Industry coverage by journalists from outside the automotive media can be a mixed bag. They are less likely to succumb to the groupthink that can undercut reporting from the likes of Automotive News or a buff magazine, but outsiders are also more likely to miss factual nuances that a beat reporter would get.
An example of this is a 1980 New Yorker story by Joseph Kraft. He made it clear in his story, “The Downsizing Decision,” that he had previously written about the auto industry. However, Kraft’s writings over his career tended to focus on foreign policy (Wikipedia, 2023). That showed in how he wrote this piece.
One theme of Kraft’s article is that the auto executives he interviewed were reluctant to acknowledge the importance of government pressure to downsize Detroit’s cars — thereby making them more competitive with those from foreign automakers at a key moment.
GM was initially the biggest beneficiary of downsizing. In April 1980 the automaker’s share of the domestic market reached an astonishing 65 percent because of the initial success of its front-wheel-drive X-cars.
A quote from a Department of Transportation official summed up Kraft’s theme:
“The government forced G.M. to take a critical look at its cars — first by setting standards for safety, then by setting standards for cleaner air, and, finally, by setting miles-per-gallon standards for fuel economy. Without the miles-per-gallon standards, G.M. would never have downsized the way it did. But the G.M. executives fought the standards every step of the way. Even now, they’re so tied up in their ideology that they can’t admit what the government did for them.” (Kraft, 1980)
This is a crucial point that I would be surprised to find very often in Automotive News during the early-1980s. However, Kraft also tended to credulously repeat questionable talking points about why Detroit was slow in downsizing its cars.
Kraft didn’t question Detroit’s ‘bigger = better’ attitude
As a case in point, Kraft (1980) did not push back against Ford President Arjay Miller’s contention in 1965 that “American car buyers have clearly expressed their preference for less austere transportation.”
Why then were import sales starting to rebound after the introduction of a wave of Detroit compacts in the early-60s? And why assume that “small = austere”? A front-wheel-drive platform Ford developed for an aborted U.S. subcompact called the Cardinal (later renamed the Redwing) could have also been used for higher-priced models such as a proposed sports car or even a minivan.
.jpg)
Kraft (1980) went on to quote Lee Iacocca: “I’ve spent all my life making small cars and styling small cars.” Not mentioned was that Iacocca reportedly played a crucial role in killing the Cardinal/Redwing. David Halberstam wrote that Iacocca preferred “big, creamy, plush cars” over smaller cars (Halberstam, 1986, p. 375). You wouldn’t pick that up by reading Kraft’s article.
Meanwhile, Kraft (1980) did not fact check GM president Elliott Estes’ excuses for the weaknesses of the automaker’s early-60s compacts. He stated that the Corvair was a “victim of bad publicity” and the Pontiac Tempest, Oldsmobile F-85 and Buick Special were “were too high and too narrow. The customers didn’t like them. It was a disastrous experiment. By 1965, we had to sell the engine plant we were using for those cars. In the next few years, we discovered that the wide-track V-8 Pontiac was our best seller. We learned that the more power we put in a car the more cars we sold. History taught us that big was better.”
Also see ‘Motor Trend gushes about the 1970 Pontiac GTO — right before it tanks’
Expecting GM management to take public responsibility for its string of bad decisions on the Corvair may have been asking too much, but it was ridiculous to say that the weak sales of GM’s compact triumvirate was due to them being “too high.” If anything, they were too low slung to be effective four-door sedans and wagons (thus, the taller 1962 Chevrolet Chevy II). And if these Y-body cars were too narrow, why was the similarly sized Ford Mustang such a breakout success?
Kraft (1980) also quoted American Motors head Roy Abernethy, who told a congressional inquiry in 1965 that the automaker had offered the Metropolitan but “the market was just not great enough to keep this small-car program going.” Not mentioned was that the Metropolitan was fairly competitive with other imports in the 1950s but eventually suffered from limitations such being a two seater with enclosed front wheels.
A more practical design might have had more staying power. However, the Metropolitan was also hamstrung because it was built by Austin in England. That meant American Motors could only generate a profit by distributing the car. In the early-60s the automaker had heavily invested in expanding its Kenosha, Wisconsin plant so quite reasonably decided to concentrate on selling the cars that were built there (Foster, 1993).
Kraft didn’t address the ramifications of GM’s changes
Just to be clear: The above comments by auto executives possess a kernel of truth. However, they collectively serve to make excuses for errors of execution. Those errors often included a failure to see the limitations of Detroit’s long-dominant belief that bigger = better. As we discuss further here, that tendency has been apparent since at least the early postwar years.
Where Kraft’s (1980) article was more useful was when noting that GM executives did not appear to be very concerned about the threat of anti-trust action if the automaker crushed Ford or Chrysler. For example, David Collier told him that there’s “no such thing as a domestic market. There’s an international market and an international set of manufacturers. I think the media should quit talking about the Big Three and start talking about the Big Eight — Volkswagen, Toyota, Nissan, Renault, and Fiat as well as G.M., Ford, and Chrysler.”
What’s ironic is that although GM was riding high in 1980 while both Ford and Chrysler were struggling, by the end of the decade the opposite would be the case. Indeed, the greater speed with which resource-rich GM downsized would ultimately turn into a disadvantage.
Also see ‘Bigger didn’t prove to be better for General Motors in late-70s and 80s’
Kraft didn’t see that coming. Nor did he see the enormous long-term implications of GM centralizing the development of it downsized cars — which served to reduce the distinctiveness of individual brands, which was a triple whammy now that size and division-specific drivetrains were less of a differentiator.
Last but not least, Kraft did not anticipate something that would have been painfully obvious to automotive historians or the road testers at Consumer Reports — dramatically redesigned cars will tend to have more teething problems. GM appeared to throw caution to the wind by rushing the X-cars to market despite using so many new components.
To be fair, Kraft’s insight was limited by the point in time when he wrote this story. For example, the full ramifications of the X-cars’ defects were arguably not yet apparent. Even so, this does not strike me as high-quality analysis that ranks with the writings of David Halberstam or Maryann Keller.
NOTES:
Production figures were from Flory (2013). Hat tip to Paul Niedermeyer (2024) for offering a heads up about Kraft’s story.
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Flory, J. “Kelly” Jr.; 2013. American Cars, 1973-1980. McFarland & Co., Inc.
- Foster, Patrick R.; 1993. American Motors: The Last Independent. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
- Halberstam, David; 1986. The Reckoning. William Morrow & Co., New York, NY.
- Hunting, Benjamin; 2019. “GM’s X-Cars: Anatomy of a Miserable Failure.” MotorTrend. Posted May 21.
- Kraft, Joseph; 1980. “The Downsizing Decision.” The New Yorker. Published April 27.
- Mintz, Morton; 1980. “Auto Industry Regulations Emerging as Campaign Issue.” The Washington Post. Published May 26.
- Niedermeyer, Paul; 2024. “The Downsizing Decision” (May 5, 1980) – A Deep Dive Into the Turmoil and Decisions That Reshaped the Domestic Auto Industry in the 1970s.” Curbside Classic. Posted April 22.
- Wikipedia; 2023. “Joseph Kraft.” Page last edited Sept. 15.
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES
- oldcaradvertising.com: Chevrolet Citation (1980)
- oldcarbrochures.org: Buick Skylark (1980); Ford Escort (1981); Pontiac GTO (1970); Pontiac LeMans (1963); Pontiac Phoenix (1980)
PHOTOGRAPHY:
- 1962 Ford Mustang 1 concept. Photo by Sicnag via Wikipedia Creative Commons 2.0. Image has been slightly lightened.
The “buff magazine” have to tread a careful line on how critical they can be. They may no longer get access to the cars for the articles and lack of access to the events they need to have content for the magazines. some magazines had very limited ethics while others were allowed decent degrees.
Automotive News is a publication for the insiders of the industry; the general public is not at all their audience. The OEMs, the suppliers, dealers and all the businesses that support them are their audience. Theirs is a business viewpoint of what is going on in the industry. Nowadays, as told by a up until recent staffer, their focus is more on the dealers and the service providers for them.
You miss one of the areas that the outsider may not grasp is the realities of the business. Product development timing is something most people struggle with – today’s concept (hopefully the correct one) for the future car may not be on the road for 5 years. Nor do they necessarily grasp the monies it takes to make that future car become a reality.
It is always easy these days to pick on GM in the late 1970 and into the 1980s. But, consider that they, unlike the others in Detroit, fully committed to downsizing through their entire platforms on their own and not as a response to Ford or Chrysler. The X platform did have unfortunate problems but on the other hand one might want to commend GM for making the commitment to make such a radical departure for a “bread & butter” product line.
Just remember what happened to the late, great Leon Mandel at “Car & Driver” when he honestly went after the poor, pitiful, despicable (allegedly a Buick) “Opel Isuzu”(The Isuzu Gemini), which replaced the German Opel 1900 sedans for 1976 due to currency fluctuations. I think Ziff-Davis had to eventually sell the magazine.
For me, CC poster NJRide, who made the most recent comment, nailed the errors GM made in in its downsizing – Saturn, the W body, and product overlap. GM could have done its downsizing more efficiently, as Ford and Chrysler did with more component sharing.
I’m looking at the Buick ad. Those two don’t look strong enough to push that Skylark out of the sand. I’ll guess their next car will be a Subaru Forester.
Look at the timelines: G.M. debuts it biggest full-size cars ever in the fall of 1970. Ford responds with its E.S.V.-inspired full-size cars in the fall of 1972. Poor Chrysler debuts its revamped full-size cars in the fall of 1973, just as spot gasoline shortages are taking hold in the U.S. G.M.’s strike-delayed mid-size cars debut in the fall of 1972, although Ford’s body-on-frame Torino had bowed a year earlier. Chrysler basically stood pat with just reskinning its intermediates for 1975. When G.M. upgraded the Nova / Ventura / Apollo / Omega platform in the fall of 1974, I assume that the work on the 1980 X-cars was already underway with “the old bookkeeper” Chairman / C.E.O. Richard C. Gerstenberg firmly in charge.
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/26/business/richard-c-gerstenberg-92-gm-official.html
The Times credited “Old Dick” with leading G.M. into “downsizing !