Automobiles of the 60s_图书大全
Automobiles of the 60s
ISBN: 9780785337829
定价: 40.00
内容简介
The symmetry was perfect. It was the Sixties, and just
as American society at large was engulfed in violent
change, so too did the domestic auto industry hurtle into
a turbulent and controversial part of its history.
The horsepower race that had begun in the Fifties accel-
erated in the Sixties. On top of that, the auto industry
expanded its offerings to include a previously unheard-of
variety of cars: big personal-luxury hardtops, miserly
compacts, potent muscle machines, and sporty pony-
cars--something for every taste and budget.
Detroit s marketing language was equally memorable:
Wide-Tracks, Scat Packs, Super Sports, and Cobra Jets.
All this, plus gasoline that seemed pricey if it topped 30
cents a gallon, combined to make for a unique generation
of cars.
Cars of the Sixties were a powerful expression of
America s waning postwar euphoria. Here was a decade
that produced the Pontiac GTO, a showroom model that
could do 0-60 mph about 6 seconds; and the Studebaker
Avanti, which crossed the Bonneville Salt Flats at 170
mph. Today, such rowdy performance strikes many as a
guilty pleasure, and a mere echo of an era that is long
gone. Indeed, by the Seventies a whole host of economic,
social, and environmental factors conspired against the
flash and dazzle offered by the cars of the Sixties. From
cockpit safety to tailpipe emissions--the federal govern-
ment mandated requirements for those and more.
Ironically, it was the car-buying habits of the public
that encouraged the heavy hand of government interfer-
ence-the same heavy hand that the public soon grew to
loathe. Consistently, and to Detroit s undoubted puzzle-
ment, consumers showed themselves unmoved by techni-
cal progress and innovation. Consumer apathy caused
Chevy s cleverly engineered Corvair to fail in its mission
as an economy compact. Buyers yawned at the 61 Pontiac
Tempest and its innovative rear transaxle and all-inde-
pendent suspension; the conventionally engineered
Tempest that arrived after 1963 handily outsold the 61.
The front-drive 66 Toronado could not match the sales
figures of the ent~irely orthodox Buick Riviera. And
Pontiac s economical 1966 overhead-cam six-cylinder
engine was almost completely ignored by a public that
overwhelmingly preferred gas-guzzling V-8s.
It s significant that most of the decade s technical inno-
