1940s/1950s cars vs. 1960s cars

[Stanley Doble]

Lizzie if you want the inside story of the auto industry by someone who actually knows what he is talking about you should read My Years With General Motors by Alfred Sloan. He was with the company from the beginning to the early sixties and some of his stories are very interesting.

One concerns the idea of planned obsolescence or the annual model change. In the early twenties they had to make a decision whether to pursue a policy of gradual development, like the Model T Ford, or annual models like everyone else.

Nobody in the whole company wanted the annual model change. Management didn't want it. Engineering didn't want it. Manufacturing didn't want it. The parts department didn't want it. The only people who supported the annual model change was the sales department for the simple reason that the public wanted it. They found they could sell a new model where the public would not buy a 2 year old model no matter how good.

So they adopted the annual model change with all its headaches because it was the best way to sell cars.

 

[Fading Fast]

I agree that the model-year change over, planned obsolescence, etc., was / is a weirdly symbiotic relationship between the public and the automakers. Most of the people I've worked with want (don't need in the sense that the car has stopped or almost stopped working) a new car (or a new used car) every 3, 4 or 5 years (and some even more frequently). Some not insignificant percentage of the population doesn't want to drive the same car for a decade - they crave change, new, different, whatever. Did / do the auto companies do plenty to promote this desire for their own profits - sure, but they aren't creating it out of whole cloth. If the public didn't want it - they couldn't have sold it.

My Dad and our family in general never bought into any of this. Up until the '70s, all our cars were owned for 10+ years. The difference in the '70s was that you couldn't get 10+ years out of them without, effectively, re-buying the car in repair and maintenance costs (and dealing with an unreliable auto all the time). But if the public wanted reliability there were always options - like Volvo, which made "boring" reliable cars when Detroit was spitting out garbage. And while Volvo did well, it never had a large percentage of the market even though most people (who paid attention to cars) would have told you a Volvo was the car to buy for safety and reliability. It wasn't just Detroit selling "new and different," it was Detroit giving the Public what it craved.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

I have to agree that this was a huge, huge part of it. Look at the things that gave Cadillac a reputation that it still hasn't recovered from. The V 8-6-4, the HT4100, and, of course, the Cimarron. All efforts for fuel efficiency. To this day, that's an issue. FoMoCo had to kill off the Panther Platform (Lincoln Town Car, Mercury Grand Marquis, Crown Victoria) due to the money it would cost to make it meet new safety standards, and CAFE. That, in turn, cost them major fleet sales to MoPar, and GM, as well as leading to the death of the Mercury brand, since the Marquis was their flagship, and biggest seller.

In all honesty, I would feel much safer in my brother's Crown Vic, than in the Taurus that is nothing more than a child in Daddy's shoes.

Another prime example is with GM. My dad had a 1966 Caprice wagon. That car came with a 396 Turbo Jet/TH400 transmission. You could use it like a truck, and he did. I have a 1987 Caprice Wagon, with a paltry 140hp delivered by a 307 with computer Quadrajet, and a 200R4 trans. It can't even get out of its own way. When the LT1 was put in the Caprice wagons in 1994, IIRC, they were considered hot rods with 260 hp. Only now are we really surpassing the power you could get years ago, with engines such as those in the CTS-V, which pushes 556 HP.

The reason seventies cars were so lousy is, they were built to government specs. I am not joking. Starting in the mid sixties the federal government mandated safety and emissions standards with no input from the auto industry. One commentator said it reminded him of a convention of drunken plumbers laying down rules and procedures for brain surgeons to follow.

Detroit managed to comply, barely. But they killed mileage, power, driveability, and engine life to do it, and added hundreds of pounds of weight and thousands of dollars in cost.

Increasing regulation of corporate average fuel economy, militant unions, and rampant inflation didn't help.

Because the emissions and safety regulations were based on weight of the vehicle, imports had an easier time. Even so, some long time imports dropped out of the picture and the Japanese took their place.

It took until the mid eighties, and inventions that did not even exist in the sixties, for Detroit to start making half decent cars again. I am thinking of computer controlled engines, electronic fuel injection, and other new designs that took 10 years to develop and put into production, then more years to work out all the bugs. The original regs allowed a lead time of only a year or two, far too short a time to allow anything but a patch up job on existing engines and cars.

Wow, I'm surprised. I bought my Cadillac for 1600 and have had it for years. Luckily, we don't have inspections outside Milwaukee County, and even that isn't that strict. I've seen my share of vehicles on the road that are more rust than metal, at this point. They soldier on, though.

A "good sticker, will run" car will run you about $1500, but it won't last you very long. I paid $4000 for my Toyota in 2004, which is still about what you can expect to pay for something that won't run into the ground in a year or so. The calcium chloride and the salt destroy the bodies, and the monstrous roads -- potholes, frost heaves, lumps of coldpatch everywhere -- destroy the suspension in short order, unless the car's got a lot of life left in it when you buy.

AMC was known for it. I have heard many stories of people finding liquor bottles behind door panels, etc, from employees drunk on the job. There's a reason "Kenosha Cadillac" was always said with a roll of the eyes.

As for "planned obsolescence" I never saw an issue with it, when it was nothing but the fact that people could look at your car and tell it was last year's model. That's superficial, and if you need to buy a new car to keep up with the Jones, that's on you. Frankly, if they built a flashy, body-on-frame luxury liner like they used to, I'd probably buy a new one. Since I don't see that happening, my Fleetwood will have to last me until I die. I fault nobody for wanting a flashy car. It's only human nature to want something that makes you feel like you stand out from the crowd, like you've made it.

You mentioned Rambler and you raised a good point, there. Rambler could have built the most quality, fuel-efficient, safest car there ever was; however, a lot of people wouldn't want the stigma of a Rambler in their driveway. My Grandpa's first car he bought was a Nash, brand new in 1949. He hardly ever mentioned it. He had a NASCAR special 1968 Impala SS427 that he bought used. He talked about on a regular basis.

While we are at it, let's not forget the role of organized labor in building overpriced poor quality cars. There were plenty of examples of lousy workmanship and even out and out sabotage in every auto plant. The UAW did nothing to stop it, and may have encouraged it.

Lizzie you seem to love the idea of "planned obsolescence", I have read Packard's books, and plenty of others like it. I don't put much stock in the critics' conspiracy theories. My impression is that the auto makers were pushing to the limit to get something new to sell every year because that is what the public responded to. Lousy quality was a byproduct but once they found out they could get away with it, the motive to make better quality cars slipped to the back of the line. The Korean War was a big factor here. Car makers were forced to sleaze out on quality because of materials shortages but when they found they could get away with it, they just kept making them cheaper.

There were some cars that were better quality than others. Rambler for example, and in some years Hudson, Chrysler and Oldsmobile. But it didn't seem to do them much good. No matter how much the public said they wanted quality when it came time to pick out a car they would buy the junkiest product if it looked flashy and said "Chevrolet" on it.

This goes along with complaints of poor fuel economy. There were always cars that delivered outstanding fuel economy. Their makers usually starved to death while everyone flocked to buy the flashy gas hogs.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Chicken and egg. Americans didn't know they "wanted" annual model changes until Sloan and his boys sold them on the idea, just as they were convinced that they "wanted" buses instead of electric rail systems by GM-financed public relations campaigns. The Boys of the twenties, the Bruce Bartons and the Edward Bernayses and their disciples pushed such ideas hard, not just in advertising but in "articles" that were nothing but shill pieces for their masters in the popular press. Pick up any issue of the Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, or (especially) The American Magazine from the mid-twenties onward, and you're basically looking at house organs for corporate interests intended to form the thinking of the consuming public.

But they were pikers in the twenties compared to the motivational researchers of the fifties, who got into the heads of the public, manipulating their personal insecurities in ways that had never been seen before. The man who bought a Mercury or an Oldsmobile instead of a Dodge did so because the Boys convinced him that it wasn't just a car, it was a vital extension of himSelf. Whether one thinks that's a good idea or not, I guess, depends on whether you think the economy exists to serve the people, or the people exist to serve the economy.

I'd hardly consider Sloan, a man who poured millions of dollars into the National Association of Manufacturers propaganda machine over the course of his life, to be a particularly honest source. Throughout his life he was a master of corporate spin -- he headed an NAM front group, the "National Industrial Information Council," devoted to promoting the idea that the NAM's way was the "American Way, " as opposed to the sinister, foreign way of That Man In The White House, and to the suppression by any means necessary of the labor movement -- and his autobiography came out at a time when his industry was under broad attack for its marketing practices. Naturally he'll find a way to say that "we're only giving the people what they want." That was always the NAM's party line.

As I've said, no sixties car lasted us more than seven years -- they physically fell apart, due largely to the flimsiness of the body work. My grandfather, who worked on cars for a living from the early forties onward, used to say his 1956 Ford truck was the last reliable vehicle he ever owned -- and even it was falling apart by the sixties. I remember riding in it as a kid, and the passenger door was held closed by a piece of clothesline rope.

Volkswagen and its boring, reliable Beetle absolutely terrified the Big Three in the sixties. By 1959, and with no national advertising yet, VW had gone from nothing at the start of the decade to 150,000 units a year in the US. If you read the intellectual press of the late fifties, especially 1957-60, you'll find article after article complaining about the poor quality of cars and criticizing the Boys for their lies and manipulation, and Volkswagen understood that mounting anger far better than any of the American manufacturers, who just kept on dishing out the same bunk. When they did start to advertise, they seized on the mood of discontent Americans were feeling with the shoddy products of Detroit and promoted the engineering of their car instead of its "style," and by the end of the sixties they were selling over half a million units a year on the strength of that approach.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

Maybe I've been lucky. I have had a lot of cars from the sixties and seventies, in the past few years, and have done alright. The biggest issues I usually have is brakes and exhaust. That's not the car's fault, though. Rust is a huge issue here in Salt country. I've bought cars that sat for years, decades, even. All it usually takes is a fresh battery, some ether down the carb, and they'll fire right up. Granted, they'll need a good carb cleaning and tune up after that, but hey, who wouldn't after sitting for years?

 

[Panadora]

Square lines makes a stir

[video=youtube;G0Zn2ms9huU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0Zn2ms9huU[/video]

 

[Bolero]

1960 ford Falcon...1962 Triumph TR 3-BRG...couple Mercury Cougars...67 Mustang, and on and on.....

Is America Great or what...???

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

I've said it many times but I've always believed that modern automotive design (from the '60s onward) is primarily designed to provide continuous employment for auto mechanics.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I don't know a single mechanic around here who makes less than $50,000 a year. As Bro. Doble said, modern cars will run fine for years and years, and then they'll fail catastrophically.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

And the worse part is that were so dependent on auto mechanics for their "expertise" when back in the day if you had taken auto shop in high school, which many schools don't even offer anymore, you could have done most of your own repairs. Not so today.

 

[LizzieMaine]

For utter unreliability, the worst car I ever personally owned was a 1988 Volkswagen Fox, which in the five years I owned it, cost me more than twice what I paid for it in repairs. The only part of that car that wasn't a lemon was the gearshift knob.

I had a word for that car, and it wasn't "Fahrvergnügen."

 

[AtomicEraTom]

Yeah, these new ones are a pain. If it's got a computer, and any Fuel Injection beyond a throttle body, I'm staying the hell away from it. Same with any transverse mounted engines. No. Thank. You.

 

[plain old dave]

I'm going to have to be an iconoclast, again. The 1960s marked the high water mark of American automotive engineering.

The Slant Six series of engines, one of the most durable yet devised. 300-400K miles without a rebuild is common.

The three-speed TorqueFlite transmission is commonly regarded as the best automatic of all time. The owners manuals said you didn't EVER need to change the trans fluid under normal service, and Chrysler meant it.

Torsion bar front suspensions were another Chrysler innovation that in part explain why for years Dodge and Plymouth owned the police and fleet market.

And there's the Hemi V-8. While it had been available in the relatively heavy New Yorker since 1951, Chrysler invented the muscle car in mid-1955 by putting a race-tuned 300hp 331 Hemi in the lightweight Windsor and removing a lot of the chrome on the C-300.

Put a 1951 Chrysler NYer next to a '61 300-G. The 413 with Cross Ram Induction, 405hp, and the Wurlitzer juke box dashboard next to a more or less upside down bathtub that will eventually get to 60 makes this a comparison that answers its won question.

 

[MikeKardec]

Besides all the negatives that have been brought up, many of which I agree with, there were some positive aspects that were being attempted in the 1960s that lead to the difference in look. Prior to the mid '60 a lot of American cars were built on a frame while later on the idea was to construct the cars around a "unibody" design. Unibody's have some MAJOR advantages in that they can be made much stiffer (engineering like a suspension bridge), lighter (which improves gas mileage and handling) and safer (once good crumple zones started to be engineered in).

I suspect that American designers could see the writing on the wall as the European car business recovered after the war. European manufacturers, thanks to the destructive powers of war, had to rebuild from the ground up, giving them entirely new factories and thus significantly more possibilities. The US, despite/because of its post war advantage, was stuck with ancient infrastructure that it could not find an excuse to replace. If I remember correctly the plant that built Mustangs up til the 1990s was the same on that built Model As ... the equipment was utterly different but it had to be made to work on the same shop floor which was not nearly as good an option as opening a brand new, purpose built facility. For similar reasons the Japanese also outstripped the US business but I'm not sure the US manufactures saw that coming in the same way.

Anyway, to compete with European companies certain upgrades in technology were needed and conditions in America were changing. Good roads were everywhere after the war, the need for a car built like a truck was waning. As has been mentioned the American population by nature of by trick wanted something new and different all the time ... at a certain point square and low was the only option left. On top of that square is easy and allows the covering of all sorts of mechanical doo-dads and low improves handling mileage and acceleration performance. We shouldn't forget that disk brakes, thin wall casting (smaller lighter engines), coil suspensions, independent rear ends, mechanical anti lock brakes (Lincoln Mk III and International Travel-All), fuel injection and a host of safety features to numerous to mention appeared just as cars were taking on the lower, tinnier, squarer, cheaper aspect none of us like. An unfortunate trade off.

It was rightly pointed out that it took some time to effectively engineer the government regulations of the 1970s into cars. I believe I've heard that it takes 7 years to get a completely new model out today ... it might have taken longer back then. We also saw the utterly boring aerodynamic shapes of the 1980s finally mature into designs that look better and get even better aerodynamic drag numbers. It all takes time.

All that said, I'd still love to have an old Merc from the 1950s or a Dodge from the 1930s. But there were reasons that while they incorporated the aesthetic of "make it cheaper and more superficial" they were also trying to make better cars too.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The thing about design that gets me is the need to make everything look "aggressive." Yes indeed, Mr. Cubicle J. Keyboarder, all 140 baldheaded pounds of him, needs a car that makes him feel like Atilla the Hun while driving to the Pick-n-Save. It says something very unfortunate about the postwar American psyche that "aggressiveness" is a vital design selling point.

Consider -- 1937 Plymouth. Not aggressive, rather friendly-looking.

1948 Chevrolet. Not aggressive, but not so friendly.

1955 Ford. Not friendly, but not ferocious.

1959 Buick. "DIE, MILK FACE!"

1967 Plymouth. "I don't like you and I don't trust you, but we have to co-exist. Whatever."

1975 Chrysler. Passive aggressive display of bourgeois credit-extended wealth.

1987 Chevrolet. "Just leave me alone, all right? Can you for once just shut up and leave me alone."

1996 Ford. "Nyuhh huh huh. You're a butt-wipe."

2006 Dodge. "I hate you. I hate you. I hate you."

2014 Ford. "DIE MILK FACE! Yes honey, I remembered to get the kale. DIE MILK FACE!"

 

[plain old dave]

Well, Lizzie, one minor correction is your '75 "Chrysler" is a '75 Imperial. In 1976, the Imperial became the Chrysler New Yorker Brougham and many '76 NYB parts are leftover '75 Imperial parts and even have Imperial PNs in some cases.

Styling, I wouldn't say aggressive; instead I would say distinctive. You can tell the difference between a '67 Cutlass, Skylark, Chevelle, or Tempest from 30 feet away, while equivalent '47 GM models are the same car with different chrome bits. This is a personal thing, but to me prewar cars are almost indistinguishable from each other. 30s stuff all looks like what gangsters drove in old movies, and late 30s-early 50s cars all (to me) look like upside down bathtubs to some degree or other. Cars really didn't become distinctive til the 50s, Cadillac tailfins, the Chrysler Forward Look and all that. Conversely, put 15 different 1966 model cars in front of me and I will be able to tell you make at bare minimum and usually model and occasionally trim level.

The '06 Charger and the '67 GTX are unquestionably the most interesting of that list. Fastest, too. My sister-in-law's first car was a red '67 GTX convertible. 440 Super Commando and 727 TorqueFlite, easily one of the fastest cars at her high school that year.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think a lot of that depends on the cars one personally likes, though. I can go out here in the junkyard behind my house and pull a chunk of grille out of the debris and if it's from the thirties, I can generally recognize what kind of a car it came from. Fifties cars, on the other hand, all look the same to me -- like, pardon the expression, middle-aged streetwalkers with too much makeup on. The only feature I distinctively recognize are those funny looking vent-windows on the 1959-60 GM cars, because I was frightened of them as a kid.

 

[plain old dave]

You might want to look at the 300 Letter Series again. Elegant, brutally fast, tasteful. A high production year in the 50s meant 2500 hardtops. And they were fully a match for any performance car made in the era, anywhere. A 57 300C would blow a Corvette into the weeds, no problem.

Sent from my SM-G386T using Tapatalk

 

[LizzieMaine]

Wouldn't have done any of us in Maine any good -- our roads were all two-lane, and speeds over 45 mph were prima facie evidence of reckless driving until I-95 opened. I don't much care for high-speed driving -- I'm perfectly happy to poke along at 35 or 40mph. Usually driving to work I don't go over 30.

I also prefer a higher-profile 30s-40s style car because of the roads here -- the frost heaves and potholes are hell on a low-slung car. I had a friend years ago who owned a 1962 Sunbeam Alpine. He took a hill in it, hit a frost heave, and tore off the oil pan. Some fun.

I also make it a point never to drive a car that has bigger breasts than I do.

 

[tonyb]

Yeah, those Caddys had some real honkers out front, for sure. My brother had a similarly endowed black-over-yellow '55 Coupe de Ville. The Bananalac, we called it. Gawd, what a tank!