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Thu 4 Dec, 2008 07:05 am
Yeah, I know about Renault, Leyland, Lucas (the man who invented darkness), the Humber Super Snipe, the Rover 3500S and all that... This thread is not about those things. I figured with the demise of Detroit A2K should probably have some sort of a thread describing some of the cars which made that possible.
The Ford Pinto and Chevy Vega would be as good a place to start as any. Detroit was being run by bean-counters in the 60s and 70s and they honestly believed the best they could hope to do selling any small car was to break even. I honestly believe that they therefore deliberately set out to build the two worst small cars the world had yet seen as a means to cure Americans of wanting to own small cars, i.e. that they figured anybody who ever owned a Vega or a Pinto would never want to own another small car so long as they lived. Insurance companies called the Pinto "The Torch", and engines were being replaced in Vegas at 40,000 mile intervals; they called that a "major service" on a Vega.
That was one of those plans which works too well; many if not most or all of those former Pinto and Vega owners never want to own another American-made small car as long as they live.
I have my own list of all time worst and it's a long list, but I'd be curious to hear what others on A2K might view as rolling reasons for the demise of Detroit.
@cjhsa,
Is that the thing they called an 'Aztec'??
Also, the Pinto was a FWD car, which made it easy to cut in half and weld back together. My college roommate had a Pinto that was a '73 in the front, and a '74 in the back.
My own version of the list btw contains one entire company ( AMC) and virtually every car they ever made, but particularly the Javelin, which was a zero-road-adhesion car like the AustinHealy bug-eyed Sprite, and the Gremlin. How anybody could make a car that bad and name it "Gremlin" as if to add insult to injury is astonishing. If ever there was a corporation which deserved to go under or to be made to disappear via a series of mergers and buyouts, it was AMC.
200-2008 Pontiac ANYTHING.
I had a friend in HS who traded in a 1969 Chevelle SS on a Grenada - I gave up on the friendship at that point. He didn't even offer to sell me the SS first.
The demise of Detroit as a car manufacturing symbol, is premature.
The original Dodge Power Wagon was the Swiss Army knife of trucks.
PS, you are probably no more than 2 vendors removed from an auto related industry. Are you some kind of Chinese Communist who wants the USA to go up in smoke?
Anyone can be a critic, requires very little skill. Fixing a problem, that takes more skill indeed. Where do you fit mrGarter snake?
@farmerman,
Fix the problem??
Simple enough: outlaw and ban the demoKKKrat party and the UAW; the problems Detroit is experiencing would evaporate within about six months.
I mean, the problems with inferior and otherwise fucked cars is basically a thing of the past at this juncture. The problem is that the 'big three' appear to make money making cars everywhere except the United States and everybody else makes money making cars in the United States.
aw farmerman... you had to go and give him an excuse to bring up that idiotic ******* demoKKKrat **** again....
I had a Pinto...it was a great car but not very sturdy...one night after I'd had a bottle of vodka, a few beers and a qualude I was dropping some girl off and rolled it. It crushed it and totaled it. Because of that my wife du jour found out about the girl and left me for a couple months, I had to hitchhike home really sore....AND the police came snooping around and I had to talk my way out of that. It was a real mess....if the Pinto had just been built well enough to do as well as I did in a high speed rollover and crash none of it would have happened....
@gungasnake,
So you dont think that GM's inabiity to come up with design that people want has anything to do with their plight? Its all a Union problem. I see.
How removed are you from the auto industry? Do you supply services to a company that supplies services or parts to auto related industry?
@Bi-Polar Bear,
Bi-Polar Bear wrote:
I had a Pinto...
This single admission speak volumes about your current condition B-PB.
Here is a photo of B-PB driving his pinto through the streets of Chicago...
Take note of his colorful arm band...
@Bi-Polar Bear,
Bi-Polar Bear wrote:
one night after I'd had a bottle of vodka, a few beers and a qualude I was dropping some girl off and rolled it. It crushed it and totaled it. Because of that my wife du jour found out about the girl and left me for a couple months, I had to hitchhike home really sore....AND the police came snooping around and I had to talk my way out of that.
Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy are proud of your life choices.
I owned a pinto.... brown water boy on the other hand.....
@Bi-Polar Bear,
I hope to find more pictures of you in your brown shirt driving around in your little Pinto.
You are definitely a fashionista of sorts.
on a serious note....someone mentioned that if the big three went under then the other manufacturers would just take up the slack...less chevys sold = more toyotas... and there would still be thousands of gm ford etc. cars that needed parts and repair for many years... so wouldn't the outlets that sell parts just restock with more of the surviving companies parts and keep on keeping on? wouldn't the plants making parts just retool for whatever specs necessary? And don't all cars regardless of make and model or year replace their tires and align their front ends and change their oil etc etc?
It's a serious question.
@H2O MAN,
there are many pictures of you engaging Pintos on a more personal level I'm sure.... but one must take care not to offend....
@farmerman,
I said quality is no longer a problem. Building cars people want and need at a rational price is something else again.
What I'd want at this juncture would be a car largely made with carbon fibre which weighed 2000 lbs or less, with one of those new engines we were discussing and a 6-speed gearbox, an absolute minimal amount of govt-mandated bullshit, and a price tag of around 15K or less.
@gungasnake,
how do you reckon that would hold up in a crash? Seriously.
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