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2018 VW Passat SE w/tech, 2016 Audi Q5 Premium Plus w/tech, 2006 Acura TL w/nav
2018 VW Passat SE w/tech, 2016 Audi Q5 Premium Plus w/tech, 2006 Acura TL w/nav
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2018 VW Passat SE w/tech, 2016 Audi Q5 Premium Plus w/tech, 2006 Acura TL w/nav
Didn't get my first car with A/C until 1990.
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That Monza was well under $5K MSRP, new
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Here is an ad from I believe 1954. Interesting torture test for a British car. The price in the USA quoted is rather breathtaking for the times.
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"Austin of England" dates it, that was the 50s branding they used, I guess to differentiate from the tiny "American Austin" some time earlier. The badge even appeared on some cars:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cars_in_the_1920s
Interesting what happened to market share between Ford and GM between 1921 and 1926....
1921 Ford 61% GM 12%
1922 Ford 49% GM 17%
1923 Ford 49% GM 19%
1924 Ford 51% GM 18%
1925 Ford 49% GM 19%
1926 Ford 37% GM 27%
Strange car....
"GM's share of the U.S. light-vehicle market slipped to 17 percent in 2018 from 17.4 percent in 2017."
https://www.autonews.com/sales/gm-sales-slip-year-ends-sealing-3rd-straight-annual-drop
Looks like the last time GM's market share was 17% was in 1922. I didn't realize until today it had fallen that far. Even back in the 1970s there might still have been vague talk about "breaking up GM" because their market share had been above 40% since before 1950.
The Rabbit along with the Civic were one possible way to the future for some of us back in the early 70s. Smaller, functional, logical, and technologically advanced cars for the time.
The problem was that the Rabbit was actually kind of a piece of junk when you came down to it. My neighbor had a 1975 Rabbit, and by maybe 1978 or so the dash was already cracking i the sun—while the metal dash of my Mom's 66 Bug still looked new. And my neighbors said the Rabbit had all sorts of problems with the engine, fuel injection, etc. The bug just ran and ran with oil changes and regular maintenance and that's it. It was dead reliable, which looking back on it was kind of amazing.
On paper the Rabbit was much better than the Bug, but until sometime in the 80s—and maybe even after that—the reality didn't quite match what was on paper.
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2015 Subaru Outback 3.6R / 2014 MINI Countryman S ALL4
Amazing slice of life shown by all these ads and brochure visuals from era between the Great War and the next one after that. I should find time to read that book too. I'm wondering what Sloan may have said in his own words regarding the GM business relationship with [non-permissible content removed] Germany. Particularly Opel.
I've seen a quote from Sloan in a letter to a stockholder in 1939 which stated that in the interest of making a profit, GM shouldn’t intrude into the affairs of [non-permissible content removed] Germany. “In other words, to put the proposition rather bluntly, such matters should not be considered the business of the management of General Motors.” According to Wiki: The original logo for the Opel Blitz, two stripes arranged loosely like a lightning symbol in the form of a horizontally stretched letter "Z", still appears in the current Opel logo.
Wow. There's no Z in Opel!
Sloane pretty much invented the modern corporation. It went from intuitive to institutional.
RE: Women and 1920s cars: I have to say, I'm impressed. I've driven quite a few 20s-era cars and they require a fair amount of arm strength and leg power. Since most women probably didn't go to the gym back then, I can only presume they were pretty resilient, and up to the challenge. Muscling a Hupmobile out of a tight parking space on 33X3 tires could not have been easy. No power steering. No power brakes. Limited visibility.
“I am shocked — shocked — to find out gambling is going on here.”
“Your winnings, sir.”
The profitable business of [non-permissible content removed] war production should not be considered the business of the management of General Motors?
“Your winnings, sir.”
To be sure, "such matters" as affairs of state, domestic and foreign, war and peace seem to have always held great interest to captains of industry. Henry Ford included. Celebs included.
("HAVE YOU SEEN OUR 1916 MODEL?" Lol!)
Speaking of women and cars of the 1920's, I found a pic of Grace Valentine at the wheel of a 1920 PACKARD TWIN 6 which makes her look like a little kid at the wheel.
Early on in Sloan's book "My Years at GM" about 20 pages is spent on a big GM project I'd never heard of before, which lasted from 1921 to 1923, for an air-cooled engine masterminded by engineering star Charles Kettering.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_F._Kettering
Kettering became the head of GM research in 1920, and before that had already had an impressive career at NCR, as well as with Delco inventing the electric starter, etc. He once said, "I didn't hang around much with other inventors and the executive fellows. I lived with the sales gang. They had some real notion of what people wanted." He also helped invent freon, the Duco paint system, etc.
Anyway, when Kettering said in late 1920 that an air cooled engine would be a great project to do and was something he really wanted to do, GM—including Sloan—backed him. But, to make a long story somewhat shorter there were all kinds of technical problems and performance problems, plus no division at GM actually wanted the engine. Sloan basically had to order Chevy to take the engine, and a few hundred cars were actually built. In 1921-22, when the air cooled engine project was at full blast and costing millions of dollars, GM was just then short on funds. This meant that other things were neglected, such as better water cooled engines for Chevy, Olds, etc.
In 1922 the economy started to come back to life after the severe postwar recession—and by early 1923 car sales were soaring. Sloan realized GM didn't have the time or money to realize Kettering's dream, and that they needed focus on and fund fundamentals. And so Sloan and GM's Executive Committee mothballed Kettering's air-cooled engine. Kettering was hurt and almost resigned, but Sloan patiently soothed K's ego and did whatever it took to keep him at GM. Thanks in part to Sloan K stayed as head GM research until 1947. It's clear Sloan has great admiration for Kettering as an engineering star, and admiration for him as a human being as well.
"I had had some consumer studies made in 1922, and we found that people throughout the United States, except at the corner of Wall and Broad streets, didn't know anything about General Motors. So I thought we should publicize the parent company. A plan submitted to me by Barton, Durstine, and Osborn, now BBDO, was approved by the Finance Committee and our top executives....Bruce Barton was given full responsibility for conducting the campaign. We then formed the Institutional Advertising Committee, consisting of car-division managers and staff men, to assist Mr. Barton."
So all those big ads we've been seeing with GENERAL MOTORS in huge letters were part of this giant campaign that started running in 1923 and went on for many years. Each division had primary responsibility for their own advertising, but all ads were coordinated to some degree so they could work in harmony, and each car division as we know also had to say in all their ads starting around 1923 "a product of General Motions" and/or "division of General Motors."
Sloan says that the campaign was a success, and also had the effect of creating a greater group identity and esprit de corps within General Motors. GM employees saw the ads too, in other words, and thought of themselves more as GM people in addition to whatever division they worked for.
On the copper-cooled fiasco, I read that when GM recalled the cars from the hands of customers and those produced but unsold, they dumped the majority of them into Lake Erie.
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Kettering, working for NCR, invented an electric motor to operate cash registers. Later on, he was the inspiration for a group of inventors/tinkerers, who later became part of DELCO.
Henry Leland, head of Cadillac, commissioned Kettering's "gang" to come up with a practical self-starter. Kettering did it one better, combining the self-starter with a generator, thereby providing not only starting, but also a non-magneto ignition system AND a charging system--all in one. Brilliant!
Kettering's insight was inspired by the cash register, when he deduced that a starter motor doesn't have to be heavy-duty, because it only needs to operate for a very short period of time.
The self-starter pretty much killed off the steam car forever.