General Motors bankrupt
In Spring of 1960, when I would have been in tenth grade at Brandywine High School in northern Delaware, I was walking home from school one afternoon, south along “Foulk” Road.
The spelling of “Foulk” Road has always been in dispute, so I’m using the current spelling, which is F-O-U-L-K.
When our family moved to northern Delaware in December of 1957, “Foulk” Road was a narrow two-lane macadam road signed as “Faulk.”
From Fall of 1961 through Spring of 1962, the road was rebuilt into a concrete four-lane signed as “Foulk.”
The address of my high-school in the graduation program is “Foulk.”
Yet the 19th-century landowner the road was supposedly named after is “Faulk.”
Whatever the spelling, it’s usually pronounced “Falk;” although occasionally you hear “Folk.”
So here I am, one fine spring afternoon, calmly bopping down “Faulk” (which at that time was still the two-lane macadam), and a bronze-metallic apparition roars by; a 1959 Pontiac convertible, top down.
The ‘59 Pontiac is the ugliest Pontiac of all time — nearly all the General Motors cars of the 1959 model-year, except Buick and to some extent Cadillac, are ugly — yet they were a manifestation of GM’s dreamworld, where gargantuan finned automotive rocket-ships propelled themselves automatically at incredible speed over Eisenhower’s sweeping interstates.
The Pontiac was being driven by a small freckle-faced red-headed dude, Class of ‘60 or ‘61 (I’m ‘62). His parents had bought the car.
As was common back then; his right hand was steering single-handed, and the fingers of his left hand were lazily entwined around the ventipane post of the huge wraparound windshield — the dogleg of which would bop your knee getting out.
Recalling that image, who would have ever thought nearly 50 years hence, mighty General Motors would be declaring bankruptcy?
In the ‘70s, General Motors held almost half the market, and was laying plans to dominate the industry.
Chevrolet was immensely successful; many cars were Chevrolets.
But the driving environment was changing. Gas was no longer cheap, and Eisenhower’s interstates were becoming clogged parking-lots.
What was needed, to sustain the American fixation with automotive travel, was smaller cars.
But this was counter to GM’s dream, which was to continue building gargantuan cars fueled by mega quantities of gasoline.
Enter the ferriners; first Volkswagen, and then the Japs.
Both were already building smaller cars. Their home markets were the antithesis of America — gasoline in short supply, roads narrow and twisting.
Yet General Motors seemed tied to that dream of gargantuan gas-guzzlers rocketing over wide-open highways.
The General tried to make smaller cars, but failed miserably.
At first Detroit fielded three-quarter cars powered by six-cylinder engines, and General Motors fielded a Volkswagen imitator, that was more Porsche (“POOR-shuh”) than Volkswagen.
The really small and economical cars had four-cylinder engines (or even less), a concept Detroit had difficulty accommodating.
The General fielded a four-cylinder car, the Chevrolet Vega, that was a catastrophe; engineering way beyond the demands of the average user. (I had one; thought the world of it, but ya didn’t dare let it overheat. And it rusted to smithereens.)
And essentially it was half-size full-size; the doors were ponderous.
Yet the Japs were making great four-cylinder cars, with the reliability Detroit had in the ‘40s and ‘50s.
Then Detroit discovered the SUV — a conveyance that could be manufactured with old technology, and thereby sold at a money-making price.
It worked for a while. Gas-guzzling SUVs sold like hotcakes — fulfillment of the American tendency toward machoness.
But they weren’t small cars, stingy on gas. Let gasoline climb to $4 per gallon, and GM’s SUVs went unsold.
America was switching to smaller cars, yet GM couldn’t afford to build small cars; big costs and minuscule profits, if any.
They had to import from Japan and South Korea.
Toyotas got rebadged into GM offerings.
So now the chickens are coming home to roost.
The mighty Pennsylvania Railroad tanked too.
In the ‘20s and ‘30s the end of Pennsy was inconceivable.
David E. Davis, the head of Car & Driver magazine through the ‘60s, has come back to Car & Driver to write a column.
He had an interesting point: that the engineers that started General Motors retired after the War, and were replaced by MBAs.
Those MBAs weren’t car-guys, which is the reason GM failed.
Well maybe so, but the great Oldsmobile Toronado (pictured above) came in the MBA era; and I think the prewar engineers were as much a party to that erroneous dream — witness GM’s Futurama entry in the 1939 World’s Fair (part one) and, part two.
A dream stoked by winning a world war, and thereby asserting the supposed superiority of the American way of life — which, excuse me, needs mega quantities of fossil fuel.
View the Futurama videos and ya note the failure to consider that cars would generate pollution, and could brown the verdant forests.
The spelling of “Foulk” Road has always been in dispute, so I’m using the current spelling, which is F-O-U-L-K.
When our family moved to northern Delaware in December of 1957, “Foulk” Road was a narrow two-lane macadam road signed as “Faulk.”
From Fall of 1961 through Spring of 1962, the road was rebuilt into a concrete four-lane signed as “Foulk.”
The address of my high-school in the graduation program is “Foulk.”
Yet the 19th-century landowner the road was supposedly named after is “Faulk.”
Whatever the spelling, it’s usually pronounced “Falk;” although occasionally you hear “Folk.”
So here I am, one fine spring afternoon, calmly bopping down “Faulk” (which at that time was still the two-lane macadam), and a bronze-metallic apparition roars by; a 1959 Pontiac convertible, top down.
The ‘59 Pontiac is the ugliest Pontiac of all time — nearly all the General Motors cars of the 1959 model-year, except Buick and to some extent Cadillac, are ugly — yet they were a manifestation of GM’s dreamworld, where gargantuan finned automotive rocket-ships propelled themselves automatically at incredible speed over Eisenhower’s sweeping interstates.
The Pontiac was being driven by a small freckle-faced red-headed dude, Class of ‘60 or ‘61 (I’m ‘62). His parents had bought the car.
As was common back then; his right hand was steering single-handed, and the fingers of his left hand were lazily entwined around the ventipane post of the huge wraparound windshield — the dogleg of which would bop your knee getting out.
 |
| The motor that put the Ford Flat-head out to pasture; the 1955 Chevrolet Small-Block V8, probably the most significant GM achievement. |
In the ‘70s, General Motors held almost half the market, and was laying plans to dominate the industry.
Chevrolet was immensely successful; many cars were Chevrolets.
But the driving environment was changing. Gas was no longer cheap, and Eisenhower’s interstates were becoming clogged parking-lots.
What was needed, to sustain the American fixation with automotive travel, was smaller cars.
But this was counter to GM’s dream, which was to continue building gargantuan cars fueled by mega quantities of gasoline.
Enter the ferriners; first Volkswagen, and then the Japs.
Both were already building smaller cars. Their home markets were the antithesis of America — gasoline in short supply, roads narrow and twisting.
Yet General Motors seemed tied to that dream of gargantuan gas-guzzlers rocketing over wide-open highways.
The General tried to make smaller cars, but failed miserably.
 |
| The greatest car GM ever brought to market; the Corvair. |
The really small and economical cars had four-cylinder engines (or even less), a concept Detroit had difficulty accommodating.
The General fielded a four-cylinder car, the Chevrolet Vega, that was a catastrophe; engineering way beyond the demands of the average user. (I had one; thought the world of it, but ya didn’t dare let it overheat. And it rusted to smithereens.)
And essentially it was half-size full-size; the doors were ponderous.
 |
| A 1972 Vega GT (mine was red and black). |
Then Detroit discovered the SUV — a conveyance that could be manufactured with old technology, and thereby sold at a money-making price.
It worked for a while. Gas-guzzling SUVs sold like hotcakes — fulfillment of the American tendency toward machoness.
But they weren’t small cars, stingy on gas. Let gasoline climb to $4 per gallon, and GM’s SUVs went unsold.
America was switching to smaller cars, yet GM couldn’t afford to build small cars; big costs and minuscule profits, if any.
They had to import from Japan and South Korea.
Toyotas got rebadged into GM offerings.
So now the chickens are coming home to roost.
The mighty Pennsylvania Railroad tanked too.
In the ‘20s and ‘30s the end of Pennsy was inconceivable.
 |
| The Oldsmobile Toronado; 1966. |
He had an interesting point: that the engineers that started General Motors retired after the War, and were replaced by MBAs.
Those MBAs weren’t car-guys, which is the reason GM failed.
Well maybe so, but the great Oldsmobile Toronado (pictured above) came in the MBA era; and I think the prewar engineers were as much a party to that erroneous dream — witness GM’s Futurama entry in the 1939 World’s Fair (part one) and, part two.
A dream stoked by winning a world war, and thereby asserting the supposed superiority of the American way of life — which, excuse me, needs mega quantities of fossil fuel.
View the Futurama videos and ya note the failure to consider that cars would generate pollution, and could brown the verdant forests.
Labels: auto wisdom
posted by BobbaLew at 8:43 AM
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