The Disdain For Small, Fuel-Efficient Cars: A Characteristic of US Auto Producers

“American automakers have always hated small cars. They were barely even American. The idea of a small car seemed impossible…So when Japanese cars began to enter the market, the American makers were nonplussed. How would they respond? One way was to turn the Youngstown plant into a factory for the GM version of the small car, the Vega. But it was a low priority for the company, who never wanted to make a car like this in the first place.”[1]

I think this is largely—but only largely—true.  The Vega was not GM’s first attempt at building a small car.  That would, I think, be the Corvair,[2] [3] which debuted in 1960 and died in 1969.  As Ralph Nader famously pointed out, this was not, even for an American car of the time, a well-made, or safe, car; it was, in fact unsafe at any speed.  There were precursors, of course.  The Nash Rambler,[4] for example.  AMC (the successor to Nash) tried again with the Gremlin, which lasted from 1978 to 1978.[5]  And Ford, infamously, gave us the exploding Pinto (1970-1980).[6]

But all of these were designed and built, not because American car companies believed in them, or wanted to build them, but because the initial boom is US imports of cars were subcompacts, beginning with the WV Beetle [7] and followed by the various Japanese cars from Datsun/Nissan, Toyota, Honda, and Mazda.  Chrysler got into the game by contracting with Mitsubishi to build a subcompact—the Dodge Colt [8].  One way to judge Dodge’s commitment to the subcompact segment of the market is that it did not even design its own product (and, until at least 1976, did not require Dodge dealers to service the Colt).

It remains true to this day that Ford, GM, and the remnants of Chrysler still regard small, well-designed, fuel-efficient cars as an afterthought.

[1]http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2019/03/lordstown-end-industrial-era-america This entire blog post is worth a read.

[2] My first car was a 1964 Corvair—bright red. 4-on-the-floor—maybe the car I’ve owned that I liked best.

[3] Most of the discussion of the Corvair is based on the wikipedia article about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Corvair

[4] It was produced from 1950 to 1955.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_Rambler My parents bought one—used—in 1956 or 1957.  It was small, slow, uncomfortable, and (in keeping with almost all American cars of the time) not particularly fuel efficient or designed for passenger safety.

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMC_Gremlin

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto  It was also produced as the Mercury Bobcat.

[7] I bought a (1964) Beetle in 1969 and another small VW product, a 1963 Karmann Ghia in 1970 (the Beetle caught on fire).

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_Colt  It was on the market from 1971 to 1994.  I bought one—my first new car—in 1974.  It was followed by 2 Mazda GLCs; I finally bought something other than a subcompact in 1987, when I bought my first Honda Accord.