Nader¢s legacy

It wasn¢ t only company ¢ bean counters¢ who now decided on the way car designs would be heading. In America an ambitious young lawyer by the name of Ralph Nader would also have a profound effect on the motor car in terms of the way it would be viewed by consumers. His classic 1966 book, Unsafe of Any Speed, attacked the motor car, and in particular General Motors for producing what he considered to be a dangerous car in the shape of the Chevrolet Corvair. Accompanied by a blaze of publicity, Nader took on GM in a crusade for safety.

The Corvair was essentially an American Volkswagen Beetle in terms of its rear-engine layout and its compact size. However, it was a much sleeker and faster design, due both to its styling and larger engine. It also used a chassis design alien to most US drivers, which resulted in the oversteering Corvair catching out so many motorists that it became known as accident-prone. Nader believed that this was largely due to poor design and development on General Motor¢ s behalf, and GM dropped the car due, partly, to poor sales.

The outcome shocked the car industry, bringing safety and consumer issues to a head. The legacy of Nader was that car-makers wouldn¢ t dare do anything other than play safe again.

The revolution of the 1950s gave was to automotive ¢ nannysm¢. Today, with environmental issues starting to gain momentum, the car is once again coming under serious assault for the second time in its short life, as ever-tightening rules on exhaust emissions and noise levels take hold.

The 1960s also saw the first stages in the meteoric growth of the Japanese car industry. Voices of concern from certain quarters of the industry went unheeded and, having already dominated motorcycle manufacturing, Japan again caught the rest of the world napping.

In the UK, car manufacturing had already started its decline-the ailing Rootes Group comprising Hillman, Humber, Sunbeam and Singer (all historic names) was bought out by Chrysler in the mid-1960s, just a few years after the innovative, but unreliable, Imp had been launched. BMC, which started the first of its sequence of ¢ shotgun marriages¢ in 1952 with the merger of Austin and Morris, gobbled up Rover and Jaguar, before becoming British Leyland Motor Corporation in 1968.

It was the start of one of the greatest automotive embarrassments in history, littered with blunders where badge engineering ruled. This is the strategy of calling an identical car by another name, trying to sell it on its qualities and it helped kill off most of the once-great British car industry.

Not surprisingly, the 1970s are generally remembered for bringing some bleak times to the global motor industry. Ironically, the decade had started with UK car sales peaking at an all time high in 1972, but two wars in the Middle East, oil shortages and the spread of economic recession across the globe soon led to an all-encompassing mood of conservatism and consolidation.

It was a time for pure survival above everything else, which in turn cultivated just the right environment for the Japanese automobile industry to prosper. With nothing to lose, it exploited the vast deficiencies which existed in the automotive products of America and Europe, both in terms of design and customer satisfaction. The rest is history.

In total contrast British Leyland (BL) lurched from bad to worse. Nationalized in 1975, industrial strife, appalling build-quality and the gradual blackening of great names such as Jaguar, Rover and Triumph, drove BL to the edge of the abyss. It was only a partnership with Honda that pulled it back from the brink and gave the company some respectability.

Vauxhall was another company in big trouble and it took the wholesale scrapping of Luton-based products in favour of rebadged, but better built, Opels from Germany to reverse the company¢ s fortunes. Citroёn, the most radical-thinking of all French car manufacturers, faced a similar problem. Despite its vehicles being technically brilliant, Citroёn wasn¢ t making enough money to ensure survival and was duly bought by Peugeot in 1974.

American companies were also in trouble, with the Chrysler ¢ empire ¢ crumbling on a global scale. Even the legendary Cadillac suffered huge losses.

Fortunately the new decade brought happier times. Car demand gradually started to creep up, ranges were rationalized and engineers were at last left alone by company accountants. However, the sheer cost of developing totally new designs meant that an increasing number of car-makers enlisted arch rivals as partners in the production of new models common to both interests, thus reducing levels of duplication in component manufacturing.

This, in some instances, led to dedicated plants being built. Some car manufacturers – notably the Japanese – established factories abroad. Soon, companies from other countries were setting up manufacturing bases around the world. The age of the global car company coincided with the fading of the postwar stigma attached to buying foreign products. A ¢ British¢ Ford is now possibly built in Germany or Spain, while French Peugeots are produced at the old Roots/Chrysler sites in the English Midlands.

To save on costs, the need for true ¢ world¢ cars suitable for all markets was now apparent. As the 1990s dawned, a new threat was mounted on the ¢ establishment¢ by Korean firms with odd names like Daewoo and Hyundai. Unlike the Japanese invasion of 30 years before, however, this one is being taken far more seriously by the established manufacturers.

The BMC/BLMC/ Austin-Rover group finally became Rover and was then sold to BMW in 1994. from being a once-dominant car-maker that annually grabbed well over one-third of all UK sales, it has now become a small and select low-volume manufacturer. Its limited range dovetails with BMW¢ s. Rather ironically, the German giant had started life building Austins under licence some six decades before.

The 1990s have also seen electric cars pushed back in the frame in order to cut pollution and provide the answer to dwindling oil supplies. The first electric-and-petrol-powered car was produced as long ago as 1906, but it has taken 90 years for car-makers to begin seriously offering acceptable alternatives to the Otto engine.

Despite a crop of new designs from major companies like General Motors, Ford, Mercedes-Benz and Peugeot, electric cars are still being resisted by public and industry alike. Plans to introduce a law in California stating that two per cent of all newly-registered vehicles must be electrically-powered has had to be postponed.

Now, more than ever, the car needs to get in step with changing times and attitudes to its use. A century has passed since Benz and Daimler showed off their inventions to a hostile public and still the car faces severe criticisms over its place in society. Moves to tax, curb and resist its role as a provider of independent transport and mass employment are gathering momentum. Industry historians may be feeling a certain hint of deja vu. As mentioned earlier, little is really new in the history of the motor car.