Word: detroits
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Despite the mileage standards, the manufacturers are determined to go on making full-size, six-passenger cars. As GM Chairman Thomas Aquinas Murphy told TIME Detroit Bureau Chief Barrett Seaman, "It's one thing to talk about reinventing the automobile to get one that will go 50 miles on a gallon. It is another thing to talk about fleet averages. That means you have got to have some cars that get a lot more than 50 miles a gallon if you are going to have the bigger alternative models people in the past have found they needed to pull...
...conventional engines, diesels give off tiny specks of soot known as particulates. In January the Environmental Protection Agency proposed that a limit on diesel particulates be set at 0.2 grams per mile (g.p.m.). The diesel on GM's 350 Oldsmobile now throws off 0.8 g.p.m., and nobody in Detroit knows how to reduce that level in full-size cars without losing power. The agency announced that it will set a final standard later this year after hearing from the auto companies and consumer and environmental groups. A fierce battle is certain...
...becomes all too apparent, however, there are signs that the regulators are becoming worried and softening their attitudes. Two weeks ago, Adams conceded that the "companies' resources are stretched in meeting the standards by 1985." For the first time he raised the possibility that the Government might help Detroit develop new engines and designs by allocating federal funds for research and development. But he stopped short of relaxing the Government's rigorous regulatory schedule...
...market is worth maybe $2 billion a year, which in Detroit's terms is penny ante. But sales abroad of cars made in the U.S. are rapidly increasing. General Motors last year exported 125,000 cars, up from 98,000 in 1977, and both Ford and Chrysler are doing well. The strongest demand is from Western Europe, especially Switzerland, Belgium and the country where people have prided themselves on making some of the world's best cars, West Germany...
...years the Germans, along with other Europeans, spurned Detroit's chromed giants as only suitable for nouveau riche butchers, high-mark call girls and mobsters. They were just too large, too showy and too expensive compared with the better-quality German models. Now, the weak dollar and the U.S. automakers' new enthusiasm for safety and economy are beginning to make the Ami Strassenkreuzer (literally, Yankee street cruiser) a fast-selling status symbol among the young professional elite...