- Image via Wikipedia
Last year I started a series of posts, cheerleading for “American” car companies. I have never meant to be their cheerleader. In fact, it wasn’t that long ago that I was on the opposite side of the fence. Some folks that have known me for a while asked what changed…
American Cars Got Better…
30 years ago, there was a chant from some circles telling us to “Buy American”. But, American cars mostly sucked. Seriously. Go look at what was being offered by GM, Chrysler and Ford in 1980. Is there anything you’d want to own? Now look at Nissan, BMW and Porsche. See anything there?
20 years ago, things started to change a little. There were still some quality issues, but the Corvette was running in a pretty fast crowd. 5.0 Mustangs were pretty cool… and the Camaro/Firebird/TransAm were pretty nifty, too. The Jeep Cherokee was creating the Sport Utility craze, and the Chrysler Town & Country was creating the market segment for minivans.
- Image via Wikipedia
Quality started to improve… but there was still a stigma attached to American cars because of their earlier quality issues. It is the same stigma that was attached to Japanese cars in the 1960s and 1970s. Now, those are considered the quality benchmarks.
The Whole Reason…
I wrote the series of posts to highlight the fact that GM, Chrysler and Ford ARE making world class cars. It wasn’t that tough to find 10 American cars that could compete on a world stage… even though some of them are actually more foreign than some of the “foreign” cars.
Related articles
- EEK! What Can Ford Learn From Lee Iacocca And Chrysler? [Retro] (jalopnik.com)
- Flashback Friday… 101 Cars Wrap-up… (lanebailey.com)
