Word: detroits
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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THERE are two kinds of news: that which has happened and that which will happen. This week's TIME cover story reports something that has happened: the introduction of the first of Detroit's compact cars...
...Even so, Detroit thought the small car was just a fad. TIME was not so sure. In a cover story on Ford Styling Chief George Walker (Nov. 4, 1957), TIME underscored the rising chorus of complaints that "Detroit's new chariots are too long, too heavy, too brassy." What TIME was reporting did not agree with many of the automakers' market surveys. But when auto sales skidded down sharply, TIME again updated the subject in a cover story on the Big Three (May 12, 1958), buttonholed motorists around the land. TIME found that they really thought U.S. cars...
Soon even some of the biggest wheels in Detroit began to doubt that U.S. consumers wanted their cars so big and bright. In the forefront of public doubters was American Motors' President George Romney (TIME, April 6, 1959). Privately, there was also Ed Cole, who had been working on a compact car for years...
...this story, TIME'S Detroit Bureau Chief Marshall Berges spent 50 hours with Cole, drove the Corvair and other cars on the G.M. proving grounds, as did Marshall Loeb, who wrote the story. For their combined work, edited by Joe Purtell, see BUSINESS, The New Generation...
...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...