Obviously, the most popular lists on this website revolve around the vehicles I had worked with. My Favorite Vehicles of [insert year here] are ones that fulfill your questions year after year. And, every year, you have opinions on it.
That is a 50-year old question that has scratched the heads of those of us who lament and laugh of these cars. In particular, how do we map the advent of a new class of American car to today’s automobiles?
In the meantime, the automotive retail business has been working overtime to reinvent itself. They are hungry for inventory, while production is ramping up under safer conditions along the assembly lines. Used cars are becoming scarce, with some auction facilities laying off personnel. However, the rental car companies are trying to reduce excess fleet in the pall of financial issues due to a reduction in travel.
Translation: Japanese cars were thought of as cheap tin boxes that would never make it through a Minnesota winter. That was the mentality of the American consumer until the last couple of decades. It does help that several Japanese automakers set up shop building vehicles on our soil to change our collective minds.
It is with historical context, however. It was ten years removed from a war that should have ended all wars. Unfortunately, a spat between Korean partisans turned into an international affair splitting the peninsula in half. The same trouble was brewing in Vietnam, a soon-to-be former French colony. Even those within the Soviet Bloc weren’t buying into the new world order as envisioned by Karl Marx. Hungary was a year away from challenging Moscow on whether it should be their superpower or not.
One of them will be the year of "thinning the herd," which, sadly, can be taken many ways. However, this term is apt for something that have been a trend in the North American automotive market – the elimination of models from their respective lineups.
TweetIt sounds like a myth, but it is true: I was brought home from the hospital in my mother's 1955 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight Starfire convertible. A fact that would otherwise be trivial is an indicator of what my future would hold. Let alone a point of historical reference that denotes a heritage of car ownership. Perhaps …
There seems to be a theme unfolding here. A disturbing and sad theme, but it is the reality that 2020 had yielded for us. On top of a pandemic and the movement towards social justice, many car lines are being eliminated by the end of this calendar year.
However, some of those vehicles no longer exist. Brands that have been erased from recent memory. Certain models no longer offered due to market conditions. Entire segments of automobiles withered away into dust.
It has been something I have witnessed through a brief foray or two into Chevrolet’s mid-sized, three-row SUV since before its first appearance in showrooms in the summer of 2017. I applauded the fact that it has adult-sized space in the third row, despite having access to it from the passenger side only. I also applauded the fact that it is contemporary enough to fit within Chevrolet’s new design guidelines, along with huge advances to its technology offerings.