Thinking about it even more - OK, so the Simca 1100 is definitely all-new for the late 1960s, and the Simca 1000 (which was smaller) was starting to get a bit long in the tooth. However, if it were exported, maybe it could be slotted in as a Plymouth (say, as a *Plymouth Eagle)? For Chrysler, the importation of the Simca 1100 could probably spawn a whole new segment, what is also known as "superminis" in Europe but as "subcompacts" in the US. So the Simca 1100 would be smaller than the Corvair, but probably would be just as powerful (if not more so). So the Simca 1100 could probably work in North America, at least in the way you're shaping it.
From The Streets of Detroit: America's Auto Powerhouse
- Thread starter TheMann
- Start date
I think the Simca 1100 would be too small for American tastes, as a car the size of the 1100 is gonna be a hard sell in America, being over two feet shorter than the first-generation Corvair (and six inches shorter than the Volkswagen Beetle) the Corvair was smaller than the other rivals. I don't think America in 1967 is gonna be ready for Simca 1100, but I think that it coming the early 1970s is a real possibility. Besides that, I have big plans for Chrysler.
So, basically, GM's management starts listening to the engineers instead of the accountants (which OTL was one of the problems; over at Ford, the Pinto, as designed would have been just fine if the shield the engineers wanted to put between the axle & gas tank was installed, but the accountants said no, as even though it would have cost less than a quarter a car, not installing it would have gotten a bit more profit out of the car, which the accountants said would have outweighed the likely liability... oopsie.)
Incidentally, GM was developing a 3rd-generation Corvair that was scheduled for release as a 1970 model OTL, but dropped it when their sales tanked. Kind of curious what TTL's Cavalier would be like, as OTLs was a good concept badly executed, & if the Citation & friends are butterflied away, so much the better.
Also, if you're thinking about AMC turning to supercharging later on TTL, might want to have them grab some people & assets from Studebaker when that company finally goes down, as Studebaker was playing around them in partnership with Paxton in the early 60s, & even released some supercharged motors in the Lark & Avanti that were as fast as some of the most powerful cars sold a few years later.
I think the Simca 1100 would be too small for American tastes, as a car the size of the 1100 is gonna be a hard sell in America, being over two feet shorter than the first-generation Corvair (and six inches shorter than the Volkswagen Beetle) the Corvair was smaller than the other rivals. I don't think America in 1967 is gonna be ready for Simca 1100, but I think that it coming the early 1970s is a real possibility. Besides that, I have big plans for Chrysler.
Really? I'd think it would be perfect - particularly once you get in the stuff like the Rancho. OK, so the 1100 could be adapted to a sedan and (thanks to the Rancho) maybe even a pick-up version. However, give it good engines, have Simca sort out the build quality issues before it goes into production, publicize it well, have it get favourable reviews, and maybe American tastes will warm up. Besides, it's not like Americans got used to something like that with the Beetle anyway when it first came out (and more so the Canadians
). If you want to give it a 2-year waiting period (say, until 1969 for the 1970 model year) so that the kinks get sorted out, that's fine with me, too. Though if Chrysler is interested, the Rancho (probably under Plymouth as well) can be moved earlier than OTL, from OTL's 1977 launch to sometime around 1971-1972.Part 3: Be Aware Of Everything, Be Afraid Of Nothing
As the 1960s ended America was a very divided society, a fact that shaped the realities within which Detroit lived. The counterculture of the 1960s, the civil rights movement, opposition to the Vietnam War and such infamous incidents as the Watts, Newark and Detroit riots, the mess of the Democratic National Convention in 1968 and the tragedy at Kent State in Ohio in 1970 all combined to make for a time that while one of some optimism, was becoming much more focused on realism, and Detroit was immune to none of these practices.
The counterculture movements added to problems, and sniping within companies made matters worse still in Detroit. After appearing before Congress to advocate GM be split up as a monopolistic enterprise in 1961, George Romney was called before Congress again in 1967, and Romney stuck to his guns, a fact which did not endear him to General Motors' management but other than that ultimately had little effect. GM's much bigger problems in 1970 lay its problematic workforce. GM's years of arguments with the UAW, along with the counterculture problem, erupted into a bitter four-month strike in 1970 which sapped the company's resources, which in the midst of a growing recession was bad news - and the bankruptcy of the Penn Central railroad in 1970, and the double hammers of both the loss of a major locomotive order and substantial shipping problems for GM, added to the problems. 1970 was the worst year for General Motors since before WWII, and even after the bitter strike, several plants (most infamously the ones at Lordstown, Ohio and Baltimore, Maryland) suffered serious problems with workers not doing their jobs or in some cases even intentionally sabotaging the line or the cars on it. Mind you, things weren't all that much better at Ford or Chrysler - both suffered problems with industrial unrest as well, with Ford suffering its Rouge River plant in Dearborn being shut for two months as a result of a major fire in April 1970 and the Atlanta plant being shut down for seven weeks after an electrical fire and explosion in November 1970. Despite strong sales, the problems were real, and by now management, happy through the 1960s to ride both technological and marketing trends, now had to confront its internal problems - which Romney totally inadvertently made worse.
American Motors was by now the fourth placed of the big four, but George Romney's skill at running the firm was proving to be its greatest strength - and perhaps most notably, AMC was not suffering the problems from labor unrest that its Detroit rivals were, largely through the good relationship between Romney and UAW leader Walter Reuther. AMC also added to the Detroit problems in 1970 through the introduction of its "compacts for the 1970s", the excellent Gremlin and brilliant Hornet.
"The Hornet is an excellent small sedan, and continues the trend of American Motors using its long history of expertise to make another car which Detroit will undoubtedly seek to chase. The Gremlin is perhaps an even better idea, as its a smaller car still and had the benefit of better-still fuel efficiency, and while the tail of the Gremlin might be controversial, to our eyes the two cars complement each other nicely, and really do work. Ford and Chrysler have rivals coming, sure, but this is AMC leading the way."
-- Motor Trend, June 1970
"The Gremlin was a surprise to us, as we had the Pinto nearly done, but we didn't figure AMC had the chutzpah to invest like they did. They deserve that credit, I'll give them that. They should know that we're gunning for them now, but we should be hoping for success for them, as it will keep Volkswagen and the Japanese at the docks."
-- Ford Senior Engineer Donald N. Frey, In an Interview with Motor Trend, March 1974
A 1972 AMC Gremlin X, with the supercharged I-4E 2.0 engine
Romney and AMC had bet big on a big score for the Hornet and Gremlin pair, introduced in April 1970, and they were not disappointed. The original small Chevrolet Nova and Corvair had moved somewhat upmarket, and Romney had sought to have their twins beat GM and Ford to the market, as well as take on the growing sales of Japanese imports such as the Datsun 510 and 1200 and the Toyota Corolla. Despite the need to get ahead, Romney had insisted in the design being good, fearing the car be a mechanical nightmare that would hurt the company's reputation. When they came out, both cars were easily as influential as the Corvair had been a decade earlier. What most set apart the AMC cars was the engine - AMC's I-4E, newly developed, was a class apart from its rivals. A twin-overhead cam four-cylinder engine, it used individual carburetors and four valves per cylinder, as well as an aluminum engine block (with iron liners) and aluminum cylinder head. The Gremlin and Hornet started with 1.7-liter and 2.0-liter versions, followed in 1972 by a supercharged version of the 2.0-liter engine. The base 1.7-liter unit made 115 horsepower - an amazing power output for a car of its day with that size engine, and the I-4E proved to be just about as nuclear bunker-tough as the AMC inline-six and V8 engines. Both cars were nearly-identical from the front to the B pillars, and here that was no real problem - four wheel independent suspension with sway bars, Bendix disc brakes and newly-developed Uniroyal Tiger Claw radial tires. In addition to the cars' solid assembly quality and very reasonable price, they added up to what was sure to be a hit for American Motors - and so it was.
The Hornet and Gremlin, combined with the competitive mid-sized Matador and successful full-size Matador, as well as the AMX and Javelin sporty cars, meant that AMC was in great shape in 1970 - and they took full advantage of that and the problem their rivals faced. The Hornet and Gremlin saw over half a million sales between them by the end of 1971, which when combined with the strong-selling Matador and Ambassador put AMC firmly back in the hunt with the Big Three, with American Motors using the advantage to leap past Chrysler into third place in America in spring of 1974.
GM and Ford were well along in their responses when the Gremlin hit the ground running, and it showed. Chrysler, still investing in large cars, made a late response into the small car game with by importing the Simca 160 into the US Market starting in 1973, naming it the Chrysler Arrow, as well as the even-smaller Hillman Avenger, named the Plymouth Cricket. Neither were a huge success, and the combination of that and Chrysler's underlying financial problems would go on to harm them badly late in the 1970s. Ford and GM, however, had better plans - the Ford Pinto and the Chevrolet Vega.
"I wanted the Vega to work so badly that I did everything in my power to do so, even placating those damn thugs at Lordstown. I remember the calls at Lordstown to make it hard for us to sell the Vega, and I called Reuther directly about it. He knew of the problems there, but I wanted him to know that if they made my life easier, I would do so for him, too. Nobody on the fourteenth floor wanted to give an inch to the UAW, but by now everybody had heard such stories about our cars that if we didn't hit that problem square in the face from the off, we'd have more problems down the road. By then, we could see what was going on at AMC, and saw that Romney was kicking our asses. We couldn't let that slide. Small cars had been loathed by Detroit, but in 1971, they were all anyone could talk about, because they were saving our asses."
-- John DeLorean, On A Clear Day You Can See General Motors, 1980
"I couldn't forget being called by DeLorean and having him want to work with me to stop the problems at Lordstown and Baltimore. Lots of my guys, especially Doug [Douglas Fraser, Reuther's successor at the head of the UAW] and Leo [Leonard Woodcock, influential UAW leader], wanted me to drop the hammer on DeLorean, but I could see that if GM was wanting to speak to us about issues at times other than negotiations, it was probably in our interest to at least hear them out. It also didn't take me long to realize that the reason they were talking to us was because of what we were accomplishing at AMC. I didn't always see eye-to-eye with Romney, but I am well aware that without him, I would not have been able to start burying the hatchet with General Motors."
-- Walter Reuther, There's an Auto Man In Us All, 1984
"The Americans are capable of much when they work at it, but the problem is the same as it is with so many of us, that being those who are so sure of their ways get too confident and lose sight of what lies beneath, what can either be their saviors of their destroyers. It is in the interest of the company to advance the sale of cars in America, but it is important that we remember that the men who run the makers of cars in America are not fools, and they are not to be underestimated."
-- Yutaka Kamayata, President of Nissan North America, in a memo to Nissan President Katsuji Kawamata, 1972
"The Vega is a worthy rival to the Gremlin and a worthy successor to what the Corvair was born as, a handsome machine of the first order which could well be just what the doctor ordered, and a very dangerous rival to the Gremlin and the Japanese. AMC loves to talk about their success, and they have reason to do so, but they had better be aware that GM can still play the game as well as any."
-- Autoweek, August 1971
The Vega was a new machine for GM in a great many ways, namely because of the fact that it was GM's attempt at a real small car. The Corvair had been a technological marvel with few rivals, but the Vega would face the Pinto and Gremlin right from the off, as well as the Japanese and Volkswagen - and by now, VW was working on a big series of new models to replace the ancient Beetle, a fact well-known in Detroit. The Vega was designed to be a more handsome, stylish car than the Gremlin, as well as being set to take on the Gremlin's modern new engine. The Vega used an aluminum-block engine, but learning from the problems Chrysler and AMC had both suffered in testing (and GM's own problems with the early Corvairs leaking oil), GM used steel liners inside the aluminum block, and the Vega's extensive testing proved two serious problems - the cooling system was inadequate and the engine had a tendency to backfire when engine vibration loosened the screws on the carburetors. Both problems were fixed early on, but the biggest problem was that Fisher Body, responsible for making the Vega's unibody, didn't do a great job of rustproofing - a fact made worse when the finance department vetoed the usage of liners on places where the Vega was most susceptible to rust. This was soon apparent, and GM fixed the problem for 1973 Vega models. Despite this and ongoing problems with build quality, the car was a commercial success, and once the bugs were sorted out, the Vega 2300 engine proved to be a long-lasting unit.
A 1973 Chevrolet Vega GT
As the Vega entered the market, another problem for Detroit emerged, one which hit the Vega, and which had an ingenious solution. The Clean Air Act, enacted into law in 1963, was significantly enhanced in terms of authority and enforcement in 1970, which GM, Ford and Chrysler responded to by taking the government to court, saying meeting the proposed laws were impossible. (AMC, quite pointedly, did not do this - they believed that they could meet the proposed laws.) GM's engineering staff, proud of their previous accomplishments, went through dozens of Vega engines as the car was being launched, as well as numerous other cars, trying to find a solution, most of their proposed fixes involving additions to the car's engine, which had the effect of reducing efficiency - no real problem for the Vega engine, which had plenty of power for its class in 1971, but which would be a real problem later on.
But in the middle of this came a solution that had to be heard to be believed. Soichiro Honda, the legendary founder of Honda Motor Company, visited Detroit dealers in April 1972, and while he was there he took his first look at what his upcoming Civic and Accord cars were up against, namely the Vega, Pinto and Gremlin. Honda was impressed by the Gremlin, but the Pinto and Vega were rather less appealing. A dealer explained the problems that GM was having meeting emissions laws, and ever the tinkerer, Honda took it upon himself to ask if he could borrow a Vega to find a solution. GM, fearing Honda was trying industrial espionage, turned him down. That deter him - he bought a loaded Vegas 2300 sportback coupe from a dealer in Chicago and had it shipped to Japan, starting work.
The Vega's handling was impressive to Honda, but the engine could be better - and Honda and his people did make it better. Ten months later, Honda was back in America with his Vega with a Honda head and intake system - which not only made but considerably bettered the emissions requirements, as well as running better and making considerably more power. Struck dumb, GM bought the Vega back and paid Honda a considerable sum of money for his work. After extensive testing, the Honda head design became a regular appearance on the Vega, with all Vegas used the new cylinder head and quad-carburetor system system from the 1975 model year. This led to Pete Estes offering to buy Honda Motor Company outright in 1980, an offer that was politely turned down. It would not be the only time the "Japanese genius", as many Detroit engineers would one day say of Honda, crossed paths with Detroit, even as the companies were rivals in ever-greater amounts.
Ford's experience with the Pinto was a completely different story, though. The Pinto, pushed into production in 1971, was a very conventional car. The demands by Ford product boss Lee Iacocca for a low price and simple mechanical components meant that while the car came with disc brakes, it used live-axle rear suspension and older-design inline-four engines. The Pinto was the cheapest new Ford in over a decade, but the Pinto's conventional nature and design, and its uninspiring performance when compared to the Gremlin and Vega, led to it not being much of a sales success - and then came the problems with exploding fuel tanks, which was made worse with an infamous memo by Ford about the cost of paying off victims of Pinto accidents versus the cost of fixing the car's known flaws with exploding gas tanks. While this was in some ways overblown, the publicity this got, with it being run by numerous newspapers and news magazines in 1972 and 1973, damned the Pinto forever - and worse still, it also damned the Mustang II project, which Henry Ford II killed because of its connection with the Pinto. Ford spent the money on an all-new Mustang for 1978, but the Pinto died in 1976.
Ford had to respond to this, as Pinto sales by 1975 had sank to under 80,000 - against 322,000 Vegas, 284,500 Gremlins and Hornets, 128,000 Corvairs and 115,000 Chrysler Arrows in the same year - and the Maverick was sinking as well. Ford decided its only real option was the European Escort Mark II, which got a restyle for the 1977 models, and Ford decided to bring the Escort, Fiesta subcompact and the Capri sports coupe to North America, making the Escort in the same plant in Edison, New Jersey, that had built the Pinto, while the Fiesta went to Ford's facility in St. Thomas, Ontario in Canada. It was a Hail Mary play to be sure, but Ford got savvy with the marketing and didn't advertise it as much - instead, the Fiesta was a car for the modern city dweller, the Capri was a sports car for the times and the Escort was advertised as "proven all over the world, and now you can buy it, too". The tactic worked, and while the Escort was a very small car, its excellent handling made it a dream for the enthusiastic driver, and both the Capri and sporty Escorts gained in America much of the love they had come to have in Europe. Indeed, the Ford Escort RS2000 would come to be one of Ford's enthusiast cars of the 1970s, and convince even somebody as hardheaded as Henry Ford II was that "world cars" were viable propositions in the United States. As for Iacocca, he was fired from Ford in 1978....and completely redeemed himself by saving Chrysler not long afterwards.
A 1979 Ford Escort RS2000 coupe
The oil crisis brought to a head all of the problems that Detroit was now starting to deal with. Despite advancement of their car models almost across the board, the fact that the majority of American cars were still enormous, fuel-inefficient brutes came to a head with the 1973 oil crisis. In response to President Nixon's support of Israel after it was attacked by its Arab neighbors in October 1973, The Arab members of the OPEC oil cartel embargoed the United States and jacked up the price of crude, eventually extending it to most of Western Europe, Japan, Australia and South Africa. This had the immediate effect of jacking the price of fuel by over 40% and serious shortages in the winter of 1973-74. Things were worse in Europe, but in America the hit was quite real and painful. The economic problems that this caused added to the problems in the economy in 1973 and 1974. This made matters worse for everyone.
Beyond the problems with sales and economic problems, one of the infamous events of this came down with GM at its troublesome Lordstown plant. After the sudden economic problems of 1974, GM was racked once again with problems with labor problems, which despite the demands of both the UAW leadership and Detroit's management reached a head in the summer of 1974. It blew up massively into the open after a racially-biased fight broke out at the trouble-prone Baltimore assembly plant on August 9, 1974, which blew up into a full-on battle involving over 600 workers which resulted in three dead and ten million dollars in damage to the plant. The problems simmered, blowing up again at Lordstown two weeks later on August 22.
GM's response to this was to announce that they would begin moving production of the Vega (built at Lordstown) away to another plant, GM having had about enough of the mess that Lordstown had been since it was built eight years earlier. On September 4, 1974, Lordstown workers angrily stopped work on the morning shift, refusing to do their jobs. GM angrily the next day fired the workers at Lordstown's day and evening shifts, but on the morning of September 9, 1974, all hell broke loose. GM workers came back to the Lordstown plant enraged, preventing people from coming to an information session at the plant. The fight turned into a vicious brawl, where enraged GM workers beat a jobseeker to death and hanged him from a telephone pole. Ohio State Police tried to break up the melee but wound up under attack themselves. The mess took over six hours to stop, resulting in seventeen people killed, serious damage to the plant and over a thousand arrests - and worst of all, the image of the hanged jobseeker was national news for days.
Both the UAW and GM were sickened by it all, and GM closed Lordstown immediately, hurriedly transferring Vega production to South Gate, California, Lansing, Michigan and Oshawa, Ontario. Walter Reuther loudly and angrily demanded the violence stop but also told GM that they wanted to work out deals so that what happened at Lordstown never happened again. GM, having made a deal with the UAW the year before, turned it down and angrily accused Reuther of instigating the riot at Lordstown. This battle got ugly fast, and worse still exploded far beyond GM, with plants for Ford and Chrysler soon appearing to be in the middle of the mess.
The aftermath of the Baltimore Riot, August 9, 1974
Into this, George Romney jumped in. On October 21, 1974, Romney went on CBS News and proposed using the contracts AMC had hammered out with the UAW as a baseline for the whole industry to use, and stating that if the companies' were willing to look at workers as part of the company's assets instead of what many UAW members said GM felt of them - "meat bags who made cars" - that Detroit would have fewer labor problems, pointing out that AMC had had little labor trouble in a decade. Detroit loudly turned down the idea, and furthermore continued to toss insults at Romney. Reuther defended him, saying that he didn't want to bankrupt Detroit but he was committed to getting the share his people deserved. Coming at a time when American public perception of the world around them was about as poor as it could get, it seemed that Detroit and its workers could end up being at it for a long time.
Ed Cole's retirement from GM was postponed in an attempt to handle this, but pressured by his board and stockholders, he took a hard line with the UAW's requests for new negotiations. Having worked as hard as he had to get Lordstown working properly and then having seen it blow up so spectacularly, Cole's hard line was the last straw for DeLorean, who resigned from GM on November 12, 1974, tossing away an almost-certain likelihood of him taking over GM's Presidency. In the middle of this, the UAW sat down with AMC to show how the whole process could work. Relations between AMC and the UAW were cordial, and the negotiations for a new four-year contract flew through and were easily ratified by AMC workers in January 1975. But Detroit still refused to budge, particularly thanks to the thought that the companies couldn't give in to thugs at their plants.
Romney made his legend here. Upon his retirement from AMC on February 28, 1975, Romney immediately began calling automaker executives and asking them what they wanted in negotiations with the UAW to end the messes, and saying that he would be the mediator if it would help end the messes that by now were doing real harm. Cole agreed to go for it, but he insisted on also speaking to Reuther himself - which Walter had no issue with. Over 1975, numerous negotiations, which ultimately resulted at one time in George Romney being hospitalized for exhaustion, led to real agreements between Detroit automakers and their workers, which included some huge changes and concessions - the most notable being a commitment to profit-sharing programs and advancement ladders, as well as more vacation days and company promises to improve the working environment in their plants. In return, the UAW had to limit absenteeism, and the companies would all shift work around to plants that showed the best quality, as well as giving up the cost of living allowance which had defined the UAW negotiations for decades. The profit sharing problems didn't work well at Chrysler for a while, but at GM and Ford it had a real, and quite positive effect.
One of the first places to get the makeover for GM was Baltimore. Baltimore Assembly was a plant built in 1935 in center city of Baltimore, which was having quite real economic problems at the time. GM's decision to go here first was a decision of Pete Estes, who took over GM's leadership when Ed Cole retired on August 30, 1975, who wanted to make a new future at a plant which had caused a massive riot. Baltimore was expanded in size and renovated, stealing many of the ideas and advances used in other industries. Re-opened in 1977, Baltimore Assembly as refurbished with painted floors, higher ceilings where possible, completely air-conditioned, natural light from skylights and the usage of covered lights to improve the natural environment. A strong showcase of what GM had in mind, Baltimore Assembly returned to work making the Corvair, with production transferred there from the overcrowded Willow Run, Michigan facility. The Corvair was produced there from 1977 until the last ones were made in the fall of 1981.
Lordstown was not returned to being a GM plant - the company decided the facility's stigma was too much to handle. GM's attempt to sell the facility never went far - Lordstown had become a buzzword for an infamous incident in the history of industrial relations in America. Unable to sell it, the plant sat vacant until 1978 - when the man who had fought hard for the plant's security took it over.
John DeLorean's dream after leaving GM had been the building of a "ethical sports car", which began to bear fruit in the late 1970s. The DeLorean DMC-12 began as John's dream, and as his dream took shape in the late 1970s, John made an audacious proposal to take over the infamous Lordstown plant was the place which would build the DMC-12s sold in North America, while ones sold in Europe and right-hand-drive would be made in Dunmurry, Northern Ireland. DeLorean loudly went to the media, seeking the guys who had lost out from the actions of the thugs, saying that he would hire them back to make the new cars - and Lordstown's huge size was such that the facility would be used for everything to do with the cars, including making some parts. This decision and his years of service to GM also meant that he could use GM parts for his car - and thanks to John Judd and a smart idea by him, the DeLorean would have its own engine, a 4.6-liter V8 made from the cylinder barrels of two Vega 2300 engines. Lordstown made its first DMC-12 in April 1980, and Lordstown would end up assembling many of the first Irish-built cars because of their rather poor build quality. Lordstown would redeem itself for DeLorean, making over 75,000 DMC-12s between 1980 and 1989, and DeLorean's company would up being a success, against most of the odds.
"Nobody believed that it would actually succeed, and I think most people were surprised when it did, and you know what, a large part of that has to go to the guys at Lordstown and Dunmurry. The people who work there now never were bad people, aside from the horrible thugs. Today, we are saying that when people talk about the great places of sports cars, an industrial town in Eastern Ohio is now joining the list. Even beyond the car succeeding, the people succeeding, that feels better still."
-- John DeLorean, talking to Time Magazine, March 1986
The DeLorean DMC-12
The 1970s were a tumultuous time, and the fights were over yet....
As the 1960s ended America was a very divided society, a fact that shaped the realities within which Detroit lived. The counterculture of the 1960s, the civil rights movement, opposition to the Vietnam War and such infamous incidents as the Watts, Newark and Detroit riots, the mess of the Democratic National Convention in 1968 and the tragedy at Kent State in Ohio in 1970 all combined to make for a time that while one of some optimism, was becoming much more focused on realism, and Detroit was immune to none of these practices.
The counterculture movements added to problems, and sniping within companies made matters worse still in Detroit. After appearing before Congress to advocate GM be split up as a monopolistic enterprise in 1961, George Romney was called before Congress again in 1967, and Romney stuck to his guns, a fact which did not endear him to General Motors' management but other than that ultimately had little effect. GM's much bigger problems in 1970 lay its problematic workforce. GM's years of arguments with the UAW, along with the counterculture problem, erupted into a bitter four-month strike in 1970 which sapped the company's resources, which in the midst of a growing recession was bad news - and the bankruptcy of the Penn Central railroad in 1970, and the double hammers of both the loss of a major locomotive order and substantial shipping problems for GM, added to the problems. 1970 was the worst year for General Motors since before WWII, and even after the bitter strike, several plants (most infamously the ones at Lordstown, Ohio and Baltimore, Maryland) suffered serious problems with workers not doing their jobs or in some cases even intentionally sabotaging the line or the cars on it. Mind you, things weren't all that much better at Ford or Chrysler - both suffered problems with industrial unrest as well, with Ford suffering its Rouge River plant in Dearborn being shut for two months as a result of a major fire in April 1970 and the Atlanta plant being shut down for seven weeks after an electrical fire and explosion in November 1970. Despite strong sales, the problems were real, and by now management, happy through the 1960s to ride both technological and marketing trends, now had to confront its internal problems - which Romney totally inadvertently made worse.
American Motors was by now the fourth placed of the big four, but George Romney's skill at running the firm was proving to be its greatest strength - and perhaps most notably, AMC was not suffering the problems from labor unrest that its Detroit rivals were, largely through the good relationship between Romney and UAW leader Walter Reuther. AMC also added to the Detroit problems in 1970 through the introduction of its "compacts for the 1970s", the excellent Gremlin and brilliant Hornet.
"The Hornet is an excellent small sedan, and continues the trend of American Motors using its long history of expertise to make another car which Detroit will undoubtedly seek to chase. The Gremlin is perhaps an even better idea, as its a smaller car still and had the benefit of better-still fuel efficiency, and while the tail of the Gremlin might be controversial, to our eyes the two cars complement each other nicely, and really do work. Ford and Chrysler have rivals coming, sure, but this is AMC leading the way."
-- Motor Trend, June 1970
"The Gremlin was a surprise to us, as we had the Pinto nearly done, but we didn't figure AMC had the chutzpah to invest like they did. They deserve that credit, I'll give them that. They should know that we're gunning for them now, but we should be hoping for success for them, as it will keep Volkswagen and the Japanese at the docks."
-- Ford Senior Engineer Donald N. Frey, In an Interview with Motor Trend, March 1974
A 1972 AMC Gremlin X, with the supercharged I-4E 2.0 engine
Romney and AMC had bet big on a big score for the Hornet and Gremlin pair, introduced in April 1970, and they were not disappointed. The original small Chevrolet Nova and Corvair had moved somewhat upmarket, and Romney had sought to have their twins beat GM and Ford to the market, as well as take on the growing sales of Japanese imports such as the Datsun 510 and 1200 and the Toyota Corolla. Despite the need to get ahead, Romney had insisted in the design being good, fearing the car be a mechanical nightmare that would hurt the company's reputation. When they came out, both cars were easily as influential as the Corvair had been a decade earlier. What most set apart the AMC cars was the engine - AMC's I-4E, newly developed, was a class apart from its rivals. A twin-overhead cam four-cylinder engine, it used individual carburetors and four valves per cylinder, as well as an aluminum engine block (with iron liners) and aluminum cylinder head. The Gremlin and Hornet started with 1.7-liter and 2.0-liter versions, followed in 1972 by a supercharged version of the 2.0-liter engine. The base 1.7-liter unit made 115 horsepower - an amazing power output for a car of its day with that size engine, and the I-4E proved to be just about as nuclear bunker-tough as the AMC inline-six and V8 engines. Both cars were nearly-identical from the front to the B pillars, and here that was no real problem - four wheel independent suspension with sway bars, Bendix disc brakes and newly-developed Uniroyal Tiger Claw radial tires. In addition to the cars' solid assembly quality and very reasonable price, they added up to what was sure to be a hit for American Motors - and so it was.
The Hornet and Gremlin, combined with the competitive mid-sized Matador and successful full-size Matador, as well as the AMX and Javelin sporty cars, meant that AMC was in great shape in 1970 - and they took full advantage of that and the problem their rivals faced. The Hornet and Gremlin saw over half a million sales between them by the end of 1971, which when combined with the strong-selling Matador and Ambassador put AMC firmly back in the hunt with the Big Three, with American Motors using the advantage to leap past Chrysler into third place in America in spring of 1974.
GM and Ford were well along in their responses when the Gremlin hit the ground running, and it showed. Chrysler, still investing in large cars, made a late response into the small car game with by importing the Simca 160 into the US Market starting in 1973, naming it the Chrysler Arrow, as well as the even-smaller Hillman Avenger, named the Plymouth Cricket. Neither were a huge success, and the combination of that and Chrysler's underlying financial problems would go on to harm them badly late in the 1970s. Ford and GM, however, had better plans - the Ford Pinto and the Chevrolet Vega.
"I wanted the Vega to work so badly that I did everything in my power to do so, even placating those damn thugs at Lordstown. I remember the calls at Lordstown to make it hard for us to sell the Vega, and I called Reuther directly about it. He knew of the problems there, but I wanted him to know that if they made my life easier, I would do so for him, too. Nobody on the fourteenth floor wanted to give an inch to the UAW, but by now everybody had heard such stories about our cars that if we didn't hit that problem square in the face from the off, we'd have more problems down the road. By then, we could see what was going on at AMC, and saw that Romney was kicking our asses. We couldn't let that slide. Small cars had been loathed by Detroit, but in 1971, they were all anyone could talk about, because they were saving our asses."
-- John DeLorean, On A Clear Day You Can See General Motors, 1980
"I couldn't forget being called by DeLorean and having him want to work with me to stop the problems at Lordstown and Baltimore. Lots of my guys, especially Doug [Douglas Fraser, Reuther's successor at the head of the UAW] and Leo [Leonard Woodcock, influential UAW leader], wanted me to drop the hammer on DeLorean, but I could see that if GM was wanting to speak to us about issues at times other than negotiations, it was probably in our interest to at least hear them out. It also didn't take me long to realize that the reason they were talking to us was because of what we were accomplishing at AMC. I didn't always see eye-to-eye with Romney, but I am well aware that without him, I would not have been able to start burying the hatchet with General Motors."
-- Walter Reuther, There's an Auto Man In Us All, 1984
"The Americans are capable of much when they work at it, but the problem is the same as it is with so many of us, that being those who are so sure of their ways get too confident and lose sight of what lies beneath, what can either be their saviors of their destroyers. It is in the interest of the company to advance the sale of cars in America, but it is important that we remember that the men who run the makers of cars in America are not fools, and they are not to be underestimated."
-- Yutaka Kamayata, President of Nissan North America, in a memo to Nissan President Katsuji Kawamata, 1972
"The Vega is a worthy rival to the Gremlin and a worthy successor to what the Corvair was born as, a handsome machine of the first order which could well be just what the doctor ordered, and a very dangerous rival to the Gremlin and the Japanese. AMC loves to talk about their success, and they have reason to do so, but they had better be aware that GM can still play the game as well as any."
-- Autoweek, August 1971
The Vega was a new machine for GM in a great many ways, namely because of the fact that it was GM's attempt at a real small car. The Corvair had been a technological marvel with few rivals, but the Vega would face the Pinto and Gremlin right from the off, as well as the Japanese and Volkswagen - and by now, VW was working on a big series of new models to replace the ancient Beetle, a fact well-known in Detroit. The Vega was designed to be a more handsome, stylish car than the Gremlin, as well as being set to take on the Gremlin's modern new engine. The Vega used an aluminum-block engine, but learning from the problems Chrysler and AMC had both suffered in testing (and GM's own problems with the early Corvairs leaking oil), GM used steel liners inside the aluminum block, and the Vega's extensive testing proved two serious problems - the cooling system was inadequate and the engine had a tendency to backfire when engine vibration loosened the screws on the carburetors. Both problems were fixed early on, but the biggest problem was that Fisher Body, responsible for making the Vega's unibody, didn't do a great job of rustproofing - a fact made worse when the finance department vetoed the usage of liners on places where the Vega was most susceptible to rust. This was soon apparent, and GM fixed the problem for 1973 Vega models. Despite this and ongoing problems with build quality, the car was a commercial success, and once the bugs were sorted out, the Vega 2300 engine proved to be a long-lasting unit.
A 1973 Chevrolet Vega GT
As the Vega entered the market, another problem for Detroit emerged, one which hit the Vega, and which had an ingenious solution. The Clean Air Act, enacted into law in 1963, was significantly enhanced in terms of authority and enforcement in 1970, which GM, Ford and Chrysler responded to by taking the government to court, saying meeting the proposed laws were impossible. (AMC, quite pointedly, did not do this - they believed that they could meet the proposed laws.) GM's engineering staff, proud of their previous accomplishments, went through dozens of Vega engines as the car was being launched, as well as numerous other cars, trying to find a solution, most of their proposed fixes involving additions to the car's engine, which had the effect of reducing efficiency - no real problem for the Vega engine, which had plenty of power for its class in 1971, but which would be a real problem later on.
But in the middle of this came a solution that had to be heard to be believed. Soichiro Honda, the legendary founder of Honda Motor Company, visited Detroit dealers in April 1972, and while he was there he took his first look at what his upcoming Civic and Accord cars were up against, namely the Vega, Pinto and Gremlin. Honda was impressed by the Gremlin, but the Pinto and Vega were rather less appealing. A dealer explained the problems that GM was having meeting emissions laws, and ever the tinkerer, Honda took it upon himself to ask if he could borrow a Vega to find a solution. GM, fearing Honda was trying industrial espionage, turned him down. That deter him - he bought a loaded Vegas 2300 sportback coupe from a dealer in Chicago and had it shipped to Japan, starting work.
The Vega's handling was impressive to Honda, but the engine could be better - and Honda and his people did make it better. Ten months later, Honda was back in America with his Vega with a Honda head and intake system - which not only made but considerably bettered the emissions requirements, as well as running better and making considerably more power. Struck dumb, GM bought the Vega back and paid Honda a considerable sum of money for his work. After extensive testing, the Honda head design became a regular appearance on the Vega, with all Vegas used the new cylinder head and quad-carburetor system system from the 1975 model year. This led to Pete Estes offering to buy Honda Motor Company outright in 1980, an offer that was politely turned down. It would not be the only time the "Japanese genius", as many Detroit engineers would one day say of Honda, crossed paths with Detroit, even as the companies were rivals in ever-greater amounts.
Ford's experience with the Pinto was a completely different story, though. The Pinto, pushed into production in 1971, was a very conventional car. The demands by Ford product boss Lee Iacocca for a low price and simple mechanical components meant that while the car came with disc brakes, it used live-axle rear suspension and older-design inline-four engines. The Pinto was the cheapest new Ford in over a decade, but the Pinto's conventional nature and design, and its uninspiring performance when compared to the Gremlin and Vega, led to it not being much of a sales success - and then came the problems with exploding fuel tanks, which was made worse with an infamous memo by Ford about the cost of paying off victims of Pinto accidents versus the cost of fixing the car's known flaws with exploding gas tanks. While this was in some ways overblown, the publicity this got, with it being run by numerous newspapers and news magazines in 1972 and 1973, damned the Pinto forever - and worse still, it also damned the Mustang II project, which Henry Ford II killed because of its connection with the Pinto. Ford spent the money on an all-new Mustang for 1978, but the Pinto died in 1976.
Ford had to respond to this, as Pinto sales by 1975 had sank to under 80,000 - against 322,000 Vegas, 284,500 Gremlins and Hornets, 128,000 Corvairs and 115,000 Chrysler Arrows in the same year - and the Maverick was sinking as well. Ford decided its only real option was the European Escort Mark II, which got a restyle for the 1977 models, and Ford decided to bring the Escort, Fiesta subcompact and the Capri sports coupe to North America, making the Escort in the same plant in Edison, New Jersey, that had built the Pinto, while the Fiesta went to Ford's facility in St. Thomas, Ontario in Canada. It was a Hail Mary play to be sure, but Ford got savvy with the marketing and didn't advertise it as much - instead, the Fiesta was a car for the modern city dweller, the Capri was a sports car for the times and the Escort was advertised as "proven all over the world, and now you can buy it, too". The tactic worked, and while the Escort was a very small car, its excellent handling made it a dream for the enthusiastic driver, and both the Capri and sporty Escorts gained in America much of the love they had come to have in Europe. Indeed, the Ford Escort RS2000 would come to be one of Ford's enthusiast cars of the 1970s, and convince even somebody as hardheaded as Henry Ford II was that "world cars" were viable propositions in the United States. As for Iacocca, he was fired from Ford in 1978....and completely redeemed himself by saving Chrysler not long afterwards.
A 1979 Ford Escort RS2000 coupe
The oil crisis brought to a head all of the problems that Detroit was now starting to deal with. Despite advancement of their car models almost across the board, the fact that the majority of American cars were still enormous, fuel-inefficient brutes came to a head with the 1973 oil crisis. In response to President Nixon's support of Israel after it was attacked by its Arab neighbors in October 1973, The Arab members of the OPEC oil cartel embargoed the United States and jacked up the price of crude, eventually extending it to most of Western Europe, Japan, Australia and South Africa. This had the immediate effect of jacking the price of fuel by over 40% and serious shortages in the winter of 1973-74. Things were worse in Europe, but in America the hit was quite real and painful. The economic problems that this caused added to the problems in the economy in 1973 and 1974. This made matters worse for everyone.
Beyond the problems with sales and economic problems, one of the infamous events of this came down with GM at its troublesome Lordstown plant. After the sudden economic problems of 1974, GM was racked once again with problems with labor problems, which despite the demands of both the UAW leadership and Detroit's management reached a head in the summer of 1974. It blew up massively into the open after a racially-biased fight broke out at the trouble-prone Baltimore assembly plant on August 9, 1974, which blew up into a full-on battle involving over 600 workers which resulted in three dead and ten million dollars in damage to the plant. The problems simmered, blowing up again at Lordstown two weeks later on August 22.
GM's response to this was to announce that they would begin moving production of the Vega (built at Lordstown) away to another plant, GM having had about enough of the mess that Lordstown had been since it was built eight years earlier. On September 4, 1974, Lordstown workers angrily stopped work on the morning shift, refusing to do their jobs. GM angrily the next day fired the workers at Lordstown's day and evening shifts, but on the morning of September 9, 1974, all hell broke loose. GM workers came back to the Lordstown plant enraged, preventing people from coming to an information session at the plant. The fight turned into a vicious brawl, where enraged GM workers beat a jobseeker to death and hanged him from a telephone pole. Ohio State Police tried to break up the melee but wound up under attack themselves. The mess took over six hours to stop, resulting in seventeen people killed, serious damage to the plant and over a thousand arrests - and worst of all, the image of the hanged jobseeker was national news for days.
Both the UAW and GM were sickened by it all, and GM closed Lordstown immediately, hurriedly transferring Vega production to South Gate, California, Lansing, Michigan and Oshawa, Ontario. Walter Reuther loudly and angrily demanded the violence stop but also told GM that they wanted to work out deals so that what happened at Lordstown never happened again. GM, having made a deal with the UAW the year before, turned it down and angrily accused Reuther of instigating the riot at Lordstown. This battle got ugly fast, and worse still exploded far beyond GM, with plants for Ford and Chrysler soon appearing to be in the middle of the mess.
The aftermath of the Baltimore Riot, August 9, 1974
Into this, George Romney jumped in. On October 21, 1974, Romney went on CBS News and proposed using the contracts AMC had hammered out with the UAW as a baseline for the whole industry to use, and stating that if the companies' were willing to look at workers as part of the company's assets instead of what many UAW members said GM felt of them - "meat bags who made cars" - that Detroit would have fewer labor problems, pointing out that AMC had had little labor trouble in a decade. Detroit loudly turned down the idea, and furthermore continued to toss insults at Romney. Reuther defended him, saying that he didn't want to bankrupt Detroit but he was committed to getting the share his people deserved. Coming at a time when American public perception of the world around them was about as poor as it could get, it seemed that Detroit and its workers could end up being at it for a long time.
Ed Cole's retirement from GM was postponed in an attempt to handle this, but pressured by his board and stockholders, he took a hard line with the UAW's requests for new negotiations. Having worked as hard as he had to get Lordstown working properly and then having seen it blow up so spectacularly, Cole's hard line was the last straw for DeLorean, who resigned from GM on November 12, 1974, tossing away an almost-certain likelihood of him taking over GM's Presidency. In the middle of this, the UAW sat down with AMC to show how the whole process could work. Relations between AMC and the UAW were cordial, and the negotiations for a new four-year contract flew through and were easily ratified by AMC workers in January 1975. But Detroit still refused to budge, particularly thanks to the thought that the companies couldn't give in to thugs at their plants.
Romney made his legend here. Upon his retirement from AMC on February 28, 1975, Romney immediately began calling automaker executives and asking them what they wanted in negotiations with the UAW to end the messes, and saying that he would be the mediator if it would help end the messes that by now were doing real harm. Cole agreed to go for it, but he insisted on also speaking to Reuther himself - which Walter had no issue with. Over 1975, numerous negotiations, which ultimately resulted at one time in George Romney being hospitalized for exhaustion, led to real agreements between Detroit automakers and their workers, which included some huge changes and concessions - the most notable being a commitment to profit-sharing programs and advancement ladders, as well as more vacation days and company promises to improve the working environment in their plants. In return, the UAW had to limit absenteeism, and the companies would all shift work around to plants that showed the best quality, as well as giving up the cost of living allowance which had defined the UAW negotiations for decades. The profit sharing problems didn't work well at Chrysler for a while, but at GM and Ford it had a real, and quite positive effect.
One of the first places to get the makeover for GM was Baltimore. Baltimore Assembly was a plant built in 1935 in center city of Baltimore, which was having quite real economic problems at the time. GM's decision to go here first was a decision of Pete Estes, who took over GM's leadership when Ed Cole retired on August 30, 1975, who wanted to make a new future at a plant which had caused a massive riot. Baltimore was expanded in size and renovated, stealing many of the ideas and advances used in other industries. Re-opened in 1977, Baltimore Assembly as refurbished with painted floors, higher ceilings where possible, completely air-conditioned, natural light from skylights and the usage of covered lights to improve the natural environment. A strong showcase of what GM had in mind, Baltimore Assembly returned to work making the Corvair, with production transferred there from the overcrowded Willow Run, Michigan facility. The Corvair was produced there from 1977 until the last ones were made in the fall of 1981.
Lordstown was not returned to being a GM plant - the company decided the facility's stigma was too much to handle. GM's attempt to sell the facility never went far - Lordstown had become a buzzword for an infamous incident in the history of industrial relations in America. Unable to sell it, the plant sat vacant until 1978 - when the man who had fought hard for the plant's security took it over.
John DeLorean's dream after leaving GM had been the building of a "ethical sports car", which began to bear fruit in the late 1970s. The DeLorean DMC-12 began as John's dream, and as his dream took shape in the late 1970s, John made an audacious proposal to take over the infamous Lordstown plant was the place which would build the DMC-12s sold in North America, while ones sold in Europe and right-hand-drive would be made in Dunmurry, Northern Ireland. DeLorean loudly went to the media, seeking the guys who had lost out from the actions of the thugs, saying that he would hire them back to make the new cars - and Lordstown's huge size was such that the facility would be used for everything to do with the cars, including making some parts. This decision and his years of service to GM also meant that he could use GM parts for his car - and thanks to John Judd and a smart idea by him, the DeLorean would have its own engine, a 4.6-liter V8 made from the cylinder barrels of two Vega 2300 engines. Lordstown made its first DMC-12 in April 1980, and Lordstown would end up assembling many of the first Irish-built cars because of their rather poor build quality. Lordstown would redeem itself for DeLorean, making over 75,000 DMC-12s between 1980 and 1989, and DeLorean's company would up being a success, against most of the odds.
"Nobody believed that it would actually succeed, and I think most people were surprised when it did, and you know what, a large part of that has to go to the guys at Lordstown and Dunmurry. The people who work there now never were bad people, aside from the horrible thugs. Today, we are saying that when people talk about the great places of sports cars, an industrial town in Eastern Ohio is now joining the list. Even beyond the car succeeding, the people succeeding, that feels better still."
-- John DeLorean, talking to Time Magazine, March 1986
The DeLorean DMC-12
The 1970s were a tumultuous time, and the fights were over yet....
Interesting, to be sure. But a Simca 160? Unless if that was the North America export designation of the Simca 1100 (which I'm not sure it was). The closest I can find is the Chrysler 180 - which flopped in Europe in OTL because it was too ambitious for the segment (like an early Simca car from the 1940s, the Ford Vedette, back from the Ford-France days). However, I still think that Simca could be the saving grace for Chrysler - and Iacocca in TTL should make full use of it. Towards the late 1970s, we have:
>The Simca 1307, known in the UK as the Chrysler Alpine. This could be more a Canadian model than a US model, unless the US is also interested. After all, apart from the LeBaron CC, Chrysler has no midsize car to speak of unless one went down to Dodge or Plymouth. The 1307/Alpine could work for Chrysler's "upscale" image, if one wanted too.
>There's still the Rancho and Bagheera to use (here, Simca 1100+Rancho). The Simca 1100 is still a good car, but in Europe towards the end of the 1970s the 1100 was getting a bit long in the tooth. However, it still retained a lot of popularity, so it was retained as being the cheapest car in the lineup (in the case of the UK and Ireland, the Hillman Avenger was freshened up as the Chrysler Avenger and, along with the Chrysler Sunbeam, took up the same end as the Simca 1100 elsewhere in Europe). If the Simca 1100 remains popular in North America, then it could be retained as part of the lineup (say, as a budget car). The Bagheera, however, is a nice little sports car that could be used, and the Rancho would definitely be nice for a crossover (and would be ideal for Canada).
>In 1978, the Simca Horizon (Chrysler Horizon in the UK) was launched. In North America, this became the Plymouth Horizon and Dodge Omni, with huge differences between them and the European original (IIRC, it used Volkswagen engines!). Due to political considerations in Britain, a variation of the Horizon was sold as the Chrysler Sunbeam - however, it was basically an update of the Hillman Avenger but truncated to a subcompact, straight down to the RWD and using as many British components as possible.
However, there's a silver lining in all this. We could have the Chrysler Sunbeam replace the Plymouth Cricket, becoming a Plymouth Sunbeam (built in North America so as to spare North American buyers of British quality issues). The Plymouth Sunbeam could have sedan and coupé/cabriolet versions in North America, but it has to be kept in mind that in this case the Sunbeam is supposed to be basic. The Simca Horizon, meanwhile, would (partially?) replace the Chrysler Arrow and thus become the Chrysler Horizon. This version is a 5-door hatchback, so to make it more palpable the Chrysler Avenger could donate its 2-door sedan, 4-door sedan, and 5-door wagon body styles. So a Chrysler Horizon wagon, for example, would look like this:
but underneath is basically the same platform as the Simca Horizon instead of the Hillman Avenger's RWD platform, which means it will share components and thus make the sedan and wagon configurations easier to build.
The key here for any Euro Chryslers in North America is to not water down the models, unlike OTL. If there's any watering down, it would be to avoid the build quality issues which plagued a good portion of them in OTL. If they can be avoided, then the Euro Chryslers will be a success. That is what Chrysler North America needs to do in TTL and what Iacocca needs to realize. That's because, in my opinion, selling off Chrysler Europe to Peugeot was the worst mistake Chrysler ever made, because that set them back significantly. If anything, it should be retained at all costs and mined for products to sell, like what GM is doing now by mining Opels to sell as Buicks in North America and China. Chrysler Europe, for sure, would definitely benefit from something like the *K-car platform.
My 2¢, as always.
Unless if that was the North America export designation of the Simca 1100 (which I'm not sure it was). The closest I can find is the Chrysler 180 - which flopped in Europe in OTL because it was too ambitious for the segment (like an early Simca car from the 1940s, the Ford Vedette, back from the Ford-France days). However, I still think that Simca could be the saving grace for Chrysler - and Iacocca in TTL should make full use of it. Towards the late 1970s, we have:>The Simca 1307, known in the UK as the Chrysler Alpine. This could be more a Canadian model than a US model, unless the US is also interested. After all, apart from the LeBaron CC, Chrysler has no midsize car to speak of unless one went down to Dodge or Plymouth. The 1307/Alpine could work for Chrysler's "upscale" image, if one wanted too.
>There's still the Rancho and Bagheera to use (here, Simca 1100+Rancho). The Simca 1100 is still a good car, but in Europe towards the end of the 1970s the 1100 was getting a bit long in the tooth. However, it still retained a lot of popularity, so it was retained as being the cheapest car in the lineup (in the case of the UK and Ireland, the Hillman Avenger was freshened up as the Chrysler Avenger and, along with the Chrysler Sunbeam, took up the same end as the Simca 1100 elsewhere in Europe). If the Simca 1100 remains popular in North America, then it could be retained as part of the lineup (say, as a budget car). The Bagheera, however, is a nice little sports car that could be used, and the Rancho would definitely be nice for a crossover (and would be ideal for Canada).
>In 1978, the Simca Horizon (Chrysler Horizon in the UK) was launched. In North America, this became the Plymouth Horizon and Dodge Omni, with huge differences between them and the European original (IIRC, it used Volkswagen engines!). Due to political considerations in Britain, a variation of the Horizon was sold as the Chrysler Sunbeam - however, it was basically an update of the Hillman Avenger but truncated to a subcompact, straight down to the RWD and using as many British components as possible.
However, there's a silver lining in all this. We could have the Chrysler Sunbeam replace the Plymouth Cricket, becoming a Plymouth Sunbeam (built in North America so as to spare North American buyers of British quality issues). The Plymouth Sunbeam could have sedan and coupé/cabriolet versions in North America, but it has to be kept in mind that in this case the Sunbeam is supposed to be basic. The Simca Horizon, meanwhile, would (partially?) replace the Chrysler Arrow and thus become the Chrysler Horizon. This version is a 5-door hatchback, so to make it more palpable the Chrysler Avenger could donate its 2-door sedan, 4-door sedan, and 5-door wagon body styles. So a Chrysler Horizon wagon, for example, would look like this:
but underneath is basically the same platform as the Simca Horizon instead of the Hillman Avenger's RWD platform, which means it will share components and thus make the sedan and wagon configurations easier to build.
The key here for any Euro Chryslers in North America is to not water down the models, unlike OTL. If there's any watering down, it would be to avoid the build quality issues which plagued a good portion of them in OTL. If they can be avoided, then the Euro Chryslers will be a success. That is what Chrysler North America needs to do in TTL and what Iacocca needs to realize. That's because, in my opinion, selling off Chrysler Europe to Peugeot was the worst mistake Chrysler ever made, because that set them back significantly. If anything, it should be retained at all costs and mined for products to sell, like what GM is doing now by mining Opels to sell as Buicks in North America and China. Chrysler Europe, for sure, would definitely benefit from something like the *K-car platform.
My 2¢, as always.
You bet.
This DeLorean is identical to the OTL one except for the fact that it has a better interior (DeLorean interiors are just a barrage of grey plastic - they can do better than that) and the 4.6-liter Judd-DeLorean V8 engine, which turns a 150 horsepower car IOTL into a 280 horsepower one ITTL, which is of course as a result far quicker.Yep. Dunmurry makes all the cars sold in RHD markets (UK, Ireland, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa) and the LHD cars sold in Europe. Lordstown makes the cars for the Americans and LHD Asian markets. The DeLorean has about 130,000 units built between 1980 and 1989, split about 75,000 at Lordstown and 55,000 at Dunmurry. There will be more for both the Lordstown and Dunmurry plants and the DeLorean after the DMC-12, too.
BlairWitch749
Banned
is chrysler still going to go for the jeep offshoot? it was wildly successful in the 90's and as long as they keep them to 6 cylinders they can be developed into today's light crossovers earlier... the inline 6 in the first jeep grand cherokees was not all the much of a fuel hog, and those vehicles were durable as hell hell
i have a soft spot for the grand cherokee, my first car was a 1997 black on black jeep grand cherokee; it survived being hit head on by a chevy suburban (me doing 30 and him doing 50) and i walked away without a scratch.... a simply well built vehicle
i have plans for the future (when I don't work as much) to buy an old one and fix it up real nice
i have a soft spot for the grand cherokee, my first car was a 1997 black on black jeep grand cherokee; it survived being hit head on by a chevy suburban (me doing 30 and him doing 50) and i walked away without a scratch.... a simply well built vehicle
i have plans for the future (when I don't work as much) to buy an old one and fix it up real nice
Great to hear as I am from NI! I can remember one day when i was about 6 being driven to my aunt's house in the countryside outside Newry when we saw this strange looking car parked at the side of the A1 road, all of a sudden the gull wing door opened and we all knew what it was!
This would have been about 1980 so it may have been a pre-production machine out for a test run. People over here still have fond memories of De Lorean, even though it ended so badly.NothingNow
Banned
Yeah, sorry BW, but I don't think AMC's going to give up that cash cow any time soon ITTL. Even under Romney's tenure they were trying to score Jeep. Hell, it was something Chapin and Teague would've pushed for ITTL just as hard, since it's a fairly sucessful firm in a market segment all of it's own, and pretty much the only reason it didn't happen before 1970 IOTL was Romney not exactly getting along with Edgar Kaiser.
Have Chapin run the acquisition and it'd be a done deal in a week.
There will be a third-generation Corvair, and the third-gen Corvair, Nova and the Vega will be GM's small cars until the J-Body arrives in 1981. No second-generation Vega comes to pass here, either.
Nelson Ledges Road Course going to be the proving ground for the DeLoreans? Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport is going to have to undergo an expansion project to handle civilian cargo traffic. Wonder which engines Ford Cleveland One and Two are going to build. Is Parma Stamping and Parma Powertrain seeing increased volume?
Truthfully, I'm really debating it. I have the Simca 1307 coming to North America (You are right that the Simca 160 / Chrysler 180 are the same car, and while it is a large car by European standards, its about the same size as the OTL Valiant) and I'll probably at first go for having the Talbot Horizon in North America as well, but the problem with Chrysler Europe is that Chrysler's selling it off was a condition of its loan guarantee from Congress, without which Chrysler would almost certainly fail. I'm not sure how to deal with that yet.
In the 1970s, though, Chrysler is tentatively trying the idea of selling European cars in North America, though Ford's decision to replace the Pinto and Mustang II with the Mark II Escort, Fiesta and Capri is going to make a major impact, but by the time Chrysler learns of this, their financial problems will be very real. Chrysler has been slow on the uptake of advanced designs (In the mid-1970s, GM and AMC are leading this, Ford working to catch up) and as Chrysler was the worst of the Big Three for moron management, I'm thinking that Iacocca arrives having been sacked at Ford wanting to make a point, and Chrysler's brush with death will convince both Iacocca and his people of the need to take what they did in the past and completely chuck it. The Rancho and Bagheera are going to be sold in North America, and the Murena will follow the Bagheera, though they will be made in North America and use full rust protection, as the Matra-Simca cars all almost universally suffered from horrific corrosion problems. Chrysler's 1980s changes will include a whole bunch of new plants, which makes it easier to make the European cars in North America.
I seem to recall during the early '70s, drinking with a Chrysler employee who mentioned that there was a parking lot full of Simca 1100s for sale to Chrysler employees for 500 bucks. Possibly, they were experimenting with alternate spare tires. Few takers, they made the trunk floor lumpy.
Your Vega doesn't mesh with my memories of the Vega. I guess it was a different timeline.
Your Vega doesn't mesh with my memories of the Vega. I guess it was a different timeline.