When I was growing up in Warren, Ohio in the '60s, it had about 65,000 inhabitants and General Motors employed nearly 30,000 people there, building cars, truck engines, and assembling wiring harnesses. Those jobs paid high union wages and offered excellent health and retirement benefits (hence the local nickname, Generous Motors). Today the population is about 45,000 and the GM payroll is down to under 5,000 – and many of those jobs have been downgraded in pay and benefits. We all drove GM cars back in the day; partly out of loyalty but also as part of an endless feedback loop in which you could not sell a used car unless it was a GM model, and no one would buy something they couldn’t sell later.
My grandfather gave me my first car -- a big, black 1948 Cadillac, so decrepit my parents wouldn’t let me drive it. Next came a 1952 Chevy followed by a chocolate brown 1972 Buick Electra 225 with a chocolate brown interior and vinyl roof. Then a ’71 Olds 442 succeeded by a ’71 Chevy Impala Super Sport – fire engine red, chrome reverse wheels and a sreamin’ small block V8 engine that got about 8 miles to the gallon if I babied it. Someday I’d like to have the car in the photo above, ('59 Caddy Eldorado) or maybe a new ‘Vette.
When I moved away from Ohio I lost my automotive way and owned a succession of European sedans. And while they were nice cars, driving them always made me feel vaguely pretentious and disloyal to my heritage. So a few years ago I went back to my GM roots and now have three pieces of “Detroit Iron” in the driveway. They are all nice cars. They’ve been trouble-free and each was much less expensive than their Japanese or European counterparts. So don’t hesitate to drive American. It won’t hurt and it might make you feel good.
This is all on my mind today because I had a drink last night with an old friend from Detroit, and we were talking about how S&P had just downgraded GM, and raised the possibility of bankruptcy, which would just be unimaginable to me. (In the last year the stock has gone from $40 per share to $5.) We talked about how many of our old friends from home depend on GM or Ford for either their job or their pension. And these are just about the last blue collar jobs in America that can support a truly middle-class life. It would be unbearably sad to see that disappear.
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21 comments:
I remember almost all of those cars. Especially the Electra which I was in when it got totalled. I was arrested (along with D'Blank) in the Chevy. Ah youth!!
We were definately a GM family. The old man wouldn't drive anything but Oldsmobile Delta 88s and would get Impala's for my mom.
Whenever I see someone driving an American car I think 'sucker'. But then I'm an elitist. Even in the south they don't, as a rule, drive American any longer. Not even in Texas. That said, my family always had Oldsmobiles - having moved up from Chevys.
This feels more like a trip down Memory Lane than politics. I was also in the duce & a quarter when it was totaled,and I'v been arrested in afew other American cars.
Somewhere in the idea "Buy American" is a feeling of banding together,supporting ourselves that feels good. The feeling was so strong that foreign car makers knew they had to build their cars here.
Then quality issues came along. Trumbull County shot itself in the foot in (guessing)1974. During a UAW national strike auto workers were shown deliberatly trashing the Chevy Vega. I was making them at the time. We ruined the cars future & GM's image for 25 cents an hour over 3 years & some retirement money. GM's image never recovered.
My parents firts car was a 1949 Plymouth that they bought in maybe 1960. It didnt come with the optional heater. We had to take blankets & bundle up in the back in the winter. Today, I guess I'm "green." I ride the bus.
GM> Corvair> Ralph Nader> back to the elections! He could have been the calvary to rescue John McCain.
My father has an Olds 98 with a monster engine, and a BMW 2002, at the same time. My brother Peter and I drove each to drop off the 2002 for service. As quick at the 2002 was on curves, the 98 got there faster. And these were not straight roads. That said, the 2002 was the better car.
Hankster -- If the 98 got there faster it was, ipso facto, a better car.
Fenway -- I know you drove a Camero in HS.
Birb/GaGa -- I'm sure I have no idea of what you speak. I sold that car in creampuff condition to a little old lady in Upper Arlington.
Fenway -- Being from Charleston, my guess is a '56 t-bird.
Dennis - You might be right. My memory of the event is understandably hazy. I do remember the Chevy though and still claim diplomatic immunity.
I learned to drive in that duce & a quarter! Both legally & illegally. (I’d take out for a drive pre license.)
Now when you see that vintage car coming towards you at night they are so wide it looks like the lights to two motorcycles riding side by side.
And that ‘71 Chevy Impala Super Sport-- well it defines testosterone.
I know a lot of people are freaking out about the stock market, but if you look at as the glass is half full….Wall Street is just having it’s annual fall White Sale.
Imagine me driving that 56 T'bird backward, drunk across the OLD Cooper River roller coaster bridge from some juke joint on Isle of Palms. Didn't we discuss juke joints some months ago?
I have an uncle now retired that turned my wife on to Nissan. She has not owned American since an 84 trans am.I drive American but no specific brand loyality. sort of like the liquor store, I did just recently purchase a used sunfire for my daughter made in Lordstown, Actually, it performs well, good mpg. An engineer for for GM wonders how much cash on hand the company really has and thinks at 5 bucks a share the company could be bought.JUst how many people were in the 225 when it met its demise.Thank God it had a full frame.
My Dad had a 40 something Green Plymouth and when I was three or so I was sitting in the front seat with him, car seats had not been invented. We went around a turn and the passenger door flew open. He threw his arm around me to keep me in the car, something he may have regretted in my teenage years.
My first car was a 56 brown Imala with the greatest tailfins ever and perhaps the most horrible shade of brown ever seen. I thought I had made the big time.
I must have made 50 trips from Camp Lejuene to DC in that car and it would fly. I was stopped in Virginia once doing about 90 mph on I-95. The cop realized we were a bunch of vietnam vets in the car and let us go. It was the only welcome home I ever got. (I was probably back up to 90 mph within 5 minutes of his letting us go.)
I haven't had a american car in I don't know how long.
I'm too young to have any kind of intellectual conversation about this boring topic...Go Obama!! :-)
(kidding...just kidding...)
Blogmaster, this is a refreshing diversion from the mind-numbing election.
American cars had something few foreign (I refuse to call them imports) rides ever did -- pizzazz. Detroit design reached its zenith when America did – in the early 60s. And our nation commenced its decline when we began importing garbage – like socialism, the Beatles and VWs.
Bugs were designed by Adolf, built by Kraut creeps (in black turtlenecks & rimless glasses) named Dieter and driven by herpetic Manson chicks.
WTF is a Tercel, Celica, Accord, or Elantra anyway? Those cars are rolling shit.
Gimme a Wildcat, Eldorado, Bonneville, Charger, Cougar, Catalina or Thunderbird, baby! On second thought, can somebody please build me a goddamn time machine, so I can escape the nightmare that is 21st century America?
And please, make sure it’s got fins, fender skirts and automatically performs fatal-hit-and-runs on pedestrians who use the words “inappropriate,” “season's greeting” and “gun-control.”
PS - Please forward this to that fat bastard BAM.
My first (and only) was a '56 Olds Super 88. Drove around in circles, not knowing where to go or how to get there -- but loved that big-assed, very safe car!!
After that, I just started hoofing it!
Hey, Fisty, BAM doesn't even own a computer!!
D, I remember the little old lady from Upper Arlington. She owned Bob Karl's Auto Wrecking on Elm Rd. in Warren. The duce had just afew dings when you (cough) sold it.
Bird,your not slipping,at least not this time.Your memory of the Columbus early morning fender bender is fact.
Well, don't forget, it was raining that morning.
Denny,stimulate the economy and get the Vette,I don't think you could handle 2 1/2 tons of cold rolled steel.Although,you might look rather distinguished behind the wheel smoking a big Cohiba, during the parade route.Definately have to be a convertible!
I love the idea of the 'vette, but the Eldo would be easier to get in and out of -- have to consider these practicalities at my advanced age. convertable for sure.
1960 something Pontiac Bonneville
purplish convertable, summer, the Bel, ahhhhhhh
GaGa,
Bob Karl owned Bob Karl's Auto Wrecking. I went to K through 12 with his son, Don, who is now an attorney in LA.(you went to K thru 8 with him, no?)
Another son, Dave, runs the biz now.
not sure how the little old lady from UA entered the picture. Any severe human damage in the "fender bender"?
DMJ Time for a lesson they dont teach you in K through 12. Bob's name was on the sign, and he & the boys did all the work. But the X Mrs. Karl collected the cash & could have lived anywhere. The X Mrs. Karls' sister Franny Modell,another little old lady, lives in Passadena and still collects paychecks from the old Browns.
No human damage at all from that little incident at the corner of High and Beck streets. It was indeed raining. It could have happened to anybody. I'm surprised they didn't cars from the streets conditions were so bad. As I recall, the other person "involved" in the incident was such an A**hole, the authorities didn't do a thing. There were three people in the car included D'Blank.
I think we've all passed the point of gracefully getting in and out of a 'vette. Eldorado is definately the way to go. Make sure it has an FM radio and an 8 track though.
Fenway - Backwards over the Ashley-Cooper bridge at night? I could barely get across it in broad daylight stone cold sober. That was one scary structure. Sad to see it gone.
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