General Motors: 10 Milestones on the Road to Bankruptcy [slideshow]
Detroit's Beautiful, Horrible Decline
General Motors: 10 Milestones on the Road to Bankruptcy [slideshow]
Detroit's Beautiful, Horrible Decline
Personally, as far as outside influences, I think "Roger and Me" was more instrumental in GM's slide downward than Nader was. Many more people saw that as a negative than those who cared a whit about Corvairs. Just my opinion. That 4-6-8 and the Cimarron were bad jokes. The Vega and Citation should have been in there too. I remember walking down a street with a friend and passing a Chevrolet dealer when the Citation came out. 1980 or so. Lot was full of Citations. I looked at them, and since I always wanted American cars to do well, my heart dropped. They just looked like junk, and I figured they were. Nothing uglier than a lot full of Citations. GM NEVER got close to small car close to the Civic/Corolla. Luckily for me I didn't care about small cars. But unluckily for GM millions of others did.
Another example of America's infrastructure disadvantage after WWII. And an example of GM not investing in technology and new infrastructure. U.S. Steel was the same way. When I worked at South Works in 1968 it was blast furnaces, while the Japs and Germans had long ago gone to BOP. Not that GM didn't employ new technology. They just didn't package it with quality and were blind to the marketplace. Hope they change their ways. We're all stockholders now.
--Vic
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