Word: subcompacts
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...good many of the new names due to appear in showrooms will be carried by subcompacts being introduced to do battle with the smaller, zippier imports, such as the Honda Civic and Volkswagen Rabbit, whose sales are booming. GM's current entry in this field, the trim little Chevette (base price: $3,225, v. $3,499 for a Rabbit), was introduced in 1975, but Chrysler now plans to follow with the country's first front-wheel-drive subcompacts, the Dodge Omni and Plymouth Horizon. Ford, too, will offer a front-wheel-drive subcompact, the Fiesta, though...
...required automakers by 1985 to turn out cars that average 27.5 m.p.g., v. 17.7 m.p.g. for the average 1977 auto. As recently as February, General Motors Chairman Thomas Aquinas Murphy protested that GM could do so only by making nearly all its cars as small as the boxy-looking subcompact Chevette. But that may not happen after all. In a "hypothetical scenario" submitted to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in Washington.* GM engineers spell out in some detail how they intend to meet the mileage standards while still producing about as wide a range of models as GM makes...
...cars will, on average, shed half a ton of weight or more. The typical GM car today weighs 4,200 Ibs.; by 1985 the average will be down to 3,100 Ibs.-320 Ibs. lighter than the company's average 1977 subcompact. Obviously the "large" car of 1985 will be a lot smaller than the behemoth of today. But GM hopes to accomplish much of the weight reduction by such methods as paring down the thickness of cylinder walls and engine blocks, using more lightweight aluminum and alloys, and expanding the use of front-wheel drive systems, which...
Recapturing Volkswagen's former lead in the U.S. import market may be a more difficult proposition. The Rabbit faces plenty of subcompact competition-not only from other imports but also from new small cars to be brought out soon by Chrysler and American Motors. Some, ironically, will be powered by VW engines. One selling point for the Rabbits that will be made in Volkswagen's Pennsylvania plant: about 20% will be equipped with lightweight, fuel-stingy diesel engines, the first large-scale introduction of diesels to the American market...
...market share when General Motors, Ford and Chrysler started making compacts too. In the mid-1960s it tried to compete against the Big Three by offering a wider range of car sizes and lost disastrously. In 1970 A.M.C. again anticipated public taste by introducing the first U.S. subcompact, the Gremlin, and by 1973 profits were boosted to $44.5 million...