> Or are you suggesting that they might have produced something usable > had they been manufacturing small cars for as long as the Japanese > automakers had?
Precisely this. After they bombed with the Corvair, there was little to show for small economy cars, aside from Chevy II, Nova, etc. As usual, these started out as fairly reasonable offerings, then got bigger, heavier, and could only be purchased with V8 power without special order. The Vega was a hurried release built as cheaply as possible to try and compete with what was coming from overseas. Want to talk about Ford's Pinto?
Small economy imports were a niche market. Sure, there were VW bugs, Mini Coopers, etc. BMW, SAAB, Morris Garage, etal, but people who bought these cars were generally considered odd in some sort of way. Was there really anything appealing about the Honda 600, at least until gasoline hit $0.50/gallon? The rest of the world and its automobile manufacturers had been feeling the squeeze far longer and had refined their designs and marketing so that they were positioned to take over when John Q Public got sticker shock at the pumps.
Me, I switched to mostly riding a bicycle during those times. _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub ARCHIVE: http://www.evdl.org/archive/index.html INFO: http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
