Word: vegas
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...cars shrink? To find out, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a research group financed by auto insurers, ran a series of head-on test crashes at 40 to 50 m.p.h. Each collision pitted a small car against a larger model produced by the same U.S. manufacturer: a Chevrolet Vega against an Impala, a Ford Pinto against a Galaxie, a Dodge Colt against a Plymouth Fury, an American Motors Gremlin against an Ambassador...
...change will be evident on all of Detroit's new cars: the price. That will rise, from a modest increase of $99 for the subcompact Chevrolet Vega to an increase of $584 for the Cadillac Fleetwood limousine. Industry spokesmen insist that the higher prices, which will probably come to an average of just under 5%, are the result of the inflationary pressures of increased labor costs and the posted price hikes in steel...
...Position. Obviously impressed by recent strides in Wankel performance, General Motors last year agreed to pay $50 million over five years for the right to use the German engine. Auto experts figure that G.M. will probably aim at producing a Wankel-powered compact, perhaps smaller than today's Vega, within three or four years. Taking a different approach, Ford is dickering to buy a 20% share of Toyo Kogyo, partly because the No. 2 U.S. automaker is interested in the Wankel engine and partly because the company wants a share of the domestic Japanese car market. How fast Wankel...
Wooing Whom? One reason, apparently, is that Detroit did not make its subcompacts quite good enough or cheap enough to win over the majority of import buyers. A stripped-down, two-door Vega, for example, sells for $2,091 (including federal excise tax and dealer preparation charges) and a Pinto for $1,944, v. $1,899 for the basic Volkswagen. The subcompacts, though, are small and cheap enough to attract many motorists who might buy bigger U.S.-made cars if they felt more flush, but whose desire for economy has been sharpened by the bite of the 1970 recession...
...sales battle. Pontiac unveiled its first small car, the Ventura II, built on the same 111-in. wheelbase chassis as Chevy's compact Nova. Ford introduced a second model of its front-running Pinto subcompact, a "runabout" that has an upward-opening rear door much like the Vega's or Gremlin's. Increased supplies of the Vega may help to curtail sales of imports too; Chevy still has not reached its goal of building 1,600 Vegas a day, but hopes to do so in late March or early April...