The Role Of Domestic Cars In The 1970's

Today, as one drives down the streets, Toyotas, Hondas, Nissans, and Volkswagens seamlessly pass by, yield to, honk at, and park behind Fords and Chevrolets. It may seem as though these foreign and domestic cars, complete with safety equipment and following emissions standards, have always sped by alongside one another with no other thought than fearing the boss’s reaction to being late for work again. Despite what the roads look like now, this mixture of cars from all over the world did not proliferate until the 1970s. With safety and emissions standards increasing in the early years of the decade and foreign companies beginning to surpass and infringe upon the domestic market, radical change was coming. But just how fast and revolutionary

Foreign threats plagued the American industry since its beginnings as the United States joined the production of the automobile after the European entrepreneurs and engineers first began experimenting with the car. While European cars remained consistently smaller than American cars, some attempts at growing the small car market in America tried, with mixed reviews, to produce compact and subcompact cars such as the Ford Pinto and the Chevrolet Vega. In The Journal of Business, Rodney L. Carlson stated, “The growth of automobile sales in the late 1960s and early 1970s was caused primarily by the emergence of the small car market . . . by 1973, domestic and imported small cars accounted for 50% of total sales” (244). Throughout Automotive Industries, the writers show frustration with the greater strength and respect of the foreign small car market compared to the slowly emerging American small car market. For the most part, however, American companies remained steadfast, conservative producers churning out huge numbers of what they did best: big, comfortable, fast, performance-oriented cars. In doing so, they often ignored government and public worries over safety, quality, and pollution problems until the Oil Crisis of 1973 decreased gasoline supply, leading

Kwoka also described “the inferior quality of U.S. produced vehicles” due to the American companies’ “preference for style competition over more fundamental improvements” (520). The solution to these problems, beginning in the 1960s, was increased government regulations with the formation of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency. Many NHTSA regulations went into effect in the late 1960s such as padded dashboards, dual-circuit brakes, safety glass, headrests, restraint systems, and more. The EPA’s Clean Air Act of 1970 forced domestic companies to meet 1975 and 1976 deadlines of emissions standards on hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, and oxides of nitrogen. As a result, PCV vales, air-injection pumps, and decal valves were developed and made requirements in models during the 1960s. To decrease emissions even more, catalytic converters were first used in the early 1970s and proved themselves capable of reducing hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide emissions. The downside, though, was that this new innovation required more crude oil and bigger engines to compensate for the decrease in horsepower. With the modifications to traditional methods of production made necessary by these