Re: And NOW, the Big 3 are doing what Packard couldn't do...

Posted by gerardo On 2009/4/2 14:01:47

Oh c'mon.... it was sure easy to be patriotic and buy American cars when American cars were those beautiful Bonnevilles, Impalas, Galaxies, Mustangs, Camaros, Rivieras, Continentals, GTOs, Thunderbirds, Toronados, Eldorados, Devilles, 300s, Furys, Polaras, Chevelles, GTXs, 442s, ... back in the 1960s the only foreign car a kid lusted after was maybe an XKE.

Bottom line: Detroit has been turning out crappy products since the mid 1970's or so. Sleek lines gave way to padded vinyl roofs, "opera windows", faux "classic" radiator shells and crushed velour interiors. Everything started to look dorky or like a friggin' pimp-mobile. Suddenly, no one under the age of 60 wanted to be seen driving those things.

Then they started with the down-sizing of once majestic cars: instead of re-engineering them into something smaller but sophisticated they cheapened the brands into compact caricatures of their former selves. Thunderbirds looked like Fairmonts, Eldorados and Rivieras looked like Skylarks. They just trashed every great name there was.

I could go on and on with so many examples... but the big-three drove their car customers away.