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Cursed Cars
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Recently, I have written about two cars that were cursed from the start - Saturn and DeLorean. The Saturn was cursed by fierce opposition from General Motors' other divisions and the DeLorean was cursed because the factory in Northern Ireland required the uprooting of a white thorn tree. Everyone knows that the little people live in white thorn trees. Everyone except John DeLorean, that is. Today, with All Hallow's Eve just a few days away, I want to tell you about a few other cars that were cursed from the beginning.
In the late 1950's, America's car makers began to realize that they were losing market share to Volkswagen, Honda and Toyota. Much to their astonishment, not every American wanted a big V-8 engine and enough interior room to carry the Cleveland Browns to their away games. The powers that be in Detroit decided to meet the import challenge head on, which meant that America was soon blessed with the Chevrolet Corvair and the Ford Falcon.
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Both cars were just this side of awful. They looked cheap, they drove cheap, they even smelled cheap. On balance, General Motors was the more innovative of the two, choosing to recreate the Volkswagen Beatle but with a more powerful 6 cylinder engine. But then, Ralph Nader wrote a book bashing the Corvair entitled "Unsafe At Any Speed". While his conclusions were flawed, the General decided to respond by hiring private detectives to sniff out any character flaws the annoying Mr. Nader might have. Sadly for them, Nader lived the life of an ascetic. Not only did he not have any skeletons in his closet, he pilloried General Motors for their surveillance of him and the Corvair died a quiet death.
The Falcon was much more conventional. An econobox with an antiquated straight 6 engine, it drove like a buckboard. My grandmother bought one and I found that, on the highway, the poor little engine sounded like it was thrashing itself to death at only 65 mph. It was simply an awful car. Nevertheless, it gave birth to the first Mustang, which may be about all the good one can say about the totally forgetable Falcon.
The second act in Detroit's attempt to fight the imports gave us the Chevrolet Vega and the Ford Pinto. Both were dreadful cars with little hope of survival. General Motors once again went for high technology , featuring an all aluminum engine. Most such engines have iron cylinder liners pressed in for durability, but GM placed their bets on a new process which coated the aluminum cylinders with a nickel compound. It was an experiment that failed miserably and the Vega engine became famous for a short life and a myriad of service problems.
Once again, Ford went with a more conventional strategy with the Pinto. With its bland styling and gutless 4 cylinder engine, the driver had a choice of moving forward or having the air conditioner on. But you couldn't do both at the same time. To make matters worse, some genius at Ford determined that they could save a dollar per vehicle by using the cargo compartment floor as the top of the gas tank. Sadly, when involved in a rear end collision, this design flaw often allowed raw gasoline to flood the interior of the car, incinerating the occupants. The resulting law suits, known as "crispy critter" cases among trial lawyers, almost drove Ford out of business.
In essence, every car that American manufacturers have brougnt to market to meet the challenge of the imports has been an unmitigatied disaster. To understand the present dire straits in which the domestic auto industry finds itself, you need to look no further than its inability to build quality small cars, starting 50 years ago. The domestic manufacturers just don't "get it" and that is the curse that continues to have the American auto industry in its grip.
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