Ep. 3 The Compact Cars of the Early 1960's

hello everyone my name is Edward and today I present you the third episode of the automotive history series in this series I'm going to cover the most funny interesting and juicy stories of automotive history but without further ado let's get started I want you to go back to the lobby get some snacks get back sit back relax and enjoy as I'm about to tell you the story of the American compact cars of the early 1960s the year is 1958 and America is experiencing a economic boom after two decades of carefully watching your money and saving up because of a Great Depression in the Second World War now people had a time to go and splurge a bit you could treat yourself by buying things that you didn't necessarily need but that you at least could use to show off such as a shiny chrome car a nice house or the latest fashion consumerism at its finest anyway the good old day suddenly ended in 1958 when America was hit by a small recession small as in the time span the economic downturn lasted only for eight months it was a sharp downturn but it was also a short one but the economic recession especially hit the automotive market and also made this car fail but that's a story for another time wink-wink auto sales fell 31% in 1957 and that made 1958 the worst car sales year after the second world war one story goes that a DeSoto dealership in st. Louis puts salesmen on a duty for 64 hours straight as part of a sell-off on to raise the sales which was to no avail by the way because DeSoto left the car industry in 1961 but at least shows what car manufacturers were willing to do to keep the sales up but anyway back to the story so 1958 economic recession and Americans were looking for ways to bring down the cost of living so what do you do you get out of your lazy chair you walk up to the front window you look at your front lawn you look at your driveway and what do you see you see a big four-door King size fits all comfy cruiser with a big gas guzzling Vee 8.now granted the fuel prices in 1950s America were something to laugh about they were still extremely low but the pragmatic people of the United States started to look for more fuel-efficient cars as part of a way to save money on transportation because a big four-door King size fits all configures where the gas guzzling v8 wasn't gonna cut it and finding a car in late 1950s America that was good on gas was impossible and yes I know that around Nash's and Ramblers out there in the mid 1950s that were a little smaller a little more economical but you get the idea so the pragmatic people of the United States turned to foreign imports especially European imports the reason why the American public chose for European cars was that they were a lot smaller and therefore lighter and therefore also a lot more economical and if I may use the words that regular car reviews use there is always a fuel shortage in Europe thus the cars from Europe were always a lot more economical and they didn't choose for Asian imports or at least not yet as the Asian car industry was still trying to develop itself in the late 1950s plus the big wave of Asian imports is a story for another time and it's a story of the 1970s so by 1960 foreign European imports started to trickle in more and more and most of them were Volkswagen Beetles so you can imagine that the American car manufacturers had to react to what was currently going on and there were multiple reasons for that first one being that the big three General Motors Ford Motor Company and Chrysler Corporation couldn't really appreciate the fact that a German car manufacturer that had interesting ties with the Second World War was going to steal their market share the second reason was that the American car companies also wanted to have a piece of the action when it comes to compact cars I mean it was just a brand-new car segment for them that could potentially be very literate 'iv the third reason was that the European import cars are great and all but they are small and it seems like that the Americans tend to have cold feet about vehicle size so the best solution would be if American car manufacturers would come up with a car that was compact and preferably economical but would also conserve traditional American automotive values such as interior space luxury and comfort and if possible a little bit of style and so that is exactly what American car manufacturers were planning to do in the early 1960s and the first car manufacturer to do that was fourth was General Motors he was Chrysler was Studebaker yes I will talk about what a big three did to come up with a compact car where we first gotta talk about Studebaker because Studebaker was the first car manufacturer to come up with a compact car and that was in 1959 whereas the big three started to introduce compact models in 1960 so Studebaker was just one year ahead but Studebaker was also a car manufacturer that was financially struggling they just didn't have the big loads of money that the big three had they couldn't afford year-to-year design changes or tail fins and so in a last attempt to save the company financially they decided to come up with a compact car just to make a quick buck of the potentially lucrative compact car market and so Studebaker came up with the Studebaker Lark the Lark was ingeniously designed to round the core body shell of mid 50 Studebakers by reducing the front and rear overhangs and shortening the wheel bays ahead of the firewall the car could still seat six people comfortably and hold a surprising amount of luggage the Lark sold well and although this temporarily saved Studebaker from financial death there was one big problem in 1959 and 1960 Studebaker larks were salt in dealerships of the big three so when you walk into a Chevrolet dealership in the corner you could find a Studebaker Lark but as soon as 1961 rolls around the big three came up with their answer to the compact car and so the Lark had to make room for cars such as the Ford Falcon the Chevrolet Corvair and the new valiant and although the Lark was a financial success and did help Studebaker to gain some extra money it was to no avail by the mid-60s the American public chose for the big three compacts instead of Studebaker come and Studebaker started to lose money again and so they decided to close up shop in 1967 but now on to the big three because what would their answers to the brand-new compact car market early early in the video already named a couple of car models but let's go over the big three one company at the time because the introduction of some of these cars were not really exemplary and we'll start off with Ford Motor Company because four did it actually right the first time under the watchful eye of Robert McNamara the Ford Falcon was born and it was a simple fuel-efficient basic transportation from A to B car with no frills nothing special there's still everything that you wanted in a car the Ford Falcon was Robert McNamara's loft child and the car just didn't come only as a sedan you could also have a two-door sedan two-door coupe station wagon pervert of all hardtop and even a van the falcon also received a sister known as the Mercury Comet or comet or I don't really know how to pronounce that comets Komets anyway mercury also received a subcompact car that was initially going to be an Edsel model but well we all know what happened with that soul and if not I will also make a video about that as well whoo so for one year only the car was just known as comet or comet just like that nothing else and then the year after it became a mercury model so Dmitri comet Lincoln Ford Motor Company's luxury division didn't receive a compact car because wow it's a luxury division if you think that the people that bought aircraft carrier sized Lincoln's were going to buy something way smaller they might have to think again moving on to the Chrysler Corporation as there were two things happening over Chrysler the first thing being that Chrysler President William Newberg heard a rumor at a cocktail party that Chevrolet was working on a dramatically smaller 1962 model in a colossal blunder new Burke assumed this downsizing rumor refer to all full-size Chevrolet's but that wasn't the case it was just a brand new smaller Chevrolet model and not the complete lineup and so Newburgh ordered that Chrysler's best-selling full-size Plymouth's and dodges were getting downsized and now I like you to guess what happened to Newberg well he got fired but downsizing full-size models that was the first thing that Chrysler did the second thing is that Chrysler also launched a new compact car but not as a model as part of Plymouth or Dodge now it was going to be a separate mark introducing valiant because valiant was nobody's kid brother this one stands on its own four tires and it's what you might think but the reality is different because the new car brand valiant was immediately suffering of an identity crisis seriously you're not gonna believe this here we go in 1960 valiant was at separate mark suddenly in 1961 valiant became part of Plymouth so now they were sold as Plymouth of valiance in 1962 with valiant returned without Plymouth or Dodge branding and then again in 1964 it was once again changed to Plymouth Valiant but now it stayed that way the last thing that could be said about the valiant is also its controversial styling because it was a good car it was a typical Chrysler car full of engineering gimmicks and whatnot but the styling was a little controversial it sold fairly well but still ended up at third place right behind the Ford Falcon and Chevrolet Corvair and now that I'm talking about the Chevrolet Corvair let's move on to the last car manufacturer General Motors General Motors like fork decided to come up with the brand new platform and then give it to all car brands except Cadillac so that they could make their own car out of it these cars were the Chevrolet Corvair the pontiac tempests the Oldsmobile f85 and the Buick special that the Chevrolet Corvair is by far the most interesting car to talk about because unlike its Pontiac Oldsmobile and Buick brothers the Chevrolet was rather unconventional the Corvair went full Volkswagen by getting a air-cooled engine that was placed in the back just like the beetle and not in the front of the car which was the most conventional way of doing it at a time also just like the Falcon the curve was part of a very extensive range of types of vehicles like a two-door sedan two-door coupe station wagon vertical and even a van and the van was more or less an imitation of the Volkswagen Type 2 van also known as the hippie van but there is one single detail that will always stick to the Corvair as I will stick to a car show while my girlfriend just wants to go home already and that is its Road handling as part of the cover being unique and hipster it received a swing axle rear axle this led under certain circumstances to excessive oversteer which could lead to life-threatening situations now this problem was already known beforehand by the developers but was ignored by management and the public didn't notice it either until this man Ralph Nader who didn't have a driver licence wrote this book and safe at any speed Ralph Nader used this example of the Corvair along with seven other examples as part of the critique on the automotive industry but it wasn't only the problem that Ralph Nader mentioned in his book the general public just wanted a basic and simple car and the Corvair was rather unconventional and like the Ford Falcon but the damage was already done sales plummeted from 220,000 units sold in 1965 to just merely fourteen thousand eight hundred units in 1968 but still though until today critics are still divided by the fact whether the Chevrolet Corvair was really that more dangerous than its contemporaries so that's that now I doubt whether the compact cars were more economical than their full-size counterparts because in the mid-60s most compact cars received the same engines that could also be found in bigger models and just as I explained that the recession of 1958 was very short I don't really think that people in the mid 60s were looking for cars with good gas mileage anymore but more so looking at cars that were compact or had a lower retail price especially for the youth that could now by a smaller yet newer car instead of relying on Daddy's King size fits all 4-door comfy Cruiser with gas guzzling v8 but if there is one thing that is as clear as day is that a compact car was here to stay and that it was going to lead to new interesting car markets such as this one can you guess what it is and with that I want to end this episode thank you for listening and remember to like and subscribe to my channel if you want more of this and make sure that you follow me on Instagram it's where I post cars that I found in a wild on the street along with some interesting facts or a story something like that none of that promotional or irrelevant so once again thank you and see you in the next video

Channel: Ed's Auto Reviews

Views: 312,773

Keywords:

Id: RgYxoyfmYUY

Length: 14min 1sec (841 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 06 2019