“Proud, that’s what the industry is — proud of itself. And with reason. It proved its vitality, its flexibility. It proved that it responds to public demand, after all.
Sure, there was a period of delay, a period which gave critics a chance to shriek. But the delay wasn’t due to mental ossification, but to that old mass-production bogeyman, lead time.
All the while the highly articulate critics were tearing around in their chariots screaming about Detroit’s failure to act, the industry was acting — at full speed. Never before have three all-new cars, with all-new engines, been brought out with such speed, with such rightness. As one engineer said, ‘It sang right from the start'”. . . .
Detroit executives must have had to do considerable lip-biting and fist-clenching to keep from shouting back last year as so many critics, private and governmental, accused them of stupidity, of failure to respond to the public’s wishes. But they did hold their tongues and now the new cars speak for them — loudly and clearly. Where are the critics now?
Yet the industry is not real certain how many of you do want the smaller, more economical cars. Things looked clearer in 1958. Then, the party was draggin’, sales were laggin’, and the switch began — a switch to smaller cars. But then along came 1959 and big cars started to sell again (to be sure, compact cars like Rambler and Studebaker sold even better). Apparently, it really was the recession that had cut sales in 1958 and not the size of the cars.”
— Art Railton, Popular Science (1960)
RE:SOURCES
- Railton, Art; 1960. “Detroit Listening Post.” January issue: p. 151.
Also see ‘Lee Iacocca got lucky with the 1964-66 Ford Mustang’
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