Word: big
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Cover) Not since Henry Ford put the nation on wheels with his model T has such a great and sweeping change hit the auto industry. Out from Detroit and into 7,200 Chevrolet showrooms this week rolled the radically designed Corvair, first of the Big Three's new generation of compact cars. Smaller and simpler than Detroit's chromespun standards, the Corvair is like no other model ever mass-produced in the U.S.; its engine is made of aluminum and cooled by air, and it is mounted in the rear. To Chevrolet's folksy, brilliant General Manager...
...Specific Needs." What the auto industry is rolling into now, says Ed Cole, is "the era of specific driving needs." More and more Americans want a big car for big driving jobs, a small runabout for short hops. Thus, having long since realized the dream of a car for almost every family, the U.S. now is sweeping toward two cars in every garage. The compacts are speeding up the trend, since two Corvairs can be bought for the price of the biggest dressed-up Chevy...
...Hearing that, Detroit wags recalled the time when Big Bill Knudsen, G.M.'s late president, boasted to Adman Bruce Barton that a certain new-model Chevy was "almost the perfect low-priced car-and it will really become perfect next year when we make one small change." Barton bit hard. "What change?" Deadpanned Bill Knudsen: "We're just going to hang a small hammock under the chassis. Catch all the goddam parts that fall...
...class will prefer a roomy, late-model car to a compact. "The man who has been in the habit of buying a luxury car will not buy a compact," says Kansas City Salesman Henry Frick. "He'll still come to us -especially if he has a big family...
American Motors' President George Romney, whose hot-selling Ramblers sped the entry of the Big Three into the compact race and now hold a commanding lead, argues that the big companies will be in trouble from the moment they jump into the smaller-car field. But not Rambler. "We will make and sell more than 500,000 Rambler '60s." Studebaker-Packard also expects a lift for Lark, up about a third to 200,000 sales. "Of one thing I'm certain," says Romney, "the one who is not going to be hurt is the customer...