Word: gm
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...wide, glassy Pacer. It will also have a fresh version of its aging subcompact Gremlin; the new model will use a Volkswagen-designed four-cylinder engine. Indeed, car buyers will find an even wider range of models of all sizes in showrooms round the nation next autumn. GM alone will sell no fewer than 40 models with four different kinds of engines. Whatever kind of car the public may want, Detroit hopes to have it ready, thus coping with buyers who think small one moment and bigger the next...
Only a year ago, Chrysler Corp. was the sick man of Detroit's auto industry. The plunge in car sales hit the company so much harder than GM or Ford that there was serious talk of bankruptcy. Chrysler's huge inventories of unsold cars were reduced dramatically by a desperate, carnival-style rebate scheme that was reluctantly picked up by competitors. A furious cost-cutting program resulted in layoffs of 20,000 salaried employees, who joined an army of assembly-line workers already on furlough. Still, the losses mounted, and last summer Lynn Townsend resigned after nine years...
Just as they see some hope of reversing the sales drop, however, the tire makers have been dealt a heavy blow by none other than their biggest customer, General Motors, which last year bought 15 million tires as original equipment. GM now is giving many drivers of its cars the idea that they do not need snow tires at all. GM claims that the TPC-Spec steel-belted radial tires that are now attached to all newly built GM cars "are designed for year-round traction performance." Tests conducted by GM indicate that on loose or soft-packed snow...
...Message. Tire makers thus face an unenviable marketing dilemma: they dare not offend GM by quarreling openly with its claims, yet they know that those claims are likely to cost them sales. So far their solution has been to plug their new "sticky" tires heavily on TV and seek in other ways to get across the message that motorists still need snow tires to get around in the heaviest snows and on ice. Goodyear, for example, is passing around to editors a release, written like a news story that gingerly notes "there is no mention of ice traction...
...assessing the vitality of one's relationships, and groping towards new ones. And, yes, it is a matter of seeking help if all the world seems grey. But while there is an inner, personal struggle which politics can never replace (oppression doesn't just come straight from GM or Washington, but is internalized through primary relationships, and must be uprooted there), there is also a social struggle to build communities which sustain individuals, and for which no amount of personal therapy can substitute...