Word: detroiter
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Lord's Day, and whenever else he can find time, he is a fervent apostle for the Mormon Church, in which he is a high official. But at all other times his missionary zeal is best defined by a plaque that hangs in the walnut-paneled Detroit office where he reigns as boss of American Motors. A facetious gift from the Cleveland Auto Dealers Association, it reads: "To George Romney, critic, lecturer, anthropologist, white hunter of the American dinosaur...
...Three have used every device of the designer's art and the engineer's skill to make cars steadily bigger, sleeker, more luxurious, almost self-operating. Surrounded by soaring fins, dazzling in their chrome, perched behind an engine of steadily, growing power, the U.S. driver had what Detroit says he wanted. But was he happy...
...that he was not. Cars were often too big to park easily or put in a garage. Gas mileage dropped as gas prices rose. Much of the prestige that once went with a big car disappeared as new prestige articles became popular. Many consumers were apt to pass up Detroit's wiles, instead spend their money for recreation, housing, travel, boats...
...Detroit sniffed the first faint signs of dissatisfaction: a ripple of interest in imported cars. At first Detroit wrote it off as reverse big-car snobbery and the desire to have something different. Where the snobs led, the mobs followed. When foreign imports rose from .8% of the market in 1955 to 8% last year, it became clear that more than snobbery was at work...
...Detroit had always brushed off demands for a lower-priced small car with the remark that motorists could buy a good secondhand big car for about the same price. But the purchase price proved not the chief factor. The secondhand car usually burned more gas and oil, needed more repairs, was less economical than the foreign...