Word: cars
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...last drop available. Lines as long as eight blocks have formed at those gas stations still open; motorists have waited three hours or more to fill up. At some stations, drivers who rose groggily at dawn to hunt for gas have had to queue up behind long lines of cars parked and locked by people who had left them there overnight. Fights with guns, knives and broken beer bottles have erupted in the lines. In Los Angeles a male motorist deflated the tires of a car that cut into line ahead of him, then beat up a pregnant woman...
...already mostly full tank-and thus caused a huge surge of panic demand. Secretary of the Treasury Michael Blumenthal told Congress last week that the average California gas purchase has lately been a mere $3-barely enough to fill a quarter of the tank of a compact car at today's prices. "I've had this car washed four times in six days," reported Fred Tyler as he stood beside a dripping Mercedes 280 on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood. His reason: the Santa Palm car wash will sell five gallons of gas to anyone who will...
Many are also beginning to take the eminently practical step of buying fuel-efficient small cars. Detroit had expected small cars to account for about 47% of all sales of U.S.-made autos this year. The actual share is now 54%. Sales of the GM Chevette and Ford Mustang in March and April ran 77% to 79% ahead of last year. Imports, mostly small and gas thrifty, are taking more than 22% of all sales, a record share. At the same time, sales of gas guzzlers are off so sharply that totals for U.S.-made cars in April...
...whether Americans can somehow be persuaded to curtail their driving. Gasoline inventories in early May were not quite 7% below a year earlier, and production was running 3.6% behind 1978. That would be enough to produce a shortage, but one that would be quite manageable with a bit more car pooling, slightly shorter vacation drives, somewhat more use of public transportation...
...Mayo, professor of travel management at Notre Dame. "It's a need, a right. You've got to get out of the house, get away from the urban centers, and people are going to get away one way or another." Many Americans, he asserts, think of their car as "a second home-a castle." Sociologist Wayne Youngquist of Marquette University agrees: "The car is America's magic carpet, and it gives people freedom and autonomy-it's their little box where they have control over their environment. There is tremendous resistance to anything that threatens...