American Cars

Just Some Observations and Opinion:

I grew up in the days when Toyotas and (then) Datsun's were junk, and when GM cars lasted for years and years (even if their door handles broke long before the engine went or frame broke). There would be "imports" in ahead on the road, and if they were - like - six years old they were giving off black smoke. You generally didn't see an old import, other than Volkswagons.

I was ten when a kid in a Ford hit my family (in a Buick Roadmaster) at 70 mph. The car spun around, but nobody was hurt. It was my two parents, aunt, her baby, my little brother, my sister and me - all headed over to a hospital to see my cousin. Of all those people, nobody was hurt.

Not long after that, though, even when imports were still cheesy and didn't live very long, "word" was that it wasn't cool to drive a car "like your father's car". I was a teenager when I got a dependable (although "uncool") burgundy sedan. My girlfriend actually said she'd be too embarrassed to have that car and she'd rather have none if she couldn't have one that was "cool" - so I was the one to drive us everywhere. I guess she'd ride in it - just not own one (or kick in for gas). She preferred a 4-cylinder, non-American, car that she'd have to drag up the right lane on hilly roads. (Going downhill was, however, a breeze.)

There was a time when people of my generation would actually prefer a cheesy-but-cool-looking hunk of tin to a dependable, solid, American, car; because being cool was everything back then.
Back then, at least some decline in interest in American cars was associated not with the quality of the car, but with a generation of people (and anyone older who wanted to be like them) who were very worried about what was cool and what was "your father's sedan".

It always seemed to me that the mid seventies and then eighties brought more and more non-American cars that were less and less tin boxes. Even if the desire for cool had died down some, it seemed as if Americans still just weren't ok with "their father's sedan". Nobody wanted to look like an "old person", so soccer moms went with mini-vans; and lots of people went with mini-cars. The nineties, it seemed to me, turned into the combination mini-van/SUV decade, with mini-cars and cars that were otherwise not shaped like standard sedans were the thing.

I don't know what was going on in board rooms and development labs at American car companies, but I've always been under the impression nobody really knew why nobody wanted American sedans any longer; and it kind of seems to me that American car makers kind of stabbed in the dark to see if they could compete. I suspect that whenever it was they began doing that, they gave up many of the very things that had once made their cars so dependable (and affordable to repair). They still had a lot of decent cars. They just weren't "dynamic" cars, and they really were not all that popular.

In a time in America when high-tech was also "the thing", there had come to be a kind of snobbery toward things that weren't "the absolute latest". There had even come a snobbery toward people who were "technical types". "Technical types", of course, used technology as the measure of a car; and non-technical types didn't know anything about anything anyway. Gone were the days when someone could call "the tow guy" to come do something about his car that wouldn't start. We've all heard how our car wouldn't start because of a $400 sensor that could only be diagnosed by "putting it on the machine". Gone was punching the butterfly choke with a screwdriver when it stuck.

I had a Pontiac for over 14 years. With the exception of replacing the battery every so often and replacing the alternator once, the car started all the time. It ran when it didn't have tune ups, and ran when the weather was causing other cars not to run. It was so dependable I didn't want to get rid of it (obviously).

Things have changed again more recently; and I'm not about to try to argue about technological sophistication or any other performance-related matter; because I just don't pay attention to car magazines and information. I know things are different. Still, there are an awful lot of 1990 Buicks and Oldsmobiles on the road still, and there are tons of Chevy Luminas and Buick LeSabres from 1995. In fact, as recently as 1995 Mazda Protege had a far cheesier interior than either the 1995 Chevy Lumina or Buick LeSabre. Dashboard and glove box? Can you say, "toy from a bubblegum machine"?

Not to be a "big downer" here, but I've been in two accidents in small cars. I did a little time in a wheelchair from one of them and have the distinction of being able to say that the only limb I've ever not broken is my left arm. The second accident took the life of the girl who needed the "cool" Volkswagon convertible. In the meantime, I've known all kinds of people who have been in accidents in their GM's and Fords that may have run up big body damage but not caused injury.

I don't need a powerful car, and I don't care if a car can spin on a dime (or whatever "performance" means). I don't even care if a door handle breaks when a car is eight years old. I'm still far more comfortable trusting my life and limbs to mid-sized American cars (although I realize some non-American cars knows specifically for safety can be fine too).

As someone who has never based my identity or sense of "coolness" on my car, I don't mind driving a decent enough looking American car that's dependable. High-end American cars can be pretty decent looking and give a pretty decent ride. Mid-level sedans can have attractive enough exteriors and decent-enough looking interiors. These days, of course, there are many, many, non-American-company cars that are also attractive and dependable. I acknowledge that and have nothing against any of them. If I found the right one (and was convinced of its safety), I may even consider buying one.

Still, I do kind of resent the way all of this appears, to me, to have happened. Back when it all started, there was an "emperor-has-no-clothes" kind of thing, or a "Charlotte's Web" kind of thing that went on. Back when my generation was so worried about being cool so many young people would choose a junky, 4-cylinder, barely-moving, tin box (or the dreaded old Volkswagon bus) over a dependable, 6-cylinder, American, sedan; the simple fact is that American cars weren't just higher in quality. They were safer. They lasted far longer than other vehicles. Repairing them was affordable. They really did "seat six comfortably".

To this day, whenever I try to discuss this particular angle of when the decline of American cars' popularity began, those former young people who didn't want to drive "their father's sedan" will always repeat the same mantra, "American cars are junk. American car makers don't know how to make a good car. They deserve to fail." I have yet to find the person "guilty" of being committed to driving a "cool" car who will at least admit that the phenomenon that occurred back then was the beginning of the decline of the American car - through not fault of the manufacturers, and only as the result of a widespread American foolishness that caused people to opt for junk over quality in favor of trying to create a "cool" image of themselves and to others.

These are the people who waited in the gas lines of the early seventies; and yet they are also often the same people who chose SUV's in the 90's, claiming that all they cared about was how safe SUV's were (even if many of that era were prone to rolling over).

Capitalism is about who can sell the most of whatever it is people want, so it's fair enough that non-American companies took the lead. I still believe, though, that the irony may well be that American car manufacturers made the "mistake" of making those solid, dependable, sedans at a time when so many Americans were valuing "cool".

It seems to me that by the 80's, after enough people had bought non-Big-Three cars, there were so many of them on the roads American sedans looked less and less like "what everybody drives". Once that began to happen, it's likely it wasn't so much a matter of being cool as it was of fitting in. I'm under the impression that one of the dilemmas for American car manufacturers was that attempting to copy anything never works very well (and often never sells well), but staying with what once made the product superior meant staying with what few people cared about at that point in time.

It's not for me to argue with people who know about performance, engineering, and whatever else about whether or not American cars are not as good as others. I have no stake in any of The Big Three, so what happens from here on out doesn't really matter much to me. Today, I, of course, continue to hear "the whole world" talk about what "junk" American cars are; and yet, based on my exposure to them over the decades and today, I'm still not seeing "junk". I'm still seeing decent, dependable, cars that some people keep for years. (There's something else to think about: How many people were keeping those old American cars while owners of "cooler" cars were trading them in for new versions of the same?)

In any case, regardless of the current state of affairs with American cars versus others, it still kind of irks me that the whole downward spiral began not with poor quality cars, but with a generation that would rather make stupid choice than ever choose anything that made them feel like their parents. At ten years old I saw the good sense my father had in choosing to drive his family around in a Buick. I drove my kids around in a Pontiac (and, yes, their father drove them around in a Volvo). They grew up to be young adults who bought mid-sized American sedans, themselves. So, there it is - we are one big, long line, of uncool, people; who see our cars as transportation and who are dumb enough to be satisfied with a reasonably nice car that offers a good ride and a little room in the back seat.

The way I see it, what we lack in "discriminating technological taste" and "sophistication", we make up for by being rebel enough to go against the tide and buy something as "wild and crazy" as an American sedan. Hey - in another couple of years, maybe the American sedan will be "the new Volkswagon bus".