Word: volkswagens
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Small imports, which range in price from $2,700 to $3,400, are also feeling the chill of buyer indifference. They now account for no more than 14% of U.S. sales v. almost 18% last year. Among foreign makes, Volkswagen, long the leader in import sales to the American market, has fallen to third, behind Toyota and Datsun...
American Motors is planning production of a station wagon version of its 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...
...years ago a combination of higher oil prices, recession and consumers' lack of confidence depressed industry output 22%, to 2.8 million cars. Volkswagen lost $312.5 million, and German Ford $68.3 million; General Motors' Opel subsidiary, thanks to nimble financial management, was able to stay in the black with a profit of $2.4 million on sales of $1.8 billion. "The big producers were all stuck with high breakeven points [largely because of high labor costs and excess plant capacity] when the recession struck," says Lutz, who moved to Ford from Bayerische Motoren Werke (BMW) in 1974. "Now the arithmetic...
...sales, which were up 20% from a year earlier through the first 20 days of February. Next year the company will enter the subcompact field with a front-wheel-drive auto modeled after Chrysler France's highly praised Simca 1307/1308. The company has agreed to buy from Volkswagen up to 300,000 four-cylinder engines and 120,000 front axles for its new subcompact, thus saving $100 million in tooling costs...
...contrast of wealth and poverty so apparent in most Latin American countries is less stark in Puerto Rico. Between the shacks and the skyscrapers lies a buffer zone of crackerbox concrete housing developments with a Volkswagen in every garage. Twenty years of industrial development as a self-governing commonwealth under American rule have created a large middle class whose veneer of prosperity conceals the extensive poverty that afflicts large sectors of the island's population...