“General Motors would have the most remarkable year of the four major manufacturers, selling two out of three new 1980 model year cars on the road. In fact, GM was down only about 3 percent from 1979, while the rest of the industry was running about 20 percent lower on average. It should be noted here that GM’s new X-cars had the benefit of a 16-month model year, instead of the traditional 12-month, but even on an adjusted basis, General Motors still carried 63 percent of the market. . . .
Fully 18 percent of 1980 model year cars were one of the new GM X-body cars, introduced in April of 1979: the Chevrolet Citation, Pontiac Phoenix, Oldsmobile Omega and Buick Skylark. Almost unbelievably, fully one in ten new 1980 cars sold was a Chevrolet Citation. The remarkable season for GM in the midst of a worsening recession can be attributed to the luck of their timing. A fuel shortage was the perfect time to introduce new compact cars with better fuel mileage than any of their competition.”
— J. “Kelly” Flory, Jr. (2013, p. 772)
RE:SOURCES
- Flory, J. “Kelly” Jr.; 2013. American Cars, 1973-1980. McFarland & Co., Inc.
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES:
- oldcarbrochures.org: Chevrolet Citation (1980)
Also see ‘Bigger didn’t prove to be better for General Motors in late-70s and 80s’
Well, okay, but Ford was headed into cutbacks in 1979 and 1980 with Phillip Caldwell and Donald Petersen tried to make Ford profitable, while Chrysler had no money after a 1979 loss of $ 1.1-billion and 1979 sales bank of 110-thousand unsold cars at the Michigan State Fairgrounds. But if G.M. was positioned for success, the X-cars would undo it. “NHTSA sued GM, demanding a recall of the entire 1980 model year, claiming the company had known as far back as 1978 of the cars’ tendency to lock rear brakes — and had provided misleading and incomplete answers to NHTSA’s investigation.
-Burnham, David (1983-01-05). (“Brake tests on 1980 G.M. X-cars suggest a wider recall is needed””. New York Times.)
“Though the NHTSA had logged 4,282 complaints, including 1,417 accidents, 427 injuries and 18 fatalities. The presiding judge dismissed the suit in 1987, ruling that NHTSA had filed the suit prematurely, and had relied mainly on anecdotal evidence, without properly developing conclusive evidence or holding investigative hearings.
-Stuart, Reginald (1987-04-15). “Judge Supports G.M. on Brakes in 1980 X-Cars”. New York Times.
The openly contentious back and forth, not only damaged the reputation of the X cars, but General Motors itself — with Hagerty (Insurance), specialist in classic cars, noting that the X-car was “one of the malaziest cars” of the Malaise era, doing enormous damage to GM’s reputation and playing a role in “the sharpest decrease in American market share” General Motors would experience in the 1980s.”
-Sass, Rob (1 August 2013). “Heavier. Slower. Safer”. The Hagerty Group, LLC.
Of course, Brock Yates predicted this decline in his important book, “The Decline and Fall of the American Automobile Industry”, January, 1983, Empire Books, New York.
My understanding is X cars were rushed into production to meet CAFE standards and needed six to twelve months more development time. This is why the X based 1982 A bodies had relatively few problems. GM also rushed the HT4100 into production for 1982, when it wasn’t supposed to debut until the FWD C bodies debuted (although those were delayed from 1983 to mid year 1984 as 1985 models). I think the CAFE standards should have been spaced out more to give the manufacturers to develop the more fuel efficient products with the necessary quality and durability.
Fredrick Donner’s rise to power in 1958 at General Motors, to put the financial people in New York in control of all G.M. planning and of “the dreaded car-guys” in Detroit, eventually backfired starting with the Vega 2300, then the X-cars, then the J-cars, then the H-body cars for 1985 and the halo cars for 1986 (Riviera, Toronado, Eldorado). The financial guys pushed through development timetables that essentially resulted in timelines that made the customers find the defects in G.M. cars, starting with the Vega. The G.M. 350-diesel engine, the Cadillac V-4-6-8, and the HT-4100 all suffered because of a lack of development and testing time. The reason why the 1966 Toronado was relatively trouble-free (other than 1966’s weak-drum brakes) was because Oldsmobile Division had been working on front-wheel-drive since 1958. In April, 1984, when I was living in Des Moines as Program Director of WHO Radio, Campbell-Ewald, which handled G.M.’s corporate advertising with input from N. W. Ayer, bought time in April on C.B.S. in a three-day, three-part mini-series TV, touting the quality of what they were building in the new cars like Cadillac Seville sedans, narrated by actor Richard Widmark and ending with the copy-line: “Nobody sweats the details like G.M.” Needless to say, G.M. was still had problems with the overall quality of their cars from the reintroduction of the A-bodies, the N-bodies. etc. Then came the “Look-a-like Cars” for the A-bodies followed by the H-bodies and the dramatically downsized Rivieras, Toronados and Eldorados. Thank you Roger B. Smith !
I recently read “Chrome Colossus” because Steve highly recommended it. Although I think the author’s personal biases came through more often than I’d like, I had no idea heretofore how much influence Frederic Donner had on the future of GM. He played the long game of not only promoting yes-men into positions of great authority for (I assume) personal reasons but also assuring that nobody but accountants would be in charge for decades. The book explained how the engineers at the top (such as Cole and DeLorean) were stymied because they were simply outnumbered (not that all their ideas were good for a major corporation trying to make money). Knudsen was shuffled aside for similar reasons. What you ended up with were seemingly milquetoast personalities with no feel for the auto business who were coasting on GM’s long-accrued inertia.
Although the author seemed to view Harlow Curtice as a huckster of sorts, he may have also been the last guy in charge at GM who really saw the big picture and who understood that the car itself was an important tool in making money (although it seems fairly obvious to anyone reading this website). Without any feel for why someone would want to buy a car, many of his successors began to chip away at what made GM great in the first place – a smart business model teamed with cars people wanted to buy because they looked good and were reasonably well put-together.
Combine that with changing regulations that GM dragged their feet on implementing, and it’s no wonder that the ’80s were a bit of a tough decade for GM.
Aaron is absolutely correct here, and I think that Alfred P. Sloan respected “the car guys”, like Harlow Curtice and John F. Gordon because they made money for General Motors, and when there were mistakes, they reacted quickly and decisively to fix their losses. Fred Donner seemingly held the men and women who made the cars a reality in genuine contempt.