What's yours? My mom had a 1976 Chevrolet Monza, which is effectively a Vega with a nicer body, and that old bugger ran strong right to the end - its body and chassis rotted out long before its mechanicals failed.
From The Streets of Detroit: America's Auto Powerhouse
- Thread starter TheMann
- Start date
What's yours? My mom had a 1976 Chevrolet Monza, which is effectively a Vega with a nicer body, and that old bugger ran strong right to the end - its body and chassis rotted out long before its mechanicals failed.
The coated aluminum block tended towards early excessive oil consumption. You've changed that with words. They didn't change that in fact. I was on the verge of a small-block swap before I regained sanity. There were pie plates with greater structural integrity. Uni-body is a wonderful thing in a universe without salt, if you use enough metal. Best thing I never did. I believe the Monza was the first car with the spark plug you can't change, an idea that has caught on. I had a Chrysler van with a 2 hour plug. My neighbour has an Uplander with a worse plug-change problem. And it all started when somebody said the crappy inline from the Vega could be replaced with a better V-engine in the Monza.
Part 4: The Nearly Unthinkable Hits Chrysler, American Small Car Invasion, Pugs, Pentastars and Soccer Moms
"It was clear by the time Iacocca took over the helm at Chrysler in October 1978 that the company was not faking its financial hell. The 'sales bank' and other stock price-raising tactics, the problems with quality in many of their cars and the huge warranty costs that were resulting from it and their falling sales had left Chrysler in a position of needing help right away. It also put the UAW in the position of being able, quite literally, to do a Nero thumbs up or thumbs down on the company. In the end, Reuther made the right call, though he would pay a stiff price for that early on, history would vindicate him."
-- Denise McCluggage, More Than A Few Tall Tales From Detroit, 1992
"The Aspen and Volare were mistakes right from the start, just as Ford's Pinto had been....poor cars with abysmal build quality and aged design, at a time when the company needed something better. When combined with Chrysler Europe's failure....We had to answer back, and quickly. The fact that Hal [Sperlich, the designer of the minivan] was ready to go when we got together again at Chrysler was a godsend."
-- Lee Iacocca, talking to Motor Trend, September 1985
"I had always feared that the union and the companies would get so used to confrontation that they would be unable to sort out differences, but what happened there shook me, I must admit....After people dying over the labor disputes of the seventies, you'd figure both sides would use their heads a little more, but Douglas [Fraser, then head of the UAW] didn't, and Roger [Smith, GM's CEO in the 1980s] certainly didn't....The two sides have always needed each other. We fought for so long that many forgot that. We can't forget it now. We all need each other too much."
-- Walter Reuther in his memoirs, 1989
After the vicious battles between the automakers and their increasingly-militant labor force in the middle of the 1970s, things began to slowly change at the companies, despite the dictatorial old man that Henry Ford II had slowly become and Chrysler's management issues. AMC took a loss when George Romney retired in 1975, though his remarkably-successful handling of the huge labor unrest of the times made the long disrespect sent his way by Detroit sink away quite quickly. Romney's being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Jimmy Carter in 1977 was just the capper on his remarkable career in the auto industry, but Romney didn't stay retired long - he was called to be an apostle of the Mormon Church in July 1978, and after years at that role, he was made President of the Church following Ezra Taft Benson's death in May 1992, a position Romney would only serve for three years before he died in July 1995. Romney's successor at AMC was his long-time Vice-President Roy Chapin Jr. - but one of the events of 1978 was the joining at AMC of George's son Mitt Romney, who would have a big effect in the future.
Chrysler's financial and management issues came to a head with its rushed introduction of the Dodge Aspen and Plymouth Volare smaller cars in 1976, as the cars were rushed into production and were loaded with problems, compounding Chrysler's reliance on its large car lineup, sales of which nosedived after the oil crisis and the labor chaos of 1974-76. The Aspen and Volare's severe problems with corrosion and general unreliability, particularly with its electrics and starter motors, added to the company's problems. Iacocca's arrival saw the company need to get a considerable influx of cash if it was to stay alive. Iacocca first went to Ford for the money (who, legend has it, literally laughed him out of the room) and then to Volkswagen, who also balked. Out of options, Iacocca went to Washington to get a major loan guarantee, which he reluctantly got, but the terms were harsh - Chrysler Europe was sold to Peugeot, Chrysler Australia to Mitsubishi, numerous development programs were ended and numerous plants were closed, resulting in the laying off of over 30,000 workers. Chrysler fought for the ability to keep its American Mobile, Chrysler Defense and American Locomotive Company subsidiaries, in part because all three were profitable enterprises. The layoffs put Iacocca at odds with the UAW, which began negotiating new contracts with Chrysler in May 1979.
The UAW ended up in trouble here. Well aware of the likelihood of Chrysler's failure if they couldn't save it, Walter Reuther and the UAW went for a conciliatory tone, saying that they had to do it here in order to save the company. Iacocca and several of his top people helped this by loudly and publicly cutting their salaries down to $1 a year, and offering to give promises in writing to laid-off UAW workers and keep their names in a database, saying that when the company turned around, they would get first call on new jobs if they wished to get them. But the UAW's schism, led by Douglas Fraser, said that American auto workers had given up enough in the battles just a few years prior, and he loudly told Reuther to push hard against Iacocca. Reuther ignored this and brought a reasonable deal to Chrysler workers - who voted it down by a more than 3-1 margin. Reuther and Iacocca kept talking, with Fraser's yelling causing more problems. Reuther sought to expel Fraser from the union in 1979, but the control board of the union threw that idea out. Reuther ultimately did get a good deal with Chrysler in January 1980, but a month after that he suffered a heart attack and retired from the union - and to his intense displeasure, Fraser would up succeeding him. Despite the acrimonious labor battle, Iacocca's guys went full-steam ahead with their new car plans - which resulted in the Chrysler K-cars, which hit the market in 1981.
Indeed, 1981 was the year of "Detroit's Small Car Revolution", as all four of Detroit's automakers came out with a veritable flood of small and mid-sized cars, all of them excellent cars. It couldn't come at a much better time - the United States' economy in 1980-81 was in rather rough shape, and such cars were sure to be great sellers. The Chrysler K-Car twins of the Dodge Dart and Plymouth Valiant, as well as the new for 1979 Dodge Omni and Plymouth Horizon (the last real designs from Chrysler Europe before its collapse), walked head-on into the General Motors J-cars (Chevrolet Cavalier, Pontiac Sunfire and the much-more-upscale Cadillac Cimarron), the Ford Escort and Sierra and the AMC Spirit. Despite the seemingly-sudden flood of such cars, the K-cars were up to the challenge. Designed with new engines with Bosch K-Jetronic fuel injection on all models, the K-cars were good performers, though the genuinely-fast Spirit outgunned it and the sophisticated J-cars outcornered it. The K-cars were quantum leaps on what had been sold by Chrysler before in just about every possible way, and it showed in the sales figures. Chrysler sold over 400,000 such cars in 1981 - which turned out to be one of the best years in decades for Detroit, where the four major American automakers between them captured over 90% of the American car market for the first time since 1965. It was a sign for Detroit, and while the cars they introduced were not perfect, they were excellent.
1981 was struck again with strikes, but in this case is was a major series of wildcat strikes that began in 1981, opposing the firing of air traffic controllers by President Reagan in August 1981. New UAW leader Douglas Fraser was one of the biggest leaders of these strikes, which turned into a political nightmare for Reagan. The automakers tried to keep things even, pointing out that they had nothing to do with the firing of controllers, and while the strikes happened, vehicle quality was unaffected and the UAW and the automakers didn't end up heavily at odds over this. (The automakers were not pleased about the wildcat strikes to say the least, but it didn't sour the improving relationships between them.) The strikes were a harbringer of what was to come in the decade in America, but they would ultimately end up being to American automakers' benefit.
Chrysler's K-cars were followed the vehicle that ultimately followed them - the legendary Dodge Caravan and Plymouth Voyagers, the original American minivans.
A 1985 Dodge Caravan Sport
A 1986 Renault Espace Quadra
"We saw the drawings and plans of the Espace and saw a problem. The whole idea of the minivan was a van for people that wanted something better than the full-size van. We knew of Renault and AMC's working together, and when we found out the Espace was gonna come stateside, the original MiniMax had to get a facelift. So we did just that, and what we got was wonderful."
-- Tom Gale, Chrysler Senior Designer, talking about the impact on the design of the original Caravan of the Espace to AutoWeek in November 1985
The arrival of the minivan to America, with the Dodge Caravan and Renault Espace both entering the market in early 1984, marked another shift. Both were designed to carry six to eight passengers, and both were large, roomy vehicles built on car chassis. The Espace used conventional doors to the single passenger-side sliding door on the Caravan, which gained a second sliding door for 1987, but it was clear that the two were gunning for each other - and that they did. American Espaces used AMC's 2-liter I-4ESX supercharged four-cylinder engine, whereas the Caravan ran with Chrysler's 2.5-liter four-cylinder. The intr4oduction of the Ford Aerostar in 1984 and Chevrolet Astro in 1985 didn't harm the sales to the Caravan and Espace to any great degree, and when combined with the K-car, Chrysler paid off its loans from Washington with remarkable speed - and with that done, Iacocca got started on working out a better future still for Chrysler, starting with heading back to Europe.
Peugeot's purchase of Chrysler Europe had potentially big upsides for the French automaker, but the costs of using those assets had caused Peugeot to run a series of huge losses in the early 1980s. Knowing that, when Chrysler returned to Europe looking for an alliance in 1984, they knew better than to be harsh about the terms. Chrysler hadn't stopped selling the Matra Rancho and Munera, but Chrysler wanted to look for beneficial mutual agreements. With Peugeot's North American dealer network struggling, that alone would have been good for them - but Chrysler's offering to sell its fast-selling minivan in Europe was a good deal, too. Chrysler wanted to use the Peugeot 205 subcompact as an entry-level small car, a wish made all the more wanting when Iacocca went for a blast on the legendary Col de Turini rally stage in southern France in a 205 GTi, an experience he called "one of the greatest thrills in my life". The Peugeot-Chrysler deal was a deal that both sides benefitted from, and so it wasn't hard for the companies to sign it. With that, the Peugeot 205, now badged the Dodge Colt, arrived in America in dealer showrooms late in 1986, about the same time as the Chrysler minivans, using Peugeot's PRV V6 engines, began to be sold in Europe.
General Motors' small car revolutionary, the J-cars, entered production in September 1980 with the goal of replacing the Corvair, Nova and Vega, as well as the other GM compacts. It had big shoes to fill, and when combined with GM's problems with quality control in the 1970s, the J-cars couldn't be losers - and GM went every extra mile possible to ensure they weren't losers. Built in two-door and four-door sedan models, a two-door coupe, station wagon and convertible, the three J-cars, the Chevrolet Cavalier, Pontiac Sunfire and Cadillac Cimarron, were designed well and engineered well - starting with the new engines they used, those being GM's Quad-Four engine family.
The Quad-Four had originally begun as Oldsmobile project, but it was soon used on all kinda of GM projects. An inline-four in 2.2-liter and 2.4-liter variants, the Quad-Four was a highly-advanced engine, with an aluminum block with steel liners, a 16-valve aluminum head and aluminum connecting rods, a knife-edged and balanced crankshaft and external balance shafts to improve the engine's NVH characteristics and allow for faster revving. All Quad-Fours were equipped with modern fuel injection, and the consequence was that the Quad-Four motor was able to get both anywhere from 142 to 185 horsepower, and yet still deliver excellent fuel efficiency. The J-cars were the first five-speed manual transmissions and four-speed automatics used by GM, and GM also took the gamble and designed the J-cars with plastic bodywork, lightening weight. The J-car was also sold differently, with all cars being well-equipped to keep costs reasonable - though the J-car was still rather more expensive than its rivals in cars like the Honda Accord and the Chrysler K-cars.
Having learned a harsh lesson with the Vega, GM began testing hundreds of K-car prototypes on American roads in 1979, and they drove them hard, stacking over tens of millions of miles in all weather conditions to make sure they were right on, this testing revealing the Quad-Four's rather raucous nature and then proving that the lighter rotating assembly and balance shafts did the trick in settling it down. The car was built with much greater attention to detail, particularly in paint and trim, right up to the point of the plant building the J-cars, GM's assembly plants at South Gate, California, Janesville, Wisconsin and Lansing, Michigan, all had new paint shops and body shops for their new models, as well as state-of-the-art plants for producing the plastic body panels. The interior of the car was designed without the brightwork of many past American cars, and was also designed with better seats and interior arrangements.
It all made a big difference. Road testers driving the Cavalier and Sunfire in early 1981 in the run-up to the car's launch in May 1981 noted that the Cavalier was an excellent car in nearly any aspect imaginable - fast, excellent handling, frugal on fuel mileage, well-equipped and built solidly. The Cadillac Cimarron was even better still, having gotten a nicer-still interior with leather seats, brushed metal trim and all kinds of extras, including standard sunroofs, six-speaker surround-sound audio systems and automatic windshield wipers. "One must wonder if everything in the Cimarron is able to last, but right now, this thing should scare Germany, because the Cimarron is the best-driving Cadillac in many years. It's luxurious inside, a blast to drive, well-built and feels every inch the quality product. Pay attention, guys, because this is a Cadillac that any man should be proud to own.
Production got off to a slow start at South Gate, Janesville and Lansing, more than anything because of the high standards which GM was aiming for for parts quality were having to be met by parts suppliers, but it didn't matter. One customers after another who got their cars noted that the higher price and the wait for it had been worth it. Most loved were those who bought the coupe versions of the cars, which were often compared (in most cases favorably) to much more expensive cars. While the Ford Escort and Sierra and the K-cars were good cars, the J-cars were soon widely being seen as the most equal of the equals.
The closest, and perhaps meanest, rival to the J-cars was the AMC Spirit and AMX2, the Spirit being offered in sedan and station wagon forms, while the AMX2, launched in mid-1982, came out with the powerful I-4EX engine (upgraded to I-4ESX in 1984) and came in coupe, fastback and convertible forms. The AMX2 and Cavalier Z24 / Sunfire GT are widely considered to be the first American road rockets, introducing a new market of small cars that were a blast to drive to the American marketplace, followed not too long later by the Dodge Daytona and Ford Escort XR3i in 1983-84. The Spirit was the largest physically of the small car, and AMC stole a tagline from Datsun to promote this - "Bigger than the small cars. Smaller than the big cars. More fun than either of them." The engineers at AMC had also gone with another full update of their design, the engineers at the number three of the big four proving yet again their resourcefulness. The Spirit was outsold by all of the new 1981 arrivals from the other automakers, but that still meant 155,000 sold in 1981 and a healthy success for AMC.
"Everybody knew that Detroit was working on new small cars, including the Japanese, but nobody saw what was coming. Nissan, Toyota, Honda, Volkswagen....none of them saw it coming. None of them saw the J-cars and Spirit was being rivals even to car companies like BMW, and the Japanese were impressed by the K-cars and the Escort and Sierra to the point that they were left without much of a response. In 1981, after years of making steady headway into America's car markets, Japan, Inc. was left on the defensive as Detroit went for Tokyo's jugular, and went right to the markets they had been cultivating for years. It's a bold play by Detroit, but judging by the fact that over a million and a half small and mid-sized cars have rolled out to happy new owners in the last year from the Detroit automakers, it must be said that if Japan isn't ready to answer back, they'd better get cracking on it."
-- BusinessWeek, in an article on the Japanese automakers, December 1981
"People always tout the cars they sell, but I'm willing to give out a bigger promise. We think you'll love the new 1982 Chryslers, but if you find a better car, buy it."
-- Lee Iacocca, in a Chrysler television advertisement, 1982
"Detroit has spent much of the last ten years undertaking soul searching on an amazing scale. GM is still management wise quite insular, but even with that Detroit these days is asking themselves the important questions, and that fact is what is making cars like Cavalier and Escort and Spirit and Dart. With the new cars and trucks now coming out of Detroit in huge numbers, what we see out there now is what we have hoped to see for decades, that being Detroit finally, at long last, getting the plot with regards to small cars and quality engineering. And if this is a sign of the future, Japan should be scared to death that the Americans will bring their cars to the Home Islands. This is a new Detroit, and if people aren't paying attention now, they soon will be."
-- John Basinger, opinion writer for Motor Trend, September 1982
A 1985 Dodge Daytona Turbo (with aftermarket wheels)
It was starting to become good times indeed, but the best was, as Frank Sinatra so well put it, still yet to come....
"It was clear by the time Iacocca took over the helm at Chrysler in October 1978 that the company was not faking its financial hell. The 'sales bank' and other stock price-raising tactics, the problems with quality in many of their cars and the huge warranty costs that were resulting from it and their falling sales had left Chrysler in a position of needing help right away. It also put the UAW in the position of being able, quite literally, to do a Nero thumbs up or thumbs down on the company. In the end, Reuther made the right call, though he would pay a stiff price for that early on, history would vindicate him."
-- Denise McCluggage, More Than A Few Tall Tales From Detroit, 1992
"The Aspen and Volare were mistakes right from the start, just as Ford's Pinto had been....poor cars with abysmal build quality and aged design, at a time when the company needed something better. When combined with Chrysler Europe's failure....We had to answer back, and quickly. The fact that Hal [Sperlich, the designer of the minivan] was ready to go when we got together again at Chrysler was a godsend."
-- Lee Iacocca, talking to Motor Trend, September 1985
"I had always feared that the union and the companies would get so used to confrontation that they would be unable to sort out differences, but what happened there shook me, I must admit....After people dying over the labor disputes of the seventies, you'd figure both sides would use their heads a little more, but Douglas [Fraser, then head of the UAW] didn't, and Roger [Smith, GM's CEO in the 1980s] certainly didn't....The two sides have always needed each other. We fought for so long that many forgot that. We can't forget it now. We all need each other too much."
-- Walter Reuther in his memoirs, 1989
After the vicious battles between the automakers and their increasingly-militant labor force in the middle of the 1970s, things began to slowly change at the companies, despite the dictatorial old man that Henry Ford II had slowly become and Chrysler's management issues. AMC took a loss when George Romney retired in 1975, though his remarkably-successful handling of the huge labor unrest of the times made the long disrespect sent his way by Detroit sink away quite quickly. Romney's being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Jimmy Carter in 1977 was just the capper on his remarkable career in the auto industry, but Romney didn't stay retired long - he was called to be an apostle of the Mormon Church in July 1978, and after years at that role, he was made President of the Church following Ezra Taft Benson's death in May 1992, a position Romney would only serve for three years before he died in July 1995. Romney's successor at AMC was his long-time Vice-President Roy Chapin Jr. - but one of the events of 1978 was the joining at AMC of George's son Mitt Romney, who would have a big effect in the future.
Chrysler's financial and management issues came to a head with its rushed introduction of the Dodge Aspen and Plymouth Volare smaller cars in 1976, as the cars were rushed into production and were loaded with problems, compounding Chrysler's reliance on its large car lineup, sales of which nosedived after the oil crisis and the labor chaos of 1974-76. The Aspen and Volare's severe problems with corrosion and general unreliability, particularly with its electrics and starter motors, added to the company's problems. Iacocca's arrival saw the company need to get a considerable influx of cash if it was to stay alive. Iacocca first went to Ford for the money (who, legend has it, literally laughed him out of the room) and then to Volkswagen, who also balked. Out of options, Iacocca went to Washington to get a major loan guarantee, which he reluctantly got, but the terms were harsh - Chrysler Europe was sold to Peugeot, Chrysler Australia to Mitsubishi, numerous development programs were ended and numerous plants were closed, resulting in the laying off of over 30,000 workers. Chrysler fought for the ability to keep its American Mobile, Chrysler Defense and American Locomotive Company subsidiaries, in part because all three were profitable enterprises. The layoffs put Iacocca at odds with the UAW, which began negotiating new contracts with Chrysler in May 1979.
The UAW ended up in trouble here. Well aware of the likelihood of Chrysler's failure if they couldn't save it, Walter Reuther and the UAW went for a conciliatory tone, saying that they had to do it here in order to save the company. Iacocca and several of his top people helped this by loudly and publicly cutting their salaries down to $1 a year, and offering to give promises in writing to laid-off UAW workers and keep their names in a database, saying that when the company turned around, they would get first call on new jobs if they wished to get them. But the UAW's schism, led by Douglas Fraser, said that American auto workers had given up enough in the battles just a few years prior, and he loudly told Reuther to push hard against Iacocca. Reuther ignored this and brought a reasonable deal to Chrysler workers - who voted it down by a more than 3-1 margin. Reuther and Iacocca kept talking, with Fraser's yelling causing more problems. Reuther sought to expel Fraser from the union in 1979, but the control board of the union threw that idea out. Reuther ultimately did get a good deal with Chrysler in January 1980, but a month after that he suffered a heart attack and retired from the union - and to his intense displeasure, Fraser would up succeeding him. Despite the acrimonious labor battle, Iacocca's guys went full-steam ahead with their new car plans - which resulted in the Chrysler K-cars, which hit the market in 1981.
Indeed, 1981 was the year of "Detroit's Small Car Revolution", as all four of Detroit's automakers came out with a veritable flood of small and mid-sized cars, all of them excellent cars. It couldn't come at a much better time - the United States' economy in 1980-81 was in rather rough shape, and such cars were sure to be great sellers. The Chrysler K-Car twins of the Dodge Dart and Plymouth Valiant, as well as the new for 1979 Dodge Omni and Plymouth Horizon (the last real designs from Chrysler Europe before its collapse), walked head-on into the General Motors J-cars (Chevrolet Cavalier, Pontiac Sunfire and the much-more-upscale Cadillac Cimarron), the Ford Escort and Sierra and the AMC Spirit. Despite the seemingly-sudden flood of such cars, the K-cars were up to the challenge. Designed with new engines with Bosch K-Jetronic fuel injection on all models, the K-cars were good performers, though the genuinely-fast Spirit outgunned it and the sophisticated J-cars outcornered it. The K-cars were quantum leaps on what had been sold by Chrysler before in just about every possible way, and it showed in the sales figures. Chrysler sold over 400,000 such cars in 1981 - which turned out to be one of the best years in decades for Detroit, where the four major American automakers between them captured over 90% of the American car market for the first time since 1965. It was a sign for Detroit, and while the cars they introduced were not perfect, they were excellent.
1981 was struck again with strikes, but in this case is was a major series of wildcat strikes that began in 1981, opposing the firing of air traffic controllers by President Reagan in August 1981. New UAW leader Douglas Fraser was one of the biggest leaders of these strikes, which turned into a political nightmare for Reagan. The automakers tried to keep things even, pointing out that they had nothing to do with the firing of controllers, and while the strikes happened, vehicle quality was unaffected and the UAW and the automakers didn't end up heavily at odds over this. (The automakers were not pleased about the wildcat strikes to say the least, but it didn't sour the improving relationships between them.) The strikes were a harbringer of what was to come in the decade in America, but they would ultimately end up being to American automakers' benefit.
Chrysler's K-cars were followed the vehicle that ultimately followed them - the legendary Dodge Caravan and Plymouth Voyagers, the original American minivans.
A 1985 Dodge Caravan Sport
A 1986 Renault Espace Quadra
"We saw the drawings and plans of the Espace and saw a problem. The whole idea of the minivan was a van for people that wanted something better than the full-size van. We knew of Renault and AMC's working together, and when we found out the Espace was gonna come stateside, the original MiniMax had to get a facelift. So we did just that, and what we got was wonderful."
-- Tom Gale, Chrysler Senior Designer, talking about the impact on the design of the original Caravan of the Espace to AutoWeek in November 1985
The arrival of the minivan to America, with the Dodge Caravan and Renault Espace both entering the market in early 1984, marked another shift. Both were designed to carry six to eight passengers, and both were large, roomy vehicles built on car chassis. The Espace used conventional doors to the single passenger-side sliding door on the Caravan, which gained a second sliding door for 1987, but it was clear that the two were gunning for each other - and that they did. American Espaces used AMC's 2-liter I-4ESX supercharged four-cylinder engine, whereas the Caravan ran with Chrysler's 2.5-liter four-cylinder. The intr4oduction of the Ford Aerostar in 1984 and Chevrolet Astro in 1985 didn't harm the sales to the Caravan and Espace to any great degree, and when combined with the K-car, Chrysler paid off its loans from Washington with remarkable speed - and with that done, Iacocca got started on working out a better future still for Chrysler, starting with heading back to Europe.
Peugeot's purchase of Chrysler Europe had potentially big upsides for the French automaker, but the costs of using those assets had caused Peugeot to run a series of huge losses in the early 1980s. Knowing that, when Chrysler returned to Europe looking for an alliance in 1984, they knew better than to be harsh about the terms. Chrysler hadn't stopped selling the Matra Rancho and Munera, but Chrysler wanted to look for beneficial mutual agreements. With Peugeot's North American dealer network struggling, that alone would have been good for them - but Chrysler's offering to sell its fast-selling minivan in Europe was a good deal, too. Chrysler wanted to use the Peugeot 205 subcompact as an entry-level small car, a wish made all the more wanting when Iacocca went for a blast on the legendary Col de Turini rally stage in southern France in a 205 GTi, an experience he called "one of the greatest thrills in my life". The Peugeot-Chrysler deal was a deal that both sides benefitted from, and so it wasn't hard for the companies to sign it. With that, the Peugeot 205, now badged the Dodge Colt, arrived in America in dealer showrooms late in 1986, about the same time as the Chrysler minivans, using Peugeot's PRV V6 engines, began to be sold in Europe.
General Motors' small car revolutionary, the J-cars, entered production in September 1980 with the goal of replacing the Corvair, Nova and Vega, as well as the other GM compacts. It had big shoes to fill, and when combined with GM's problems with quality control in the 1970s, the J-cars couldn't be losers - and GM went every extra mile possible to ensure they weren't losers. Built in two-door and four-door sedan models, a two-door coupe, station wagon and convertible, the three J-cars, the Chevrolet Cavalier, Pontiac Sunfire and Cadillac Cimarron, were designed well and engineered well - starting with the new engines they used, those being GM's Quad-Four engine family.
The Quad-Four had originally begun as Oldsmobile project, but it was soon used on all kinda of GM projects. An inline-four in 2.2-liter and 2.4-liter variants, the Quad-Four was a highly-advanced engine, with an aluminum block with steel liners, a 16-valve aluminum head and aluminum connecting rods, a knife-edged and balanced crankshaft and external balance shafts to improve the engine's NVH characteristics and allow for faster revving. All Quad-Fours were equipped with modern fuel injection, and the consequence was that the Quad-Four motor was able to get both anywhere from 142 to 185 horsepower, and yet still deliver excellent fuel efficiency. The J-cars were the first five-speed manual transmissions and four-speed automatics used by GM, and GM also took the gamble and designed the J-cars with plastic bodywork, lightening weight. The J-car was also sold differently, with all cars being well-equipped to keep costs reasonable - though the J-car was still rather more expensive than its rivals in cars like the Honda Accord and the Chrysler K-cars.
Having learned a harsh lesson with the Vega, GM began testing hundreds of K-car prototypes on American roads in 1979, and they drove them hard, stacking over tens of millions of miles in all weather conditions to make sure they were right on, this testing revealing the Quad-Four's rather raucous nature and then proving that the lighter rotating assembly and balance shafts did the trick in settling it down. The car was built with much greater attention to detail, particularly in paint and trim, right up to the point of the plant building the J-cars, GM's assembly plants at South Gate, California, Janesville, Wisconsin and Lansing, Michigan, all had new paint shops and body shops for their new models, as well as state-of-the-art plants for producing the plastic body panels. The interior of the car was designed without the brightwork of many past American cars, and was also designed with better seats and interior arrangements.
It all made a big difference. Road testers driving the Cavalier and Sunfire in early 1981 in the run-up to the car's launch in May 1981 noted that the Cavalier was an excellent car in nearly any aspect imaginable - fast, excellent handling, frugal on fuel mileage, well-equipped and built solidly. The Cadillac Cimarron was even better still, having gotten a nicer-still interior with leather seats, brushed metal trim and all kinds of extras, including standard sunroofs, six-speaker surround-sound audio systems and automatic windshield wipers. "One must wonder if everything in the Cimarron is able to last, but right now, this thing should scare Germany, because the Cimarron is the best-driving Cadillac in many years. It's luxurious inside, a blast to drive, well-built and feels every inch the quality product. Pay attention, guys, because this is a Cadillac that any man should be proud to own.
Production got off to a slow start at South Gate, Janesville and Lansing, more than anything because of the high standards which GM was aiming for for parts quality were having to be met by parts suppliers, but it didn't matter. One customers after another who got their cars noted that the higher price and the wait for it had been worth it. Most loved were those who bought the coupe versions of the cars, which were often compared (in most cases favorably) to much more expensive cars. While the Ford Escort and Sierra and the K-cars were good cars, the J-cars were soon widely being seen as the most equal of the equals.
The closest, and perhaps meanest, rival to the J-cars was the AMC Spirit and AMX2, the Spirit being offered in sedan and station wagon forms, while the AMX2, launched in mid-1982, came out with the powerful I-4EX engine (upgraded to I-4ESX in 1984) and came in coupe, fastback and convertible forms. The AMX2 and Cavalier Z24 / Sunfire GT are widely considered to be the first American road rockets, introducing a new market of small cars that were a blast to drive to the American marketplace, followed not too long later by the Dodge Daytona and Ford Escort XR3i in 1983-84. The Spirit was the largest physically of the small car, and AMC stole a tagline from Datsun to promote this - "Bigger than the small cars. Smaller than the big cars. More fun than either of them." The engineers at AMC had also gone with another full update of their design, the engineers at the number three of the big four proving yet again their resourcefulness. The Spirit was outsold by all of the new 1981 arrivals from the other automakers, but that still meant 155,000 sold in 1981 and a healthy success for AMC.
"Everybody knew that Detroit was working on new small cars, including the Japanese, but nobody saw what was coming. Nissan, Toyota, Honda, Volkswagen....none of them saw it coming. None of them saw the J-cars and Spirit was being rivals even to car companies like BMW, and the Japanese were impressed by the K-cars and the Escort and Sierra to the point that they were left without much of a response. In 1981, after years of making steady headway into America's car markets, Japan, Inc. was left on the defensive as Detroit went for Tokyo's jugular, and went right to the markets they had been cultivating for years. It's a bold play by Detroit, but judging by the fact that over a million and a half small and mid-sized cars have rolled out to happy new owners in the last year from the Detroit automakers, it must be said that if Japan isn't ready to answer back, they'd better get cracking on it."
-- BusinessWeek, in an article on the Japanese automakers, December 1981
"People always tout the cars they sell, but I'm willing to give out a bigger promise. We think you'll love the new 1982 Chryslers, but if you find a better car, buy it."
-- Lee Iacocca, in a Chrysler television advertisement, 1982
"Detroit has spent much of the last ten years undertaking soul searching on an amazing scale. GM is still management wise quite insular, but even with that Detroit these days is asking themselves the important questions, and that fact is what is making cars like Cavalier and Escort and Spirit and Dart. With the new cars and trucks now coming out of Detroit in huge numbers, what we see out there now is what we have hoped to see for decades, that being Detroit finally, at long last, getting the plot with regards to small cars and quality engineering. And if this is a sign of the future, Japan should be scared to death that the Americans will bring their cars to the Home Islands. This is a new Detroit, and if people aren't paying attention now, they soon will be."
-- John Basinger, opinion writer for Motor Trend, September 1982
A 1985 Dodge Daytona Turbo (with aftermarket wheels)
It was starting to become good times indeed, but the best was, as Frank Sinatra so well put it, still yet to come....
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I wonder if Congress could be persuaded to change its mind if it can be convinced that keeping Chrysler Europe was an absolute necessity. If it were me doing the arguing, I'd have said that it was freakin' obvious, because selling it off would be short-sighted - that cars like what was being made at Poissy (and its worldwide subsidiaries) were the future, that the models can be integrated into just a couple of platforms (here, I'm thinking of both the Horizon and the 1307 being used, with some tweaks on both sides of the Atlantic, as the basis for a *K-car platform in TTL - though because of that, it wouldn't be called the K-car in TTL but something more in line with "world car" that could be used for subcompact, compact, and midsize applications), that the models are nice and fun to drive, and - heck - they can be produced locally as well. I'd also argue that if Chrysler Europe were sold off, than Chrysler would be hobbled because whilst everyone else is bringing over small and medium cars from their European subsidiaries and producing them locally, Chrysler would be passed by and thus see its sales fall to unsustainable levels. Of course, I could agree that as part of the loan condition, things would be shaken up at the management levels and be completely reorganized, but it can be done as well as retaining Chrysler Europe - even including things like integrated supply chains. That's just a sampling of how I'd argue it - someone more experienced than I would be probably go more into detail as to why Chrysler Europe should be retained and thus allow Chrysler to get the loan whilst retaining Chrysler Europe.
NB: Talbot is the brand used in OTL after Chrysler Europe got sold to Peugeot. If Chrysler Europe was retained, they'd still be called Chryslers or Simcas.
Of course - but now they know they have to bring something to the market, because Ford is doing it. Heck, if need be, Buick could still be importing Opels in TTL and eventually integrating them into the Buick lineup so that Buick would - partially, at least - be like a semi-local brand for Opel like what it is now, with the Verano and the Regal and the like. That would be more of a concern for Chrysler, because Buick is meant to be upscale, like Chrysler's target market. Ford would be going after Plymouth's demographic and that would be just as much of a concern. So Chrysler has to bring at least some of its Chrysler Europe models over to North America - they now have no choice. But, of course, the only way that can work is by retaining Chrysler Europe and not selling it off to Peugeot.
Oh, definitely.
Or you could have the Murena retain the Bagheera name in North America. And there's this little gem from Wiki, from OTL after Chrysler Europe got sold off to Peugeot:
Of course, we know what happens after that - that idea from Matra became the Renault Espace, and Chrysler had developed its minivans from the K-car, more or less independently. But what if Chrysler (both Chrysler North America and Chrysler Europe), early on, got persuaded enough by Matra so as to give the go-ahead to the design? I, obviously, would like the Rancho to stay on in addition to the dessin orange, but hey, if it can be built on the *K-car platform and partially united with OTL's Chrysler minivan project, then it would be all for the better, IMO.Wiki said:
A couple of really nitpicky ideas that might flesh out things a bit more:
- How about some mention of Studebaker and its decline/demise? Might not there also be room for the Lark as an alternative to the offerings of the other four manufacturers? And might not the Avanti somehow survive as a challenger to both Corvette and Mustang?
- In 1963 and again in 1975 IOTL, GM made serious moves toward reviving La Salle as a marque (indeed, there are many photos extant of a prototype '75 La Salle)--but neither came to fruition. The closest approach was '75, which saw the light of day as the Cadillac Seville. Might it be possible to have La Salle restored at some point after the first oil crisis as the first of what we'll call the personal luxury cars?
- Whither the Wankel engine?
I had Chrysler go with a coated aluminum block in the Slant-six design, and they found out about the problems with excessive wearing of the cylinder walls and the problems with oil consumption. The problem with overheating was mentioned as well, and the problems with poor bodywork got fixed early on. The Vega was not exactly a great car in this world, but its a damn sight better than OTL.
In this world, however, Chrysler retained three outside divisions - their electronics firm (which makes the electronics in the K-cars, and will be be doing rather more in the future), the military division and the locomotive and heavy equipment business. The military division in this world makes some of America's M1 Abrams tanks (they designed it IOTL), and the locomotive/heavy industry division is a profitable firm as well. Chrysler Europe, however, had been running big losses before the crisis in the late '70s (true IOTL and ITTL) and Washington giving money to the company to save jobs in France is not gonna fly. Chrysler Europe had to be sacrificed in order to save the larger company, but don't worry, the company isn't out of Europe forever....
It's not a have to do it at all - Ford's bringing the Europeans to North America was a panic job because of the fact that the Pinto had such a terrible reputation.
See above. I cannot see Chrysler Europe being saved, not in the midst of the financial chaos Chrysler was in in 1978-79. The Horizon is still coming to North America, though, and Chrysler's French Connection isn't dead. The Matra-Simca connection isn't gone, either. Chrysler still sells the Rancho and Murena in North America and will do so for a while, and as Chrysler will never own Jeep in this world (AMC would never sell it), they will have to come up with their own SUVs.
I'll let you in on the next chapter for Chrysler - Peugeot took on considerable losses trying to rebuild what had been Chrysler Europe, and after the loans to Washington are paid back, Iacocca will go back to Peugeot work with them to set up a real alliance between them. The result is that Peugeot's best small cars, namely the 205 hatchback, will come to North America as Chryslers - and Chrysler designs a off-roader that will be sold on both sides of the Atlantic. The problem this creates is that there are two minivan projects - the dessin orange, however, will get sold to Renault, not simply taken to them as Matra did IOTL, thus making life rather better for Matra, as well as allowing the (rather different than OTL) Chrysler minivans to be sold in Europe as well as North America. Renault's hookup with AMC (not the buyout of OTL, but they work together) will ensure the Espace is sold in North America, as AMC has nothing like it out or in the pipeline in 1984. Antonis Volaris (who designed the Rancho, Bagheera, Murena and Espace) will be getting himself a second home in Detroit....
Studebaker was circling the drain by the time of this TL's beginning, and the technological advancements from Detroit, if anything, would have buried it that much quicker. Having four automakers requires a fair number of butterflies as it is, and for a customer who wants a sporty car in the mid-1960s already has a number of choices.
Why, though? La Salle was meant as a companion marque to Cadillac, but what need is there? Cadillac is moving to build smaller cars in the first place. I don't see why you'd bother trying to wedge La Salle between Cadillac and Buick.
As OTL, but Detroit never used it. Mazda does, of course, and they have got most of its problems licked. The problem with Wankel rotaries is that particularly when worked hard they are atrocious for fuel efficiency, and you have to work them hard to get anywhere. I honestly think that Wankel rotaries would be ideal for motorcycles more than cars, because of their compact dimensions, light weight and less need for torque to get cars moving from low speeds.
I like the updated version of the TL much better now. A Chrysler-Peugeot alliance? That's much more palpable. With Peugeot, there's also a whole lot that can be used. You mentioned the 205, but that's one of many. Maybe Chrysler could use Peugeot's diesel engines for their vehicles, both in Europe and in the Americas*?
*Plural here because of Latin America - I once read that it's possible to convert a diesel engine to running ethanol (which would be a boon for Brazil, considering their sugar cane-based ethanol is popular in that country).
*Plural here because of Latin America - I once read that it's possible to convert a diesel engine to running ethanol (which would be a boon for Brazil, considering their sugar cane-based ethanol is popular in that country).
Peugeot in this deal gets to use Chrysler's dealer network to sell and service the 405, 505 and 605, as well as sell the Chrysler Town and Country minivan as the Peugeot 805 in Europe. In return, Chrysler sells the 205 as the Dodge Colt and can use Peugeot engines, and Peugeot and Chrysler will co-operate on new engine development, particularly diesels. Likewise, Matra is working closely with Peugeot in this world, which means the Matra Murena will be sold for a much longer period and sell far more units than OTL, and Peugeot's expertise with turbodiesel engines will be mined extensively by Chrysler. The second generation of Matra Rancho will be sold both as the second-gen Rancho but also as the Dodge Durango in North America, starting in 1985. In the decadent 1980s, I am expecting the Matra Murena to sell lots in North America, to which GM aims the Pontiac Fiero directly at it.
??? Ummm... as far as I know, ethanol would be a horrible fuel for diesel. Ethanol is even more volatile than gasoline is, and while volatility isn't directly related to explosiveness, there's a correlation.
Soybean oil, on the other hand would be easy to use with minor modifications. (You have to filter the oil beforehand, and I think you need minor mods to the engine.) I know that South Africa was talking about running diesels on almost unmodified sunflowerseed oil during the Apartheid era.
A quick google of ethanol diesel only turns up blended fuels.
Ethanol works fine in sparkplug engines, though. Brazil runs a sizable percentage of its cars on straight ethanol, IIRC.
Part 5 - New People, New Times and New Cars
With the blockbuster launches of 1981, and the strikes of 1981-82 having stunned America and having had an effect on the nation's politics, the 1980s headed into a decadent time.
For starters, the strikes in 1981 ended with the unions getting their way and the professional air traffic controllers getting re-hired, a backdown that was hugely embarrassing for President Reagan - but one which showed that he and the Democrats could work together. Having succeeded at stopping what they viewed as an unjust firing, the unions headed out against other injustices, but found a surprise waiting for them which was due to be their minefield, namely that Walter Reuther's statements in the late 1970s that labor and management could find a way to coexist were starting to come true.
A new generation of workers was entering the workplace in America, the baby boomers moving into positions of power and influence. They came in having a strong desire to better themselves, but this generation was also smart enough to see that they needed to all be better off if they themselves were to benefit. This led to the confidence of the times being matched in aggressive actions to expand both America's wealth and the prosperity of its working classes, figuring that if the working people prospered than so would the management classes. These people were legion in Detroit by the middle of the 1980s, and while the men on top were still heavily suspicious of the UAW's motives and the UAW was suspicious of the company and its bargainers, the middle levels of management were soon full of those who saw the UAW as a potential asset. This led to many actions by all of the makers to improve the quality of work life for the employees.
"When I first walked into River Rouge (the famed Ford assembly plant in Dearborn, Michigan), I went to see one of the plant managers, wanting to tell him about the Quality of Job One and Our Company is Our People plans. I found him in the middle of the plant screaming at an employee over having to use the bathroom. The man looked ill to me, and yet this man wasn't even thinking of it. I demanded he stop yelling at him, to which he turned to me and said 'another blankety-blank accountant'. I put my hand on the guy's shoulder and said 'son, you know why we need programs to make our people's lives better? That. Right there.' I could see he was sick, and I told him to go home. When the plant manager protested, he said 'are you serious?' to which I answered 'well, I don't know whether you take it seriously, but as far as I can tell, I'm serious.' That went around Rouge in about a New York Minute, and I never had trouble there again."
-- Former President of Ford Motor Company, Donald Petersen, speaking in The American Auto Factory, 2006
"Guys were hearing about the new plants at Bowling Green and Tacoma and the rebuilt plants at Baltimore and South Gate and Janesville and asking 'why can't we get all of that stuff?' When I asked GM management about that in 1982, I was given an answer 'We haven't gotten to all of the plants, yet.' I responded to that by asking 'so, all of GM's plants are gonna get all of that?' I must admit I was stunned when the guys at GM said 'Yes.' I didn't think they were willing to spend the money. But by the end of the eighties, they had kept their word. I hated to admit it, but it was true. The guys were working in better plants, and they made better cars as a result. We went into the eighties wanting to hate on another. By the end of the eighties, they were listening to us for real. By the end of the nineties, they were raising up ideas to help us. It was stunning to me, but I had to re-evaluate everything I had ever thought about Detroit."
-- Former UAW President Douglas Fraser, In an Interview with the Detroit Free Press, May 2004
The result of this 1980s push was political changes, too - so much so that when Fraser began his push to get universal health care in the United States in 1983, he had little trouble getting it, and his vocal opposition to the bitter Arizona Copper Mine strikes of 1983 gave much support to the miners, to the point that the copper miners got most of what they wanted and would end up heading back to work. Labor's strikes had raised their concerns, and the decisions of the American managerial class in the 1980s meant that it would not be a long time before things changed in America. The United States in the 1980s moved to a much more confrontational position with the Soviet Union and states they disagreed with, and while Ronald Reagan's loss to Ted Kennedy and Henry M. Jackson in the 1984 Presidential election changed a great many things, it did not change the strong-arm foreign policy and it did not change major economic policies. It did, however, have a huge change for the automakers in 1986, when President Kennedy passed the "Advancement of American Health Care Act" in May 1986, which opened up the Medicare Program to those who wished to buy in and enacted substantial legislation to control the industry to ensure affordable healthcare for all Americans - and the ability to buy into Medicare made sure that the insurance companies paid attention.
To nobody's surprise, being both huge industries that were heavily unionized, the American automakers were among the first one to feel the changes. Chrysler's survival had in large part come from the UAW being willing to deal with Chrysler, and the middle management made sure that the automakers paid back the guys who had given up concessions to help keep the business alive - for example, when Chrysler had started selling the Peugeot 205 in North America, Chrysler reactivated its mothballed plant in Hamtramck, Michigan, to make it in North America - much to Peugeot's initial unhappiness, who wanted its plants in France to supply the cars. Despite the acrimonious relationship between GM President Roger Smith and Fraser, particularly after Smith and many of his board of directors voted themselves multi-million-dollar bonuses hours after extracting billions in wage concessions from the UAW (An act that ultimately saw Smith fired), after the rocky 1973-81 period, labor peace was the rule in Detroit, and the vehicles they built improved steadily in quality from an already good standard.
In the middle of this, the imports began setting up in North America. Nissan began operations in Smyrna, Tennessee, in 1982, followed a year later by Honda in Marysville, Ohio and in 1984 by Volkswagen in Westmoreland, Pennsylvania. It was something of a surprise to the Japanese that the plants in the United States had workers that were just as diligent as their Japanese counterparts, and even more to their surprise, they were rather more co-operative. The UAW attempted to unionize both Japanese facilities and failed, though they succeeded in unionizing the Volkswagen plant in Pennsylvania in 1985. Honda by the 1990s would go so far as to import cars into Japan from the United States for a while.
The Detroit automakers rolled through the 1980s developing better and better designs. General Motors' Quad-Four engine design spawned a second new engine, the PowerSix, a V6 engine family of 3.2 to 4.4 liters that would be used in a variety of applications from mid-sized sedans to pickup trucks, with the Power-Six debuting on the Chevrolet Celebrity, Pontiac 6000 and Buick Regal in 1984, as the new A-bodies replaced the unloved X-bodies. The engine was also soon used in a variety of cars from all GM divisions, as well as the Chevrolet S-10/GMC Sonoma pickups and the Chevrolet Astro/GMC Safari minivans. The A-bodies themselves were quality units, much better than the X-bodies, and while the Celebrity was meant as a fairly conventional mid-sized sedan, the Pontiac 6000 was meant as a fun car to rival cars like the BMW 3-Series and the Buick Regal was meant as middle-level luxury car. It did these jobs fairly well, with the 6000 having a 3.4-liter version of the PowerSix engine and a Getrag-built six-speed manual transmission as standard equipment, which made the 6000 a genuinely quick car.
Ford went even further than that, releasing the Taurus to a world of fanfare in 1985. Dubbed the "Car of the Future" in press releases, the Taurus was meant to be an executive car in Europe and a strong mid-sized contender in North America, and its 'aero-style' design, similar in language to the Escort, Sierra and Thunderbird, was a handsome machine. Designed to handle more like a sports car, Ford touted that they had tuned the suspension of the Taurus in Germany and America, and boasted of many high-speed test runs to see how the car handled at high speeds. Their touting was very proud, but it didn't take long to see why they were cocky. The Taurus used a variety of powerful engines, the king of which was the Taurus SHO's supercharged 3.0-liter V6, designed and built by Yamaha, capable of making 285 horsepower. The Taurus included both a high-quality and luxurious interior, with some neat options available, including one of the first CD players in a car, cellular phone, power seats with power-adjusted lumbar and side support, a high-tech digital dash (an option that most Taurus had) and even an all-glass roof, the last an expensive option but one which a fair number of cars had. A radical design, the Taurus was a big gamble for Ford - and one that most at GM and Chrysler figured would fail in favor of more conventional medium-sized sedans.
They would be disappointed, as the Taurus would go on to be a reasonable success in Europe and a rousing success in America. Ford's President at the time, Donald Petersen, boasted of how he had left his chaffeur-driven Lincoln at home and bought a loaded Taurus to drive himself to work every day. It was soon also frequently used by American embassies in Europe, even some used as staff cars for American armed forces around the world.
A 1987 Ford Taurus SHO
"One can't be mad at the gamble. Ford decided to step up to the future, and boy did they hit a home run. The Taurus is not merely a good car like the Escort and Sierra, it is a great car. It really is not just a pretty face, it is a massive cut above the competition, a luxury car at a mid-sized price, a machine that is so impressive it defies conventional wisdom. American cars have never better than this, and if this is the future, we love it."
-- Motor Trend, stating the rationale for the Taurus being their car of the year for 1986
GM had a surprise of its own, but in a totally different market, and one which had been pretty lonely for a long time - small sports cars.
The market dominated for decades by the British had effectively been abandoned by them. British Leyland's financial problems in the 1970s and the abysmal build quality of many of the cars had contributed to them becoming rare pieces by the end of that decade, with the Triumph TR7/TR8 departing the American market in 1979 and the MG MGB in 1980. But as the number of people wanting a good small sports car grew in the 1980s, they found a handful of good choices, the most common of which was the Alfa Romeo Spyder. But with Chrysler's sale of the Matra Murena showed that the market was real, and in 1984, both General Motors and Toyota jumped in it with both feet, bringing out the Pontiac Fiero and Toyota MR2. The Fiero, powered by the Quad-Four engine, was the larger and quicker of the two, though they were pretty much even on handling. Both cars were fantastic drivers, and it didn't take many drives in either the 185-horsepower, 30-mpg Fiero or the 125-horsepower, 34-mpg MR2 to win over a convert to the love of driving. Compared to the Murena, the Fiero and MR2 were both quicker, though the Murena was a hoot to drive as well and the looks were totally a matter of taste. And to nobody's surprise, the three spent the 1980s as rivals - and big ones. All three were excellent commuter cars when they weren't out driving fast, and many of the people who bought them would say that they would use these cars to drive to work and do everyday errands that didn't need more than two seats, as well as having great fun when the opportunity presented itself. The Fiero was an instant score for GM, despite some niggling troubles with electrical components and potential engine fires, the Fiero sold extremely well, and GM could loudly say they had a car that nobody else in Detroit had any answer to and not be lying.
A 1984 Pontiac Fiero
Over at AMC, the work with Renault had produced a plan to sell Renault cars in America, in a similar deal to the one Peugeot and Chrysler had signed. Renault bought a 10% share in AMC as part of this, and as with Chrysler, AMC needed and wanted a good supermini to sell, and following the beginning of the sale of the AMC Cobalt, a rebadged (and American-built) version of the Renault Clio, launched in 1987. The Cobalt and the Dodge Colt made it so that the European hot hatch wars were coming to America, it showing in the arrival of the AMC Cobalt Williams and Chrysler Colt Indy in the early 1990s. Meanwhile, Renault and AMC worked out a new engine series to replace the aging PRV V6, which by the mid-1980s was being phased out at all three automakers. But the big scoop for AMC was their Jeep brand, and the introduction of the Jeep Cherokee in 1984.
This proved to be interesting timing, as the Cherokee came out a mere three weeks before the Dodge Durango, a Chrysler-badged version of the Matra Rancho from Europe, in the spring of 1984. Both were smaller SUVs than the big ones that had been sold in America for decades, and both were big sales successes from the start. The Cherokee was the better off-roader of the two (though the Durango could very easily hold its own), while the Durango was more livable on the road. Both beat the pants off of their much-bigger body-on-frame rivals, spurring the development of rivals from Ford and General Motors. Jeep's profits, Renault's help and the strong sales of the Spirit, AMX2 and following 1983 the Espace kept the company profitable and provided all of the resources needed for the revamp of AMC's mid-sized and bigger models. Despite some major misgivings by the French management and unions, The Renault-AMC alliance would prove to be just as beneficial as the Peugeot-Chrysler one, and in both cases the French automakers would learn much from their friends in Detroit, and the vice-versa was also true.
None of this was any benefit to Japan, either. In the semi-autobiographical book Made In Japan, Sony's founder and chairman Akio Morita commented in quite a lot of depth about how Japanese culture and their way of thinking, a book that seemed to be about Japan's success in export fields. It drew a response from Lee Iacocca and Mitt Romney, the book Talking Straight, where Romney and Iacocca pointed out that one of the people most influential with Japan's modern auto industry was an American, W. Edwards Deming, who had taught the Japanese much - and many of those lessons had been absorbed in Detroit, too. It was also pointed out that Japan was aggressive in sales tactics and had over the years built extensive trade barriers to its own lucrative domestic markets. Despite the comments, Talking Straight refused to bash Japan in general.
"The Japanese turned a nation destroyed by war into an economic powerhouse in a generation, as much as their tactics played a role in that, if they had not produced excellent products, they would have never been able to take off to such a degree as they have. They are worthy of respect. But one of the advantages of today's modern world is that they taught us here in Detroit many lessons, and we now know about all of the flaws we had once been guilty of. And now, we produce products to as great if not a greater quality than theirs, and we have no issue with them selling cars in America, quite the contrary. Lee said "If you find a better car, buy it." Mitt said "We want customers to make great choices, because we believe in what we build." That's how American automakers are now, and Japan had better be prepared for it, because the American worker is the equal of any on Earth, and we're proving it now."
-- Lee Iacocca, Mitt Romney and Sonny Kleinfeld, Talking Straight, 1988
By the middle of the 1980s, other new tech was rolling into Detroit with a vengeance. Even beyond the development of fuel injection and modern engines, some other new and interest ideas came out in the 1980s, and this was hardly limited to one automaker. General Motors' purchase of Hughes Electronics in 1982 saw Hughes work out the development of Cadillac's proposed cylinder-deactivation technology, the V8-6-4, which entered the market first with the Allante luxury sports car in 1985 and soon spread across the range of V8 engines produced by General Motors. Likewise, while most of the American makers began using Bosch fuel injection in the 1970s, by the 1980s they all had their own systems - and Chrysler and Peugeot went a step further in the late 1980s with high-pressure direct-injection for gasoline engines, a technology which began to bear fruit in the early 1990s. The cylinder-deactivation idea from GM was soon also a topic of discussion in the rest of Detroit and soon the world, as while it had little effect on stop-start city driving, in the larger and heavier Cadillac models it had a substantial difference in highway fuel efficiency. Chrysler, by contast, hooked up substantially with Peugeot and Cummins in the development of diesel engines for cars and light trucks, figuring that they could better GM's fuel efficiency claims. All of the automakers were able to clear the CAFE fuel economy legislation - GM cleared it by a little, Ford and Chrysler by some and AMC by a lot - but by 1985 the idea of fuel economy was one which lots of consumers paid attention to, and along with the continuing demand for mid-sized and larger cars and the developing truck and SUV trends, it meant that if Detroit was not give an opening to the imports, they needed to be on the R&D ball pretty much all the time.
But all four of the companies, quite profitable through the 1980s, were ready for the challenge - and Washington's passing of its universal healthcare legislation, contrary to the doom-and-gloom predictions of its opponents, proved to be a godsend to heavily unionized Detroit. It reduced the healthcare costs of the Detroit automakers by nearly 20% in a two-year period, a cost-savings worth billions. This also was true across much of America's industrial sectors, and it would be noted by demographers that through the 1980s and 1990s America's collective health levels grew considerably, attributed in part to the fact that the new system allowed one to see a doctor or get treatment without fear of the costs - and it would also be found that this reduced the costs of care, as many more health problems were caught earlier, before they became serious issues.
These changes, combined with the growth in the economy of this period, led to much of the 1980s being called "the decadent times". Strong economic growth in much of the Western World helped with this, and it was a time where it also became clear where the world's lines were drawn. Japan's economy grew into an immense bubble in the 1980s, and while the trouble that this caused would become very clear later on, it was a world that allowed Japanese companies to jump into America in a big way, and it showed in the actions of the Japanese automakers and industrialists, who bought up huge amounts of American real-estate and industrial assets, which gave them move influence in America but also had the effect of causing problems for them later on. It also led to American automakers starting sales in Japan, though that country's level of red-tape and protectionism at the time drove the Detroit makers nuts. Still, for higher-priced cars in the bubble economy, it was worth it in a great many cases. Japan's rise into the leagues of world powers in economic terms had been a long time in coming, but by the 1980s it was very real, and it would show in the future....
With the blockbuster launches of 1981, and the strikes of 1981-82 having stunned America and having had an effect on the nation's politics, the 1980s headed into a decadent time.
For starters, the strikes in 1981 ended with the unions getting their way and the professional air traffic controllers getting re-hired, a backdown that was hugely embarrassing for President Reagan - but one which showed that he and the Democrats could work together. Having succeeded at stopping what they viewed as an unjust firing, the unions headed out against other injustices, but found a surprise waiting for them which was due to be their minefield, namely that Walter Reuther's statements in the late 1970s that labor and management could find a way to coexist were starting to come true.
A new generation of workers was entering the workplace in America, the baby boomers moving into positions of power and influence. They came in having a strong desire to better themselves, but this generation was also smart enough to see that they needed to all be better off if they themselves were to benefit. This led to the confidence of the times being matched in aggressive actions to expand both America's wealth and the prosperity of its working classes, figuring that if the working people prospered than so would the management classes. These people were legion in Detroit by the middle of the 1980s, and while the men on top were still heavily suspicious of the UAW's motives and the UAW was suspicious of the company and its bargainers, the middle levels of management were soon full of those who saw the UAW as a potential asset. This led to many actions by all of the makers to improve the quality of work life for the employees.
"When I first walked into River Rouge (the famed Ford assembly plant in Dearborn, Michigan), I went to see one of the plant managers, wanting to tell him about the Quality of Job One and Our Company is Our People plans. I found him in the middle of the plant screaming at an employee over having to use the bathroom. The man looked ill to me, and yet this man wasn't even thinking of it. I demanded he stop yelling at him, to which he turned to me and said 'another blankety-blank accountant'. I put my hand on the guy's shoulder and said 'son, you know why we need programs to make our people's lives better? That. Right there.' I could see he was sick, and I told him to go home. When the plant manager protested, he said 'are you serious?' to which I answered 'well, I don't know whether you take it seriously, but as far as I can tell, I'm serious.' That went around Rouge in about a New York Minute, and I never had trouble there again."
-- Former President of Ford Motor Company, Donald Petersen, speaking in The American Auto Factory, 2006
"Guys were hearing about the new plants at Bowling Green and Tacoma and the rebuilt plants at Baltimore and South Gate and Janesville and asking 'why can't we get all of that stuff?' When I asked GM management about that in 1982, I was given an answer 'We haven't gotten to all of the plants, yet.' I responded to that by asking 'so, all of GM's plants are gonna get all of that?' I must admit I was stunned when the guys at GM said 'Yes.' I didn't think they were willing to spend the money. But by the end of the eighties, they had kept their word. I hated to admit it, but it was true. The guys were working in better plants, and they made better cars as a result. We went into the eighties wanting to hate on another. By the end of the eighties, they were listening to us for real. By the end of the nineties, they were raising up ideas to help us. It was stunning to me, but I had to re-evaluate everything I had ever thought about Detroit."
-- Former UAW President Douglas Fraser, In an Interview with the Detroit Free Press, May 2004
The result of this 1980s push was political changes, too - so much so that when Fraser began his push to get universal health care in the United States in 1983, he had little trouble getting it, and his vocal opposition to the bitter Arizona Copper Mine strikes of 1983 gave much support to the miners, to the point that the copper miners got most of what they wanted and would end up heading back to work. Labor's strikes had raised their concerns, and the decisions of the American managerial class in the 1980s meant that it would not be a long time before things changed in America. The United States in the 1980s moved to a much more confrontational position with the Soviet Union and states they disagreed with, and while Ronald Reagan's loss to Ted Kennedy and Henry M. Jackson in the 1984 Presidential election changed a great many things, it did not change the strong-arm foreign policy and it did not change major economic policies. It did, however, have a huge change for the automakers in 1986, when President Kennedy passed the "Advancement of American Health Care Act" in May 1986, which opened up the Medicare Program to those who wished to buy in and enacted substantial legislation to control the industry to ensure affordable healthcare for all Americans - and the ability to buy into Medicare made sure that the insurance companies paid attention.
To nobody's surprise, being both huge industries that were heavily unionized, the American automakers were among the first one to feel the changes. Chrysler's survival had in large part come from the UAW being willing to deal with Chrysler, and the middle management made sure that the automakers paid back the guys who had given up concessions to help keep the business alive - for example, when Chrysler had started selling the Peugeot 205 in North America, Chrysler reactivated its mothballed plant in Hamtramck, Michigan, to make it in North America - much to Peugeot's initial unhappiness, who wanted its plants in France to supply the cars. Despite the acrimonious relationship between GM President Roger Smith and Fraser, particularly after Smith and many of his board of directors voted themselves multi-million-dollar bonuses hours after extracting billions in wage concessions from the UAW (An act that ultimately saw Smith fired), after the rocky 1973-81 period, labor peace was the rule in Detroit, and the vehicles they built improved steadily in quality from an already good standard.
In the middle of this, the imports began setting up in North America. Nissan began operations in Smyrna, Tennessee, in 1982, followed a year later by Honda in Marysville, Ohio and in 1984 by Volkswagen in Westmoreland, Pennsylvania. It was something of a surprise to the Japanese that the plants in the United States had workers that were just as diligent as their Japanese counterparts, and even more to their surprise, they were rather more co-operative. The UAW attempted to unionize both Japanese facilities and failed, though they succeeded in unionizing the Volkswagen plant in Pennsylvania in 1985. Honda by the 1990s would go so far as to import cars into Japan from the United States for a while.
The Detroit automakers rolled through the 1980s developing better and better designs. General Motors' Quad-Four engine design spawned a second new engine, the PowerSix, a V6 engine family of 3.2 to 4.4 liters that would be used in a variety of applications from mid-sized sedans to pickup trucks, with the Power-Six debuting on the Chevrolet Celebrity, Pontiac 6000 and Buick Regal in 1984, as the new A-bodies replaced the unloved X-bodies. The engine was also soon used in a variety of cars from all GM divisions, as well as the Chevrolet S-10/GMC Sonoma pickups and the Chevrolet Astro/GMC Safari minivans. The A-bodies themselves were quality units, much better than the X-bodies, and while the Celebrity was meant as a fairly conventional mid-sized sedan, the Pontiac 6000 was meant as a fun car to rival cars like the BMW 3-Series and the Buick Regal was meant as middle-level luxury car. It did these jobs fairly well, with the 6000 having a 3.4-liter version of the PowerSix engine and a Getrag-built six-speed manual transmission as standard equipment, which made the 6000 a genuinely quick car.
Ford went even further than that, releasing the Taurus to a world of fanfare in 1985. Dubbed the "Car of the Future" in press releases, the Taurus was meant to be an executive car in Europe and a strong mid-sized contender in North America, and its 'aero-style' design, similar in language to the Escort, Sierra and Thunderbird, was a handsome machine. Designed to handle more like a sports car, Ford touted that they had tuned the suspension of the Taurus in Germany and America, and boasted of many high-speed test runs to see how the car handled at high speeds. Their touting was very proud, but it didn't take long to see why they were cocky. The Taurus used a variety of powerful engines, the king of which was the Taurus SHO's supercharged 3.0-liter V6, designed and built by Yamaha, capable of making 285 horsepower. The Taurus included both a high-quality and luxurious interior, with some neat options available, including one of the first CD players in a car, cellular phone, power seats with power-adjusted lumbar and side support, a high-tech digital dash (an option that most Taurus had) and even an all-glass roof, the last an expensive option but one which a fair number of cars had. A radical design, the Taurus was a big gamble for Ford - and one that most at GM and Chrysler figured would fail in favor of more conventional medium-sized sedans.
They would be disappointed, as the Taurus would go on to be a reasonable success in Europe and a rousing success in America. Ford's President at the time, Donald Petersen, boasted of how he had left his chaffeur-driven Lincoln at home and bought a loaded Taurus to drive himself to work every day. It was soon also frequently used by American embassies in Europe, even some used as staff cars for American armed forces around the world.
A 1987 Ford Taurus SHO
"One can't be mad at the gamble. Ford decided to step up to the future, and boy did they hit a home run. The Taurus is not merely a good car like the Escort and Sierra, it is a great car. It really is not just a pretty face, it is a massive cut above the competition, a luxury car at a mid-sized price, a machine that is so impressive it defies conventional wisdom. American cars have never better than this, and if this is the future, we love it."
-- Motor Trend, stating the rationale for the Taurus being their car of the year for 1986
GM had a surprise of its own, but in a totally different market, and one which had been pretty lonely for a long time - small sports cars.
The market dominated for decades by the British had effectively been abandoned by them. British Leyland's financial problems in the 1970s and the abysmal build quality of many of the cars had contributed to them becoming rare pieces by the end of that decade, with the Triumph TR7/TR8 departing the American market in 1979 and the MG MGB in 1980. But as the number of people wanting a good small sports car grew in the 1980s, they found a handful of good choices, the most common of which was the Alfa Romeo Spyder. But with Chrysler's sale of the Matra Murena showed that the market was real, and in 1984, both General Motors and Toyota jumped in it with both feet, bringing out the Pontiac Fiero and Toyota MR2. The Fiero, powered by the Quad-Four engine, was the larger and quicker of the two, though they were pretty much even on handling. Both cars were fantastic drivers, and it didn't take many drives in either the 185-horsepower, 30-mpg Fiero or the 125-horsepower, 34-mpg MR2 to win over a convert to the love of driving. Compared to the Murena, the Fiero and MR2 were both quicker, though the Murena was a hoot to drive as well and the looks were totally a matter of taste. And to nobody's surprise, the three spent the 1980s as rivals - and big ones. All three were excellent commuter cars when they weren't out driving fast, and many of the people who bought them would say that they would use these cars to drive to work and do everyday errands that didn't need more than two seats, as well as having great fun when the opportunity presented itself. The Fiero was an instant score for GM, despite some niggling troubles with electrical components and potential engine fires, the Fiero sold extremely well, and GM could loudly say they had a car that nobody else in Detroit had any answer to and not be lying.
A 1984 Pontiac Fiero
Over at AMC, the work with Renault had produced a plan to sell Renault cars in America, in a similar deal to the one Peugeot and Chrysler had signed. Renault bought a 10% share in AMC as part of this, and as with Chrysler, AMC needed and wanted a good supermini to sell, and following the beginning of the sale of the AMC Cobalt, a rebadged (and American-built) version of the Renault Clio, launched in 1987. The Cobalt and the Dodge Colt made it so that the European hot hatch wars were coming to America, it showing in the arrival of the AMC Cobalt Williams and Chrysler Colt Indy in the early 1990s. Meanwhile, Renault and AMC worked out a new engine series to replace the aging PRV V6, which by the mid-1980s was being phased out at all three automakers. But the big scoop for AMC was their Jeep brand, and the introduction of the Jeep Cherokee in 1984.
This proved to be interesting timing, as the Cherokee came out a mere three weeks before the Dodge Durango, a Chrysler-badged version of the Matra Rancho from Europe, in the spring of 1984. Both were smaller SUVs than the big ones that had been sold in America for decades, and both were big sales successes from the start. The Cherokee was the better off-roader of the two (though the Durango could very easily hold its own), while the Durango was more livable on the road. Both beat the pants off of their much-bigger body-on-frame rivals, spurring the development of rivals from Ford and General Motors. Jeep's profits, Renault's help and the strong sales of the Spirit, AMX2 and following 1983 the Espace kept the company profitable and provided all of the resources needed for the revamp of AMC's mid-sized and bigger models. Despite some major misgivings by the French management and unions, The Renault-AMC alliance would prove to be just as beneficial as the Peugeot-Chrysler one, and in both cases the French automakers would learn much from their friends in Detroit, and the vice-versa was also true.
None of this was any benefit to Japan, either. In the semi-autobiographical book Made In Japan, Sony's founder and chairman Akio Morita commented in quite a lot of depth about how Japanese culture and their way of thinking, a book that seemed to be about Japan's success in export fields. It drew a response from Lee Iacocca and Mitt Romney, the book Talking Straight, where Romney and Iacocca pointed out that one of the people most influential with Japan's modern auto industry was an American, W. Edwards Deming, who had taught the Japanese much - and many of those lessons had been absorbed in Detroit, too. It was also pointed out that Japan was aggressive in sales tactics and had over the years built extensive trade barriers to its own lucrative domestic markets. Despite the comments, Talking Straight refused to bash Japan in general.
"The Japanese turned a nation destroyed by war into an economic powerhouse in a generation, as much as their tactics played a role in that, if they had not produced excellent products, they would have never been able to take off to such a degree as they have. They are worthy of respect. But one of the advantages of today's modern world is that they taught us here in Detroit many lessons, and we now know about all of the flaws we had once been guilty of. And now, we produce products to as great if not a greater quality than theirs, and we have no issue with them selling cars in America, quite the contrary. Lee said "If you find a better car, buy it." Mitt said "We want customers to make great choices, because we believe in what we build." That's how American automakers are now, and Japan had better be prepared for it, because the American worker is the equal of any on Earth, and we're proving it now."
-- Lee Iacocca, Mitt Romney and Sonny Kleinfeld, Talking Straight, 1988
By the middle of the 1980s, other new tech was rolling into Detroit with a vengeance. Even beyond the development of fuel injection and modern engines, some other new and interest ideas came out in the 1980s, and this was hardly limited to one automaker. General Motors' purchase of Hughes Electronics in 1982 saw Hughes work out the development of Cadillac's proposed cylinder-deactivation technology, the V8-6-4, which entered the market first with the Allante luxury sports car in 1985 and soon spread across the range of V8 engines produced by General Motors. Likewise, while most of the American makers began using Bosch fuel injection in the 1970s, by the 1980s they all had their own systems - and Chrysler and Peugeot went a step further in the late 1980s with high-pressure direct-injection for gasoline engines, a technology which began to bear fruit in the early 1990s. The cylinder-deactivation idea from GM was soon also a topic of discussion in the rest of Detroit and soon the world, as while it had little effect on stop-start city driving, in the larger and heavier Cadillac models it had a substantial difference in highway fuel efficiency. Chrysler, by contast, hooked up substantially with Peugeot and Cummins in the development of diesel engines for cars and light trucks, figuring that they could better GM's fuel efficiency claims. All of the automakers were able to clear the CAFE fuel economy legislation - GM cleared it by a little, Ford and Chrysler by some and AMC by a lot - but by 1985 the idea of fuel economy was one which lots of consumers paid attention to, and along with the continuing demand for mid-sized and larger cars and the developing truck and SUV trends, it meant that if Detroit was not give an opening to the imports, they needed to be on the R&D ball pretty much all the time.
But all four of the companies, quite profitable through the 1980s, were ready for the challenge - and Washington's passing of its universal healthcare legislation, contrary to the doom-and-gloom predictions of its opponents, proved to be a godsend to heavily unionized Detroit. It reduced the healthcare costs of the Detroit automakers by nearly 20% in a two-year period, a cost-savings worth billions. This also was true across much of America's industrial sectors, and it would be noted by demographers that through the 1980s and 1990s America's collective health levels grew considerably, attributed in part to the fact that the new system allowed one to see a doctor or get treatment without fear of the costs - and it would also be found that this reduced the costs of care, as many more health problems were caught earlier, before they became serious issues.
These changes, combined with the growth in the economy of this period, led to much of the 1980s being called "the decadent times". Strong economic growth in much of the Western World helped with this, and it was a time where it also became clear where the world's lines were drawn. Japan's economy grew into an immense bubble in the 1980s, and while the trouble that this caused would become very clear later on, it was a world that allowed Japanese companies to jump into America in a big way, and it showed in the actions of the Japanese automakers and industrialists, who bought up huge amounts of American real-estate and industrial assets, which gave them move influence in America but also had the effect of causing problems for them later on. It also led to American automakers starting sales in Japan, though that country's level of red-tape and protectionism at the time drove the Detroit makers nuts. Still, for higher-priced cars in the bubble economy, it was worth it in a great many cases. Japan's rise into the leagues of world powers in economic terms had been a long time in coming, but by the 1980s it was very real, and it would show in the future....
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So far, so good, man.
Ah, good. I'd figured since the French were about the only ones not to be able to operate in the American market after the 1980s and they mad a raft of wonderful cars in the 1980s and 1990s, so to me it was natural. No Citroen in North America, but that will change.
I'm having his business career here go in a very different direction ITTL. His dad here is a bona-fide hero of the American car industry, the man who began the process of bridging the gap between the UAW and the companies' management teams for the benefit of all. Here, Mitt joins AMC after getting his juris doctor and MBA, and his view is like many of the 1980s crop of business entrepreneurs - build up everyone so that everyone benefits, them most of all. That's what Mitt's goal is here. The Bain Capital Mitt Romney made money through dubious tricks and shoddy treatment of companies. The American Motors Mitt Romney will make his fortune finishing what his dad started with regards to the UAW and AMC. I'm debating a political role for him later on, but for now, he's a management-oriented AMC middle-level executive and one on the rise, both because of his very-famous dad and his own skills.
Orville_third
Banned
Nice political changes, though I'm not fond of Kennedy and Jackson. Will Saturn still exist, or will GM incorporate its labor models and new components into the rest of the fleet? Will the factory improvements cause a rethink of the Hawthorne Effect? Will the car companies begin listening to Amory Lovins and his views on reducing the use of oil? Will Japan's car industry's expansion into the US be increased? (They were planning an Isuzu plant in the 1980's in SC...oddly some local manufacturers opposed it, fearing the rise of unions.)
Will BMW and Mercedes come to the US same as OTL or sooner?
Will BMW and Mercedes come to the US same as OTL or sooner?
Long time lurker, first time poster
I'm loving this TL. IMO this very well COULD have happened so it's very well-written as well as results more to my preferences.
I've got several questions for The Mann:
I'm loving this TL. IMO this very well COULD have happened so it's very well-written as well as results more to my preferences.
I've got several questions for The Mann:
- With the Dems taking over in 1984 and making UHC happen- how much is SDI and the whole defense buildup part of the federal spending picture?
- Are you planning to import some of the cool bits from your other TL's (more nukes, railroads, and mass transit both as economic and environmental stimuli?)
- Sure you've tackled cars ITTL- what about aerospace? Does the settlement of labor troubles in the 1980's and seeing the car industry spark itself to compete more effectively domestically and internationally spark a similar resurgence in civilian airliner manufacturers? (I'm trying to keep McD and Lockheed doing civilian work instead of just being military contractors)
- Another key American industry that fell apart was shipbuilding. I'd love to see American yards do what Hyundai and other shipyards did to be the shipyards to the world's merchant marines.
- Do you think these trends oif stronger American manufacturing quality and international marketing through the 1990's would butterfly offshoring or do you think the trend toward globalism is too strong for that?
Is this OTL?
Yes. DeLorean, along with engine specialist Russell Gee and chassis engineer Bill Collins, were effectively the guys who created the Pontiac GTO, though Pontiac's marketing guys and division boss (who later headed all of GM), signed off quite enthusiastically on the idea.
GM's incorporation of its labor models and components are pretty much company-wide. While holdouts exist, after the labor chaos of the mid '70s (culminating in the awful incident at Lordstown) and Chrysler's near-bankruptcy knocking some sense into the UAW, GM's middle management guys are very much in favor of the "get them on our side" approach.
The Hawthorne Effect happens any time you change something about the environment in an industrial setting, but here the overall point is to make the working conditions better for the guys on the line, which outside of the Hawthorne Effect has been found to make for both higher productivity and, more importantly in this case, better quality finished products.
Amory Lovins isn't really relevant to the situation in this world, namely because the demand for fuel-efficient cars was largely driven by oil shocks in 1973 and 1979, and for Detroit one of the goals is to keep the Japanese to as little a foothold as possible. They still get one, of course, but here the four American automakers still retain over 80% of the American car market right up to the present day, though the Japanese have a strong foothold. Later on, the negawatt revolution will see widespread consideration, as the idea of customers wanting the energy in terms of services and not so much amounts of electricity makes a lot of sense.
The global involvement in the US is likely to remain about the same as OTL, though now the hookups between Chrysler and Peugeot-Citroen and AMC and Renault have resulted in players who didn't play in the OTL US market having bigger footholds, and as the United States here is gonna have a much wealthier middle class than OTL, I also expect that the market I had above will be rather bigger, too. M-B and BMW will be coming sooner, as the market is bigger and American autoworkers have a much better reputation than OTL, though I'm debating as to whether the UAW is involved in their plants.
SDI went out the window when Reagan lost in 1984 - its seen by Kennedy and Jackson as being ludicrously expensive and unworkable. The excesses of the defense buildup got smoothed off, but its still ongoing - the whole point of having Jackson on the ticket for the Democrats is to grab all of the foreign policy wind from Reagan, with Jackson handling foreign policy issues more as Kennedy runs domestic ones. The medicare plan here involves a buy-in for those under the age of 65, effectively having it act as a "public option" as was proposed under President Obama's plan IOTL. The public option, the regulatory changes and larger size and influence of labor unions ITTL are going to push health insurance providers into much better coverage at lower prices, allowing a fairly similar form of system as to what exists in IOTL Germany of France. All Americans will be covered by the time Kennedy and Jackson are up for re-election in 1988.
Most definitely. (Notice how Chrysler in the bankruptcy proceedings kept American Locomotive Works? There is a reason for that.
) Here, March 28, 1979, is just another day at the office at Three Mile Island, and while Chernobyl's highly-public horror will still happen, it will be easier to pass it off as a failure of Soviet technology rather than an indictment on nuclear energy as many made it out to be IOTL. GM and Chrysler both being major locomotive builders is a major way to help the automakers. All of the American car companies produce all kinds of other engines - AMC produces large-scale Marine engines, GM and Chrysler make locomotives and mass transit vehicles, Ford and GM make heavy trucks and all of the above make engines for other purposes. I'm debating that one. Airbus is gonna suck a lot of the European markets out of the aerospace world, and better rail transport in North America is gonna hurt like hell to low-cost haulers like Southwest. I'm not quite sure how to handle that one, though I think that Lockheed will need a new airplane to stay in the civilian market.
Some of that will happen here. Todd Pacific, National Steel and Shipbuilding, General Dynamics, Avondale Shipyards and Bath Iron Works will remain in the civilian shipbuilding business, though not nearly to the extent of the work done by Hyundai or Mitsubishi in Asia. However, there will be several major American firms who are major buyers of American-built cargo ships....
I'm debating this. GM is not gonna be massively moving its operations to Mexico as IOTL, and I'm thinking that after Tiananmen Square the world is gonna for a good long while give the People's Republic of China the middle finger. I am thinking, however, that while a fair bit of manufacturing will move abroad, a heckuva lot of it will remain in America, particularly in industries where the value of the products are higher.
The Trans Am of course gets built, and yes, it is used in Knight Rider. (I loved that show when I was a kid.) The Skyline GT-R is also built, though I'm not sure about it being sold in North America. EV1, I'm not sure about yet.
I'd hope that the *Saturn model would be GM's way of doing things. Who doesn't remember how the people at the Saturn dealer, before allowing the buyer to drive off into the sunset with their new car, getting it ready for the "Launch Pad"?
That was one of the cool things from Saturn I remember as a kid.Well, considering both by now had been in the US since at least the late 1950s/early 1960s, I'm assuming OTL.