by most metrics. And it sure did well! Detroit has made plenty of good small cars, but you have to sift through a lot of mediocrity or absolute junk to find them. Or have to dig through history to remember when Detroit’s small cars didn’t hit the buffet line.
bloodnok : in a fit of insanity, my old dad bought a ford fairmont wagon, possibly a 79 or 80 model year, with the four-banger & a stick.
Out of curiousity, did he buy it new? And did you have it when it was worn out and nearly impossible to tune like every other emissions-strangled, carb’d car from that era?
(see everyone’s comments about the Great Honda Accord in the Capsule Review to prove my point)
Geeber: Thanks for beating me to it, although the 1951 two-door wagon pictured here was also called the Deliveryman. Check out tons of early Rambler pictures here.
I posted this car because Rambler comes as close to an iconic American compact as I can imagine, rather than as evidence for the article’s argument. As vvk points out, the D3 can build quality compacts, but their North American operations never treat the segment with the respect it has come to deserve. Compare the current European and American Focii for evidence, and go on from there. The issue of so-called “American tastes” always seems to mitigate whatever good Detroit is able to achieve in this area. I, for one, lament this perception that compact cars have to be ultra-cheap and dismal or tarted up to be something they’re not in order to be successful in America. This attitude indicates an issue of culture, not capability.
As for the issues vvk brings up in re: bringing Euro-models stateside, Ford is the new canary in the coal mine on that.
Edward,
Thank you…I had forgotten about the cheaper Deliveryman version.
Interestingly, it was the station wagon version of the Nash Rambler that really sold well. The hardtops and convertibles weren’t quite as popular. For years, Rambler station wagons were extremely popular…and the AMC Hornet Sportabout of the 1970s also sold extremely well.
I think the unwillingness to build decent compacts is Detroit’s biggest achilles heel. Whenever domestic apologists get on their soapbox they invariably talk about big or expensive cars to prove that domestics are the equal of imports or transplants. They don’t understand that most Americans will never buy a Corvette or a Challenger or a CTS.
Toyota and Honda made their bones by making small cars that people actually liked. They got where they are by giving people more than they expected from a small car. American small cars have always had a distinct odor of stripped down cheapness to them. As if they were designed by the “b team” and not lavished with the attention to detail that their more expensive and bigger bretheren got.
Now, when there were no viable imports, that strategy worked fine because it drove customers to the more expensive upscale models. But nowadays it just drives them to the competition transplants and imports. Detroit points out that their Caddys or Corvettes are second to none and scratches its collective head as to why they have such a dismal rep among young buyers – it’s because those young buyers only remember that crappy Fiesta or Citation they had as a first car.
As I said back in an earlier TTAC article, Detroits motto might as well be “if you can’t afford something nice, buy a domestic instead.”
Martin Albright: …it’s because those young buyers only remember that crappy Fiesta or Citation they had as a first car.
”
The Ford Fiesta was a pretty good car. Ford pulled it from the U.S. market in 1980 because it had the front-wheel-drive Escort ready for sale.
No argument regarding the Chevrolet Citation, though.
The last truly decent small car to come out of Detroit was the mid-to-late sixties Chrysler A-body (Valiant/Dart). The six-cylinder/Torqueflite drivetrains were as solid as an anvil. If it weren’t for the mediocre fuel mileage and traditional Chrysler poor body integrity, most of them would still be on the road today.
In a nutshell:
in the US auto market
small equals cheap ex. Ford Model A then Ford Focus now
big equals expensive ex. Cadillac V-16 then
Cadillac Escalade now
in Europe and Japan
smallest is cheap ex. VW bug or Fiat
small by US standards is expensive ex. Mercedes
Until the late 1970’s the largest Mercedes was equal in size to a midsized car from Detroit. during the last twenty years the size of automobiles has continued to decline such that today’s full size cars are nothing more than what once were considered mid-size. We demanded the carrying capacity of yesterdays full size cars which resulted in the creation of the min-van and suv. Detroit responded with product in demand and until the rapid rise in fuel costs were doing ok.
It’s not that American auto companies can’t make a good small car, rather it is the market demand for large vehicles and consumer perception that large is better (more expensive) that has been the Achilles heel of the Detroit three.
Europe and Japan have been making small vehicles for 50 years because of tax policy that taxed large vehicles and the consumption of oil. Our policy makers saw this but never changed policy to encourage smaller vehicles. CAFE was a joke especially since it didn’t apply to “trucks”.
Time will tell if we will continue to produce an American vehicle or if we will just consume products from Asia and Europe.
The 1960 Ford Falcon held the record for new model sales until it was knocked off its perch by the 1965 Mustang(a Falcon under the skin). After 65, Ford allowed the Falcon to wither on the vine. It’s a common pattern at Ford, they start off promising enough, then slack off and fail. They can’t slack off anymore, it’s do or die time now.
Nobody has yet mentioned the used car problem. In this market, larger cars have always cost more than smaller cars. I bought a new 2007 Honda Fit Sport. Still relatively inexpensive.
The problem for manufacturers in this market is that you can buy a nice 2 to 4 year old vehicle that is bigger, nicer with better performance and is more impressive for about the same price as a nice new little car. So long as gas prices and the economic situation are within historic norms, most people in this country will buy the performance and the luxury.
I bought the Fit because of $3 per gallon gas. I wanted another full sized Ford van to replace my 94 Club Wagon that was in the process of expiring at 165000 miles. I wanted the room, the utility, the comfort for my family of 5, the V8 power and all that, and I could have bought a 2 yr old one for about what I paid for my Fit. I still think that gas prices are on a long term upward trend, but I’m having a bit of remorse right now.
Despite the cool car in the photo, I really don’t agree that you can call any pre-’73 vehicle from Detroit a “compact.” Yes, they were smaller than their brand mates, but hardly a VW Bug or Mini. They utterly lacked the ingenuity and skill of design and packaging that made those and many other small cars pleasurable despite their small size.
And it’s not as if the VW didn’t sell!
As for Detroit AFTER ’73? Not a single thing worth it’s scrap metal, IMHO.
BTW, jpc – the cost of vehicles was driven by easy credit, and the need to keep raising prices to prop up residuals so you could keep leases “affordable” on those ever-more-expensive cars that you needed to keep leases affordable that…oh never mind.
It’s tempting to believe that Detroit produced bad compacts because of some scheme to convince buyers to move up the ladder.
I don’t believe that. They really did try. They made a diligent effort to do well with such cars as the Vega, Citation and Cavalier.
They just aren’t good at it. Detroit was successful when the priority was on size, style, horsepower, and options packages. They lost it when the market moved away from those.
The Big 3 were never particularly good at precision engineering or manufacturing, and they found themselves unable to compete as consumers increasingly began to prefer products that could offer quality and reliability without bulk and flash.
The nail in the coffin came from the democratization of what used to be options. Once upon a time, a car could be moved upmarket simply by putting gadgets on it. Now, every car in the market has power everything, air conditioning, decent stereos, etc. available. When it was no longer possible to distinguish a Buick from a Chevy by adding freon and a bit of color, the justification for having those additional mid-tier brands disappeared, but the brands lingered on, dying and dragging down the others with them.
Retarded Sparks:
Despite the cool car in the photo, I really don’t agree that you can call any pre-’73 vehicle from Detroit a “compact.” Yes, they were smaller than their brand mates, but hardly a VW Bug or Mini. They utterly lacked the ingenuity and skill of design and packaging that made those and many other small cars pleasurable despite their small size.
Yes, VW sold a lot of bugs, but they sold them on price. The VW was a well made car for very little money. The Mini? Never got much traction here. No firsthand knowledge, but I doubt that anything british from the 60s had any better quality record than any contemporary MoPar (which is not a very high standard, and this from a big MoPar fan.)
By the early 70s the 800 pound gorilla of the subcompacts was the Toyota Corona/Corrola and the Datsun 510. Hardly groundbreaking ingenuity, these. Again, they sold on price. As with the VWs, the high quality was a side benefit that only became apparent as the years wore on.
rudiger:
Whatever faults they may possess, the Dodge Dart from 1963 through the 70s must have had something going for it. Here in Portland, Oregon it is far and away the most common car of that era that’s in use as a daily driver. Probably the owners don’t much care about gas mileage or body integrity. The cars just run forever.
The Dart is not really that small; the Valiant of that era was on a shorter wheelbase.
When I was growing up in Southern California in the late 50s and early 60s, it seemed that the British had their moment in the sun when it came to selling compacts in the US. Almost everyone on our street had a second car from England. We had a Hillman Husky, and there was a Sunbeam, a Vauxhall Victor, two English Fords, and a Hillman Minx. Plus sports cars, an Austin Healey and a Morgan. But then came the Japanese.
rudiger:
Whatever faults they may possess, the Dodge Dart from 1963 through the 70s must have had something going for it. Here in Portland, Oregon it is far and away the most common car of that era that’s in use as a daily driver. Probably the owners don’t much care about gas mileage or body integrity. The cars just run forever.
The Dart is not really that small; the Valiant of that era was on a shorter wheelbase.
When I was growing up in Southern California in the late 50s and early 60s, it seemed that the British had their moment in the sun when it came to selling compacts in the U.S. Almost everyone on our street had a second car that was from England. We had a Hillman Husky, and there was a Sunbeam, a Vauxhall Victor, two English Fords, and a Hillman Minx. Plus sports cars; an Austin Healey and a Morgan. But then came the Japanese.
Love the photo of the Nash Cross Country station wagon.
A bit of Nash trivia – In the sedan, the front seat could be reclined so that it was level with the rear seat, creating a bedroom of sorts. The trouble was most fathers with daughters were quite aware of this feature. So, if you showed up in Nash to pick up your date, chances were that her dad would have a meltdown and she would be instantly grounded.
PCH 101:
I don’t believe that. They really did try. They made a diligent effort to do well with such cars as the Vega, Citation and Cavalier.
I can’t let this one go by. It’s hard to come up with a list of cars where Cavalier is the best one. I must reiterate an earlier point: GM has never made a decent small car. I think most TTAC readers would vote the Vega as the worst US car since the 1920s. For all the well deserved quality gripes directed at Ford and (particularly) Chrysler from the 50s on, NOBODY brought us anything even remotely as pathetic as the Vega. The sad thing is that I believe that GM REALLY DID try. Ditto the Citation, which looks good only next to the Vega.
It is even worse when considering that in 1969-71 when the Vega was under development, GM was like the Roman Empire – it was all powerful and it was everywhere. If anybody had the resources to develop a decent small car, it was the GM of that period.
The Ford Pinto had its problems, but it was a pretty decent car, for what it was. I would take one over anything in your list of Chevrolets.
Is selling on price a bad thing? I guess it’s how you define a “good” small car – good on gas, easy to park (VW), good at the dragstrip (Mustang). Was a Datsun 510 sold in 1972 built any worse than a Vega? I don’t think so. They had, to many, better, more engaging driving dynamics, and got better mileage. The fact that they were also cheaper just added insult to injury.
pch101: I’m not “tempted” to believe this, I actually know from someone designing cars in Detroit RIGHT NOW that small car design teams are starved of resources and management’s explanation is “small cars are supposed to be crappy cars.”
rudiger :
December 15th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
The last truly decent small car to come out of Detroit was the mid-to-late sixties Chrysler A-body (Valiant/Dart). The six-cylinder/Torqueflite drivetrains were as solid as an anvil. If it weren’t for the mediocre fuel mileage and traditional Chrysler poor body integrity, most of them would still be on the road today.
I recall more than one of these with its slant six ready to soldier on for another 100,000 miles, while the body falling off as bits of brown iron oxide. I called them Hole-ly Rollers.
It is an easy problem to fix. Slap a $10/gal tax on fuel and watch our roads flooded with excellent GM/Ford compacts.
A fuel tax is not the magic bullet you think it is. It’s an option that not only would send an already fragile US economy straight into depression, but it’ll also put an end to the career of any politician who merely breathed its approval.
NOBODY brought us anything even remotely as pathetic as the Vega.
That supports my point. On paper, there were aspects of the Vega that were innovative. I’ll put myself on a limb and say that the styling was decent for its day. The car should have worked, but fundamental design flaws and bad management decisions that prioritized cost savings over quality ensured that it would be a disaster that would forever harm the brand.
That’s the sad part of this whole thing. Even when they make the effort, Detroit still can’t do the job. Their best just isn’t good enough.
Americans want to earnestly believe that the engineering in Detroit is fine, but it isn’t. It’s subpar compared to the rest of the world. For years, they could hide it behind speed and vinyl and velour and cruise control and fuzzy dice, but when those days disappeared, so did their sales.
Reliability is largely the result of parts quality, operational management and design. Unreliable cars have inadequate parts and assembly lines that prioritize volume over quality, building bad designs. Of course the cars aren’t as good, you can’t expect them to be as good if the inputs are inferior.
Ford is in better shape and has more potential for a turnaround, because they are looking to their overseas operations to address these problems. Chrysler has none of that, and Opel lags behind Ford enough that it has a disadvantage in playing catch up.
Fantastic picture!!!
The problem with the domestic automobile industry was that, well into the 1980s, Detroit thought that the 1949 Cadillac and Oldsmobile represented the Holy Grail – body-on-frame construction, overhead valve V-8, automatic transmission, independent front suspension and live rear axle.
Detroit busied itself developing accessories (power steering and brakes, cruise control, stereo systems, etc.) and making air conditioning effective, reliable and relatively inexpensive.
And, for many years, that basic idea worked fine for the majority of buyers. American cars were affordable, durable and inexpensive to repair. American air conditioning and automatic transmissions were the best in the world. American gadgets were reliable and relatively inexpensive.
The only problem is that formula doesn’t work well in the smallest vehicles. It also doesn’t work if emissions are a concern, or the buyers want to get more than 14 mpg out of their vehicles.
But, for many years, the majority of buyers ate it up and came back for more. More buyers were looking at smaller cars in the 1960s, but the real change occurred with the passage of the Clean Air Act and the first fuel crisis. These two challenges required precision engineering, design and manufacturing, and Detroit badly botched the job.
Do not forget that on its maiden voyage around GM’s test track, the front end of the vega FELL OFF!. It had to be reengineered with a stronger structure around the front firewall/bulkhead. Says alot, doesnt it?
geeber:
It’s not that simple. A damn nice compact can be done with a pushrod-4, a live rear axle and body on frame construction. If the car is developed properly and built well.
On the big-3 compacts (and full size cars) the accessories failed, the engines failed and the transmissions failed. Nothing was developed properly.
One of Detroit’s biggest problems is schizophrenia. Multiple platforms for the same kind of car, switching back and forth between FWD and RWD, and when they finally perfect things they kill them.
They finally fixed a lot of the Corvair’s flaws, and then killed it; they perfected the Fiero, and then killed it.
Instead slowly improving the front engine, RWD layout they went FWD, all the way up to Cadillac, allowing BMW and Mercedes to take the premium market.
Why did they switch to FWD? Because they thought their customers were too stupid to drive proper cars. Designing cars for stupid customers left them with only that.
GM introduced fuel injection in some cars in the 1950s, and then killed it, leaving some cars with carburetors up to the 1990s.
The early Chrysler 300s and the suicide door Continental had unibodies in the 1960s, and then the big-3 gave up and put their big cars back on frames until the big cars switched to FWD in the ’80s and ’90s.
Various GMs also had independent rear suspensions in the 1950s and early 1960s, when almost every RWD European car had a live rear axle, but that was killed also.
In GMs mind “the stupid Americans would never know the difference”, except that Americans are much smarter than the big-3 have ever given them credit for.
To whoever it was that called the Model-T a “compact”. It may have had a 4-cylinder engine, but it was rather big. A lot of Model Ts got modded into pickup trucks, not F-150 big but still..
If you want to bring up an old “small” car you want to mention the Austin 7, sold in the US as the Bantam (the guys that built the Jeep prototype, right as they were going broke).
I just took a stroll down memory lane and googled “chevy vega pictures” and was reminded that the Vega wasn’t really a bad looking car. I think they got the styling right for the day, it’s just that under the skin it was a disaster…… Remember the Cosworth Vega, looked like a mini Camaro decked out in Black with Gold stripes and Gold Mag wheels.
Never owned a Vega, but had three Mopar slant 6s in the day and yes, you couldn’t kill them. Had two Corvairs(check my name), loved ’em. Had two Pintos, hated ’em.
Isn’t it even more base than we all think? The reality of car buying is that it’s mostly males who are the buyers, and the Bigish3 have spent their lives extolling two “virtues”;
* More power is somehow better, and
* Outdoing your neighbour is somehow an achievement
Those two things play to very alpha male behaviour. Generation after generation have grown up with that as a twin dimension of the Bigish3 marketing effort.
All that was easily expressed in bigger or taller cars year after year.
Weren’t VW Bettle drivers “snarled” at in the 1960s? Herbie The Love Bug probably did more for compacts than the entire marketing effort of the Bigish3 on their own small cars ever did.
Don’t even start on motorsport “marketing” – how agricultural is Nascar? How brain dead is drag racing? What brands have tried to connect themselves with that most?
Also I agree with no_slushbox and always look out for his/her comments. Thanks.
I agree with Sass’s analysis. The trouble with Detroit isn’t just the myopia or the NIH syndrome. It was (is) that the corporate culture is incapable of processing information that does not fit the usual paradigms.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of mid level D3 execs were cycled in and out of their foreign operations in the last 40-50 years. All of which should have acquainted said execs with a new appreciation for the well- conceived small car. But once back in Motor City, upper management wouldn’t listen to such ideas. And that’s pretty much a textbook definition of hubris.
One thing I would like to see from TTAC is an article addressing the role advertising has played in shaping America’s “need” for big vehicles. The diamond industry managed to create the tradition of diamond engagement rings in the U.S. How much effect has tens of billions of dollars of advertising had in convincing people that size is more important than quality or sportiness or fun or another alternative to size that could have been just as easily stressed?
“The British car market prices you are citing are meaningless. Even cars that are identical in the US and UK, like BMWs, cost twice as much in the UK. Price a US 335i and a UK 335i.”
The worst thing was that until the crash in October, lunch cost twice as much. The UK Pound was over valued at $2, it is less overvalued now that it is $1.50.
The other factor is that they charge a VAT (sales tax) that I think makes up about 17.5% of the price add-on e.g. a 2.00 item costs 2.35 at the register.
“One of Detroit’s biggest problems is schizophrenia. Multiple platforms for the same kind of car, switching back and forth between FWD and RWD, and when they finally perfect things they kill them.
They finally fixed a lot of the Corvair’s flaws, and then killed it; they perfected the Fiero, and then killed it. ”
Wrong psychiatric category. Its more like ADD/HD. But it is a key problem.
my 20 yr old BMW 528e fixation is the result of not being able to buy a decent 66 Valiant. About the only difference between the 2 is that the bimmer has better brakes.
I beg to differ. Willy’s made a great compact that was world famous and a great seller. You just can’t get them here anymore.
PeteMoran:
Usually I just use this to vent / avoid work, but I’m glad that some of my comments are valuable. Thanks.