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- Path: sparky!uunet!gossip.pyramid.com!pyramid!pyrps5.eng.pyramid.com!jmuth
- From: jmuth@pyrps5.eng.pyramid.com (John Muth)
- Newsgroups: rec.autos
- Subject: Re: Before Buying Foreign (was Re: Before Buying Japanese).
- Message-ID: <185071@pyramid.pyramid.com>
- Date: 21 Jan 93 21:15:43 GMT
- References: <1993Jan13.024653.22772@EE.Stanford.EDU> <1993Jan13.012156.27232@sco.com> <1993Jan19.073621.23889@informix.com>
- Sender: news@pyramid.pyramid.com
- Distribution: na
- Organization: Pyramid Technology Corporation, Mountain View
- Lines: 29
-
- In article <1993Jan19.073621.23889@informix.com> aland@informix.com (Colonel Panic) writes:
- >In article <1993Jan13.012156.27232@sco.com> garyh@sco.COM (< Gary H >) writes:
- >>ship). That's how it worked and will always work! Remember, when japanese
- >>cars first came out, they were considered cheap, ugly, and a to have one
- >>(just like Hyundai's 8-)). However, people were so sick of the big 3
- >>wringing money from their pockets that they jumped shipped. Now, it's all a
- >
- >No, for the most part they jumped ship as a result of the gas "shortages" and
- >gas price increases of the 1970s -- the Japanese cars of the time (plus a few
- >other imports such as VWs) had substantially better gas mileage than domestics.
-
- They jumped ship for a variety of reasons. My father, for example, decided in
- '74 to get a car with better milage than the '70 Oldmobile '98 with the
- 454 V8 he was driving (For those of you to young to remember, an M-1
- tank weighs less and gets better milage than a '70 Olds 98 with the 454 V8.
- The back seat was big enough for an orgy, but that's another
- story). GM and Ford had recently introduced small, fuel effiecient cars
- called the Chevy Vega and the Ford Pinto. He replaced the Olds with a
- Chevy Vega. That Vega was undoubtedly the biggest pile of shit I've ever
- driven. The transmission died at 1200 miles. After about 6 months my
- brother and I just called it "Smoky the Car" because of large amount of
- smoke that blew out of the tailpipe under any conditions that resembled
- acceleration. 0-60 times where measured in weeks. It was the last American
- car my father ever bought.
-
- American manufacturers had high milage cars on the market when the gas
- crisis hit, they just weren't very good cars.
-
- John Muth
-