Word: chevrolet
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Every U.S. auto company is contributing to-and benefiting from-this surge, but none so much as General Motors. With its standard models reinforced by the pizazz-laden Corvair Monza and the compact Chevy II, G.M.'s Chevrolet division alone has grabbed off more of the U.S. auto market (30%) than the whole Ford Motor Co. (26.2%). Between Chevrolet's runaway success and solid, though less dramatic, increases for Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick, General Motors as a whole now accounts for 52.2% of all the cars sold in the U.S. (The only company that ever did better...
...stultification by the drive and competitive urge of the line divisions. The decision to build the compact rear-engine Corvair in 1959 took G.M.'s committees about four months to approve. But the fact that the Corvair was built at all was due to the initiative of then Chevrolet Division Chief Edward Cole (TIME cover, Oct. 5, 1959), who on his own time put together plans for the car long before he had any authorization at all. "Let's face it," sighs a rival automaker. "That big G.M. animal has a fantastic response mechanism...
...judge to decide disagreements between the company and its dealers, and set up elected dealer councils to thresh out problems with company brass. The result is that today G.M.'s 13,800 U.S. dealerships are prized possessions. Says San Francisco Chevy Dealer Ellis Brooks: "Getting a Chevrolet franchise is the dream of everybody in the business...
...late '50s marked the death of the American car buyer's traditional urge to move up to higher-priced cars. For a time, this skepticism seemed likely to lead G.M. into serious trouble. In 1959, when Ford's compact Falcon scored an immediate success while Chevrolet's rear-engine Corvair was something of a dud, it appeared that Ford might grab off the lion's share of an important new market. Almost by chance, however, Chevrolet dressed up some Corvairs with pizazz features to attract customers into showrooms to look at the ordinary Corvair. With...
...several years past, there have been persistent rumors that the Justice Department would like to go even further and cut G.M. down to size by breaking off Chevrolet as an independent corporation. (Rival Automaker George Romney has long urged that G.M. be split up.) Now that G.M. dominates more than half the auto industry, the rumors come in louder and stronger. "Dominate," observes Donner dryly, "is a word like discriminate. It was a perfectly nice word until a few years...