1940s/1950s cars vs. 1960s cars

[FedoraFan112390]

I was watching a film from the mid 60s earlier and I noticed something...I'd always loved '60s cars before, but they really had a sort of flimsy look to cars previous to that - and cars since then have had the same look.

I mean, compare these cars:

1949 Mercury Coupe

1957 Mercury Coupe

1967 Mercury Monterey

1950 Chevrolet Bel Air:

1957 Chevrolet Bel Air

1963 Buick LeSabre:

Cars in the 1940s and 1950s were bulky, but they looked tough, like rolling, finely crafted works of art. 1960s cars look tinny, flimsy, very metallic by comparison.

 

[Stanley Doble]

You have a point. Sixties cars were tinny and flimsy in some ways, compared to forties cars. Fifties cars somewhere in between. There was a progression of cheapening starting really with the Korean War. Because of materials shortages chrome got sleazier, radiators and other parts made of copper and brass got thinner, plastic was substituted for metal wherever possible. When car makers found out what they could get away with they followed the logical line of progression.

Seventies cars represent an all time low in quality. Newer cars aren't necessarily better built, but they learned to make plastic and cheap parts that would last the life of the car, with luck. Today's cars are very reliable and long lived but God help you if anything needs repair.

Cars of the forties were made to be repaired and rebuilt and can be kept on the road indefinitely. The newer the car the harder they are to fix.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Vance Packard discussed this at length in "The Waste Makers," his best-selling expose of planned obsolesence in 1960, and he accurately predicted that in the decade to come the increasingly-sleazy Detroit product would lose ground to sturdy imports like the Volkswagen, which placed the emphasis on engineering rather than "design."

I have an eighteen-year-old Toyota for winter driving. The motor still runs like a fine watch, but I had to have over $2000 worth of body work done last year to get it thru inspection, and quite a few of the plastic parts have long since fallen off and are piled up in the trunk.

 

[Fading Fast]

I basically agree that the '60s saw a downshift in quality from the '50s in American cars. But having owned or having relatives who owned cars from '50s, '60s and '70s in my lifetime, the Grand Canyon sized gap in quality was the downshift from the '60s to the '70s.

The '60s cars were, IMHO, still very good, solid affairs, that, with basic care, lasted. The '70s (especially a few years in) cars were garbage, complete junk. They were junk from the start - right off the lot they had problems. And no amount of care would make a difference.

It felt to me like a pro-active decision was made to turn the cars of the '70s into junk. Lizzie knows way, way more factual car history than I ever will, so I'll only speak from my experiences as an owner (or of relatives who owned them that I used and repaired), I thought the '60s were solid good cars made to last (overall), but the '70s were garbage. It didn't feel like an evolution down in quality, it felt like a complete break with the past - like someone said, "let's just make these things into big piles of junk."

 

[Doctor Strange]

The difference between our 1962 Chevy Biscayne and the same model (my folks always went for the cheapest taxi fleet car, not even the bottom-trim-level Bel Air!) from 1971 was striking. The 62 was a nice, solid car. The 71 was a bloated, gas-guzzling boat, overpowered and underbraked, and the plastic interior (very unlike the metal on the 62) began to crack, flake, and outgas almost immediately. We were duct-taping foot-long cracks in the plastic dashboard panels within a couple of years!

 

[LizzieMaine]

The most we ever got out of a sixties car in my family was seven years -- the '61 Chevy my mother drove into the side of a house when the brakes abruptly quit. It had rust holes the size of a fifty-cent piece in the fender panels by that point. We had a '68 Ford which caught fire in the driveway when it was three years old. We had a '74 Ford Galaxie where the driveshaft fell off when I was driving it along an Interstate off ramp at 35mph.

The best thing about any of these cars was the radio in the '74 Ford. Wish I'd kept it.

By contrast, my grandparents had a 1936 Chevy for almost twenty years.

 

[Stanley Doble]

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.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Of course, the foul air quality in the fifties and sixties allowed by unregulated and unrestricted automotive and industrial pollution, and the end of twenty-nine cent gas with the coming of the Arab oil embargo had more than a little to do with prompting the need for those things. The industry was aware of hydrocarbon emissions from cars as a major factor in smog as far back as the early fifties, but they refused to accept responsibility and preferred to spend their money designing tailfins and chrome decolletage until the Government finally forced them to do something about it. "The Market" had no intention of responding to the problem without coercion.

Likewise with safety, there were widely published critiques of shoddy design practices as a contributor to fatal accidents going back to the early fifties -- fifteen years before Nader finally got everyone's attention. The industry got away with as much as it could for as long as it could because who could make them do otherwise?

And as far as militant unions are concerned, you could call the UAW of the sixties and seventies a lot of things, but "militant" wasn't one of them. After the war, Walter Reuther moved sharply to the right, and took advantage of the political climate of the moment by expelling all the "radical, militant" elements from the union, thus consolidating his own political power. Genora Dollinger, the heroine of the 1937 Flint sit-downs, who was one of the militants thus expelled, attacked the UAW leadership of the sixties and seventies to their faces as nothing but "tuxedo unionists," more interested in dining at black-tie affairs alongside management and politicians than in actually doing anything meaningful to protect the gains won by shed blood in the thirties.

This is borne out by the actual strike record of the sixties and seventies -- there were strikes at Ford and GM in 1961, both of which were resolved smoothly, and a wildcat strike at Chrysler in 1968 over racial and working conditions at one plant. This strike was repudiated by union leadership and lasted less than three days. That was the most militant labor action in the auto industry in the entire decade of the sixties, and it had more impact on internal union politics than it did on manufacturing operations.

The UAW struck GM again in 1970 -- but this strike was deliberately colluded up by management and union leadership to allow the workers to "blow off steam" in the wake of Walter Reuther's mysterious death in a plane crash. The workers marched for two months, got a raise, and that was it. There were strikes at Ford and GM in 1976 that won minor concessions on pensions and vacation time, but both companies were doing very well at that moment and didn't seem to be all that concerned about those concessions. And that was as militant as things got.

 

[Metatron]

I see what you are describing, and the earlier cars are more to my taste, with a more sculptured silhouette, but I can see why that shift happened.
The more angular and lower profile cars must have looked modern and edgy when they were first introduced. This is assuming that aesthetics are not completely overshadowed by considerations of efficiency in car design.

 

[Fading Fast]

Thinking about my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles (not too many of any of those in my family, but enough to buy several cars), all of their cars from the '60s lasted 10+ years and car "problems" were not a big discussion point. But the '71 Ford Galaxy, '72 Buick Lesabre, '75 Lesabre and '78 Olds 88 that various family members owned were all - every single one - horrible. They all had trouble from day one and spent a ridiculous amount of time at the dealers being repaired under warranty and, then, at the local garages we used after the warranty ended. That's when "car repair issues" became a regular topic of family conversations. Maybe our experience was atypical, but it really seemed as if there was a pro-active decision to turn the cars from pretty well made and reliable into complete pieces of junk between the '60s and '70s.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think a big part of the reason sixties cars seem to be of better quality than seventies cars is that the decline in quality was progressive -- a 1961 car might seem rugged compared to a 1971 model, but it, in turn, would look quite shoddy next to a 1951 or 1941 model. A few quotes from "The Waste Makers," written in 1960, back up this perspective:

Lawrence Crooks, chief automotive expert at Consumers Union, has concluded that today's engines are "very good." However, his comments become scathing when he talked about the trend of automobile design as a whole. His auto-testing experience has convinced him that 'the quality on the whole has been going downhill...Stuff keeps falling off."

Mr Crooks spoke nostalgically of the 1941 Chevrolet as a motor car that really had built in quality and sensible proportions. To cite another example, he said that fewer cars today were as solidly and sensibly built as the prewar Hudsons. And the 1952 Chevrolet is a car he remembered with fondness. He felt that the 1959 Chevrolet was no match for the 1956 model. Speaking of the quality of cars in general, he told me in 1959: "Cars were better built five years ago for the state of the technology existing at the time than they are today. The cars then were more honestly built."

The bodywork of motorcars and their structural rigidity were not as good as they had been a decade ago, he felt. And this widespread lack of structural rigidity had played a major role in promoting "creative obsolescence." Nothing makes a car seem old faster than rattles. And motorcars produced in recent years have tended to develop rattles faster than they did a decade earlier. Further, he said, "the rattling gets worse as the car gets older. With the vogue for hardtops -- into which less structural stiffness is built -- this characteristic is getting worse." In 1959 the Wall Street Journal took note of all the complaints about late-model cars by conducting a survey. It queried the owner of an automobile repair shop in Detroit as saying that engine quality was commendable but that "the bodies today are cheesy. They're full of rattles.

Another thing that makes a fairly new car seem cheesy and old -- regardless of its dependability in transporting its owner -- is exterior rust and corrosion. In the late fifties, many models developed mottled looks with a rapidity that appalled their owners. Some motorcar makers such as Oldsmobile installed corrosion-resistant aluminum grilles as a sales feature because of the unhappiness, but others evidently were content to let the discolored splotches appear. Frequent resculpting of the exterior was said to be one cause of the difficulties. The widespread use of salt on roads might also be a factor. But some of the corrosion, it was charges, was being deliberately encouraged. Financial writer Sylvia Porter quoted officials of an industrial-design firm as asserting that "alloys are design to rust instead of last."

Consumer Bulletin, published by Consumers Research, Inc., took note of all the complaints about quick-rusting bodywork by reporting: "There seems to be no doubt that bodies of present day cars could be made to last much longer than they now do, but manufacturers are fully aware that if they make their cars too durable, future sales will suffer; consumers will naturally tend to keep their cars longer before turning them in if bodies have well resisted corrosion and other types of damange that mar appearance."

--The Waste Makers, pages 96-97, copyright 1960.

The main reason American cars got crappier every year from the mid-fifties forward? Because Detroit believed that people needed to buy a new car every five years or so to keep them in business, and the cars they bought needed to self-destruct in order to keep the machine of consumption primed and running. The honest engineers were run out the back door and the Boys From Marketing were running the show. Red, white and blue postwar capitalism at its finest. Production for profit, not production for use! Remember kids, U AUTO BUY NOW!

 

[emigran]

Ms Liz brings up good points, i.e., the culture of the eras. I think 40's 50's and 60's cars cannot even be compared to one another because the cultural tenor of each decade spawned a totally different level of production and durability ( at the very least)... Consider the fashion of the thirties moving into the War era and then post war and then "freedom seeking" 60's. I see the cars produced as a perfect reflection of the culture and society. Technology and commercialism "progressed" with the spending habits of the times.
If one considers the aesthetic impact only, Id say one would still have to look to the context of the decade's prevailing social and economic make-up.I may prefer one style over another and that is subjective... apples /oranges

 

[vitanola]

Vance Packard discussed this at length in "The Waste Makers," his best-selling expose of planned obsolesence in 1960, and he accurately predicted that in the decade to come the increasingly-sleazy Detroit product would lose ground to sturdy imports like the Volkswagen, which placed the emphasis on engineering rather than "design."

I have an eighteen-year-old Toyota for winter driving. The motor still runs like a fine watch, but I had to have over $2000 worth of body work done last year to get it thru inspection, and quite a few of the plastic parts have long since fallen off and are piled up in the trunk.

Are used cars expensive up in your neck of the woods, Miss Maine? Of late I have been buying very nice modern drivers in the $2000-3000 range, cars which look presentable and have years of life left in them. I am not now in the market, but just saw a very clean 2003 Toyota Camry with fewer than ninety thousand miles for sale for $2850 or best offer. Of course our markets doubtless differ, for Southern Michigan has alway had a great car culture, and imports sell at a tremendous discount.

 

[LizzieMaine]

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.

 

[FedoraFan112390]

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.

Lizzie, I tried pming you, would you please clean out your message box? It says it's full.

 

[Stanley Doble]

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]

It becomes a chicken and egg argument -- did the industry build shoddy junk because it's what the public wanted, or did they condition the public to want shoddy junk thru manipulative, psychologically-advanced marketing techniques? I think an analysis of the advertising methods used by the auto industry during the fifties and their "motivational research" departments provides a pretty conclusive argument that the chicken was there first, and the consumers were the eggs getting laid.

"Planned Obsolesence" was defined in the mid-fifties and popularized as a concept in these words: "Instilling in the buyer the desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary." Thru a combination of motivational research, psychological marketing, and shoddy manufacture -- "better" usually amounting to "more chrome, more gimmicks, or a different color" -- the auto industry, and, indeed, most of American manufacturing in the postwar era, held to exactly this practice. It's the most fundamental, essential philosophy of modern-day commodity capitalism. And the result is a desperate, profligate consumer society in which nothing is as worthless as what you bought last week.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Lizzie as a Dodge owner you should appreciate this. In the early fifties Plymouth and Dodge made some high quality, reliable, well built, well engineered, roomy, economical, long lived vehicles. They were actually smaller and lighter, yet roomier than the models they replaced. In other words paragons of practical engineering.

The public avoided them like the plague. By 1954 Plymouth dropped out of the Big 3 and landed in 4th place in sales, after Chevrolet, Ford and Buick. As you know Buick is a much larger, more expensive, flashier, gas hog of a car yet it outsold the plain but practical Plymouth.

Plymouth responded by building longer, lower, more powerful, flashier cars from 1955 on. Their sensational looking 1957 model broke all sales records. They literally could not build them fast enough. They also leaked, rusted out, were full of squeaks and rattles, and generally were not nearly as good a car as they were building 5 years earlier.

So, we have a philosophical question. Should they have gone on building good quality, economical practical cars until they went broke? Or did they do the right thing by following the trend of the times?

Incidentally the quality problems were the result of changing too many things too fast. They addressed the problems, recovered the reliability and longevity they were known for, and in the early sixties, came out with the "5 year 50,000 mile powertrain warranty" the longest guarantee ever offered on any car, including Rolls Royce.

 

[Stanley Doble]

From contemporary reports the mid fifties did see a drop in quality. The basic car, the engine, transmission, power train, steering, brakes and wheels were fine, in fact longer lived and more reliable than ever. The problem was the chintzy accessories. Air conditioners, power windows, power seats, radios, and the like were of poor quality and caused most of the problems.

The chrome was cheaper than it had been but paint jobs were more durable and required less polishing and waxing. Body metal was similar in thickness and quality, but the new styles had more places to trap mud, snow and this created rust problems. The wide spread use of salt in winter in northern areas didn't help. I clearly remember cars developing rust spots in 2 or 3 years and rusting thru in 4 or 5 years.

Some people had their cars oil sprayed underneath every fall, and washed and waxed their cars regularly. If you did this and maintained them by the book, they could last a long time but not many people bothered. It was easier to trade in every 2 years. Anyone who bought a new car, maintained it, and drove it for 10 years was considered eccentric.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Several car companies fought the trend of the times and they all went broke except one. The only company to build small, economical, practical, reliable cars and get away with it was American Motors. Do you remember the Rambler? All the independents made small economy cars, and they all went broke except Rambler. They actually had a very clever strategy of offering a distinctive choice, and developed a brand image different from any other car. They had a further advantage that they could prosper on sales of 100,000 to 200,000 units a year, something no other car company east of Iceland could do.

From the early fifties to the early eighties they built a lot of good but boring cars. Now most cars on the road resemble Ramblers in concept more than any other car of the fifties or sixties. But who remembers American Motors? They were the least popular car company in their own time and are practically forgotten today.

The point is, for all the gab gab about planned obsolescence and wastefulness and the need for practical economical transportation when the public was offered a clear choice they went for the flashy powerful jobs 9 times out of 10, and the one car known for being sensible and practical was shunned by all but a few eccentrics.