Auto Sales Changes Each Decade

Auto Industry Experiences Change
by Torrey H. Brinkley

Recent headlines have noted that the automobile industry in the USA is experiencing profund changes. Big pickup trucks and large SUV sales are plummeting, as customers search out newer economical alternatives in the wake of extremely high fuel prices. Overall sales of vehicles in the USA, will drop from a high of 19 million units a few years ago to perhaps under 15 million for 2008. Major manufacturers are wrestling with organizational and financial challenges to help turn a profit in these difficult times.

However, this is not the first time that the auto industry has had to shift gears, re-think their product mix, and move in a different direction from the recent successful past. Look at the historic record to see that automobile manufacturers rarely have had 5-6 consecutive years of continuous profits and smooth-sailing:

**DEPRESSED AUTO SALES. 1929 to 35 was the Great Depression, which wiped out many previously successful auto companies. Money was so tight, that average folk just could not afford to buy a car.
**BRIEF RECOVERY PERIOD. 1936-41 was a re-grouping period, when many cars became sleeker and more modern. Wealthier folk, who had money, did buy cars.
**TANKS NOT CARS. 1941-46, however, brought all auto manufacturing to a halt, as World War II saw U.S. car plants turned into war production facilities. The men went off to Europe & Asia to fight a bloody war, while women went to work on the assembly lines, wondering what the future of the world might be.
**PUTTING AMERICANS BACK ON THE ROAD. 1946-50 saw re-tooling of the postwar plants, with some new attempts to provide Americans with their first cars: Kaiser, Crosley, Frazier, Jeep, etc.

**TRYING TO GET MODERN.1951-54 saw the first major remodeling and restyling efforts, as cars became a major transportation mode west of the Mississippi, & especially on the West Coast.
***STYLED BOATS WITH FINS. 1955-61 brought bigger and wider cars, with growing tail fins, boat-sized bows, and even a few foreign entries coming on the scene (Volkswagen, Triumph, Mercedes, MG and Jaguar).
**FIRST SMALL CAR THRUST. 1960-64 saw some people desirous to get into a new batch of economy cars (not the greatest Falcons, Corvairs and Valiants) to combat the influx of foreign competition (which included Toyota, Datsun, Renault, Austin, Fiat, etc.). There was an explosion of choices in the marketplace, and gasoline cost just 25 to 30 cents a gallon.
**MUSCLE CAR ERA. 1964-72 brought out the horsepower wars, with Muscle Cars & Pony Cars from the domestic manufacturers, and an ever-expanding assortment of foreign sporty cars: Ferrari, Aston Martin, BMW, Pantera, Lancia, Alfa Romeo, Jensen, etc.)

**REGULATIONS & POLLUTION CONCERNS. 1973-78 however, spelled the end of the car fun, as government regulations and a gas crisis, slowed everything down, while anti-smog devices choked off performance. Sales of pickup trucks blossomed, but convertibles all but disappeared.
**GOING SMALLER AGAIN. 1977-85 saw a transition from larger rear wheel drive machines to smaller front wheel drive models. Minivans sprung on the scene to haul families and their gear. These two factors helped saved Chrysler Corporation from sure bankruptcy and closure. Station wagons, however (big, heavy and gas-guzzling), fell by the wayside.
**DESIRE FOR VALUE SEDANS. 1985-90 saw the rise of mid-size sedans in the marketplace (the Ford Taurus and Honda Accord led the way) .
**A NEW THIRST FOR POWER & LUXURY. 1990-2007 saw a return slowly of muscular V-8s for sporty cars, and the introduction of luxury Asian nameplates: Acura, Lexus and Infiniti. Convertibles also came back, and some new smaller station wagons got re-introduced. Sales were almost evenly distributed between pickup trucks, minivans, general sedans, sport utilities and sporty cars.

**SPORT UTILITIES ON THE ROAD. 1998-2004 brought the number of new sport utility vehicles up to 90 offerings. There was a movement away from USA products, with customers increasingly buying Asian and some European cars (and, to a lesser extent, their truck products).
**CROSSOVER POPULARITY. 2004-08 saw the introduction of new crossover SUVs every few months, a growing interest in hybrid powered vehicles, improvements in the Korean vehicles, and Toyota becoming a top sales leader, in car sales particularly.
**DOWN GO THE TRUCKS. 2008 is here, and perhaps this is the first time in 30 years that the top selling vehicles in our land will not be the Ford F-150 pickup truck, followed by the Chevy Silverado. Folk are also quickly dumping their big, heavy gas-guzzling used SUVs, as gasoline costs shoot up to $4 a gallon (the price that Europeans were paying 35 years ago).

Rumors are spreading that some major US manufacturers might soon drop some nameplates and unpopular models. Over the last 50 years, many US auto lines (or captive imports) have been cancelled (AMC, Avanti, Buick's Opel, Bricklin, MOPAR's Colt, DeLorean, DeSoto, Eagle, Edsel, Excalibur, Frazier, Geo, Hudson, Imperial, Merkur, Nash, Oldsmobile, Packard, Plymouth, Rambler, Shelby-Olds, Studebaker, Stutz,etc.), but only Olds and Plymouth had ever been major sales successes.

How can planning departments hope to stay ahead of the potential changes that might come on the world scene? Will there be much response to the Chinese entries into the North American marketplace, with very low quality/reliability ratings so far? Might India also try to export some of its very cheap offerings to the USA? Will ever-higher fuel prices drive most consumers to consider alternative fuel vehicles, or move them into mass transit alternatives? Is technology ever going to get us into above-ground personal transport, as opposed to highway-based vehicles?

Stay tuned; keep your hands on the wheel. Changes are inevitable